Echos of Evolution - Cyber Diplomacy

When we think of evolution, we often imagine nature reshaping itself—animals adapting, environments transforming, species emerging from struggle. But evolution is not limited to biology. It echoes through history, societies, and systems. Today, it echoes through cyberspace.

Let’s listen to those echoes—and acting on them.

Let me take you back to 2017. The world was shaken by the WannaCry cyberattack—a ransomware epidemic that swept across 150 countries. Hospitals shut down, governments stalled, and chaos rippled across continents. In the aftermath, a group of police officers from different nations working at INTERPOL's Global Centre for Innovation, came not with answers—but with uncertainty. Many of their governments had issued no guidance, no policies, no framework. There was no international regulation to refer to for guidance.

That moment wasn’t just a crisis. It was a mirror.

It reflected how the world had failed to evolve fast enough to meet a digital threat. While technology surged ahead, our laws, systems, and cooperation lagged behind—still clinging to structures built for an offline era.

My Journey: Between Codes and Countries

My journey into this world didn’t begin with a computer or a courtroom. It began in the middle— between disciplines. I was a computer science engineer fascinated by systems. Then I studied management, politics, diplomacy, law, and international security. Somewhere along the way, I realized that the world doesn’t need more experts who speak in silos. We need translators—people who can bridge the worlds of code and countries.

In my work with various national law enforcement agencies, in security and defence and withINTERPOL, I saw the same story repeating. Cybercrime wasn’t a niche concern—it was a global epidemic. But the response? Disconnected, delayed, and deeply bureaucratic.

I remember a case that changed everything for me.

A farmer in Solapur, India, lost Rs. 10,000—his savings—to an international phishing scam. He walked into a local police station, hoping for help. But that crime didn’t stop at his phone. It traveled through servers in three countries, used anonymous cryptocurrency accounts, and left no trail.

What do you tell that man?

There was no system equipped to help him. The time, cost, and complexity to recover the money made it almost impossible. And he’s just one of millions. This is the real face of cybercrime—not headlines, but heartache. Ordinary people losing their dignity and savings to faceless systems.

The Digital Jungle

We are living in what I call the Digital Jungle. Every click, every connection, every keystroke— traces a path through a vast, invisible landscape. In this jungle, predators don’t wear masks or carry weapons—they use malware, misinformation, and manipulation.

And yet, the laws that govern our protection were written before smartphones even existed.Governments pour billions into creating new policies, institutions, and schemes. But instead of building agility, we build more silos. We treat cyber threats like checkboxes—not like the dynamic, evolving dangers they are.

This is not a failure of intention. It’s a failure of evolution.

What If We Evolved?

Imagine if evolution echoed through our institutions. Imagine if, instead of new bureaucracies, we built new bridges.

Enter Cyber Diplomacy.

Cyber Diplomacy is not just about diplomats and data. It’s about recognizing that cyberspace needs its own language of cooperation—one that blends the precision of technology with the compassion of diplomacy.

We need Cyber Diplomats—people who understand firewalls and foreign policy, encryption and empathy. People who can act swiftly across borders, who understand the urgency of threats and the human cost behind them.

Imagine a world where every international organization, every government body, and every critical infrastructure had its own cyber diplomat—someone trained not just in response, but in anticipation. They would be our new diplomats of peace—not across physical borders, but across digital frontiers.

Our Critical Infrastructures Are Whispers Away from Collapse

Think of our power grids, our hospitals, our water supply systems, our transportation networks. These are the arteries of modern life. And they are all connected—digitally. But they are also fragile. In many cases, these systems are built using imported technologies—some with embedded backdoors, others with hidden vulnerabilities. These aren’t just security gaps; they are open invitations. And yet, when attacks happen, we still rely on slow-moving institutions, outdated playbooks, and overloaded investigators. We react sluggishly when we should be agile.

What if, instead, we had Cyber Diplomats who could step in at the first sign of trouble—liaise between nations and companies, cut through red tape, and coordinate responses in real time? Not just react, but resolve. Let me paint a few scenes of why this matters, because these aren’t theoretical threats—they’re happening right now to people like you and me.

Consider our cars. A few years ago, on a highway outside St. Louis, a man was driving his Jeep Cherokee at 70 mph when the unthinkable happened. Without warning, the air conditioning turned on full blast, music started blaring, and the windshield wipers went crazy. The driver’s accelerator stopped responding; the Jeep slowed to a crawl. Two hackers, miles away, had remote control of his vehicle and eventually forced it into a ditch. It was a controlled experiment by security researchers – a wake-up call to the auto industry – but imagine if it hadn’t been just an experiment. Imagine a family driving home at night when their smart car is hijacked by a cybercriminal demanding ransom to give back control. Or a city where tens of autonomous cars suddenly veer off course due to a malicious command. In an instant, the very technology that keeps us safe on the road could turn our highways into chaos.

