Interpreting cyber-energy-security events: experts, social imaginaries, and policy discourses around the 2016 Ukraine blackout

Abstract

ABSTRACT The digitalisation of the energy system brings out the question of cyber threats. How this area is perceived and how cyber-security policy in the energy sector develops is driven by the most spectacular cyber-incidents. How do these events shape public perceptions about the dangers of digitalisation? To understand this, we look at the 2016 CrashOverride cyberattack on Ukraine’s grid. Hypothesising that cyber-energy security incidents are interpreted in the context of socio-technical imaginaries of the energy sector and security imaginaries linked to foreign policy, we distil four discourses that emerged around the Ukraine attack among Western experts and commentators. One represented it as evidence of an accelerating race towards disaster, another as merely a tip of the iceberg. The third portrayed it as less catastrophic than initially suggested, while the last one as part of Russia’s cyber strategy. Not all of these were picked up by the broader public debate in Western security circles, and only the more alarmist discourses had a visible impact beyond niche communities.