Consider our ports. In June 2017, a piece of malware originating in a conflict half a world away spread rapidly and struck one of the world’s largest shipping companies. Within hours, port terminals from Mumbai to Rotterdam saw their computer screens go dark. Cranes sat idle. Containers couldn’t be tracked or moved. That malware – now infamous as NotPetya – ended up costing the shipping giant Maersk an estimated $300 million and forced it to halt operations for weeks. Now flash forward to last year: in South Africa, the major port operator Transnet was hit by ransomware, leading to a shutdown of ports in Durban, Cape Town, and beyond. They had to declare “force majeure,” essentially admitting that an extraordinary cyber incident made it impossible to fulfill their obligations. At the Port of Durban – which normally handles 60% of South Africa’s trade – throughput dropped to just 10% of its capacity. Trucks queued for miles outside the gates, with drivers waiting for days in the sweltering heat to deliver food, medicine, goods. A cyberattack had literally jammed the lifeblood of a nation’s economy. Think about the ripple effects: a factory in East Africa waiting on parts that never arrive, supermarket shelves in Europe going empty because a container is stuck on a ship, millions in losses and lives disrupted – all from a few lines of malicious code.

Consider the open ocean. In 2017, over twenty ships navigating the Black Sea suddenly reported their GPS location somewhere impossibly wrong. The ships’ instruments placed them 32 kilometers inland, at a random airport on the map. Imagine being a ship’s captain, looking at your navigation screen and seeing your 200-meter-long oil tanker on top of a hill at an airport, when you’re actually out at sea. This wasn’t a bizarre software glitch; it was a deliberate GPS spoofing attack – someone electronically tricking ships’ navigation systems. Thankfully, the captains trusted their eyes over their instruments and no accidents occurred. But it’s not hard to see the danger: if you can mislead a ship’s GPS, you can send it off course, potentially into hazardous waters or even into a collision. In an era when logistics and timing are everything, such spoofing can create chaos – ships missing ports, supply deliveries delayed, even accidents that put lives and the environment at risk.

Each of these stories – the hacked car, the frozen port, the misled ships – shares a common truth. In cyberspace, borders mean nothing. The hacker controlling a car might be in a different country altogether. The ransomware crippling a port in Africa was likely launched from another continent. The GPS spoofing signals that confounded ship captains in the Black Sea could have been emitted by anyone from a state actor to a lone wolf with some illicit equipment. The threats are cross-border, instantaneous, and mercilessly effective. And the people affected often have no idea where the danger really came from. The family in the car, the dock worker at the port, the ship’s crew – they’re left bewildered, asking “Who would do this? Why? What now?”

Why This Matters Now

The future isn’t coming—it’s already here.

Generative AI is creating deepfakes in seconds. State-backed hackers are targeting vaccine data, election systems, and food supply chains. Teenagers in remote villages are running phishing networks. Nation-states are fighting proxy wars through code.

And somewhere in this chaos, people are losing hope.If we don’t evolve, we risk losing more than data—we risk losing trust. Trust in systems, institutions, and in each other.

A New Kind of Evolution

Evolution is not just about survival. It’s about adaptation. About learning from the past and stepping into the future with intention. The echo we hear today is this: it’s time to adapt. Not with fear—but with vision.

Cyber Diplomacy is not a utopian dream. It’s a necessary next step in our global evolution. A way to bring nations together, protect the vulnerable, and secure the digital world for generations to come.

Let’s not wait for another global cyber crisis to remind us of what we already know. Let’s listen to the echoes—and answer them.

Let me share why this is personal to me. My own journey has been about living in the space between these worlds. I began as a computer engineer fascinated by systems and code. Later, I found myself studying law, policy, and international security. I’ve worked with law enforcement and international agencies, and I kept seeing the same story repeat: cybercrime wasn’t a niche tech problem—it was a global epidemic. But the response was fragmented, delayed, often tangled in bureaucracy. I realized the world doesn’t need more people shouting across the divide of tech and law; the world needs translators – people who can stand in that gap and speak the languages of both code and country. People who can convene a security expert in one hand and a treaty lawyer in the other and get them to craft solutions together. In other words, people who can evolve beyond single specialties into something new: cyber diplomats.

Final Thought

I’ll leave you with one image:

The farmer in Solapur, checking his phone, not knowing his savings are gone. The police officer, wanting to help, but stuck in a system that hasn't evolved. The cyber diplomat, standing between them and the world—ready, connected, prepared.

That is the evolution we need.

Let’s echo it, together.

Thank you.