Virtual Routes Colloquium is back with a brilliant lineup of speakers for the fall/winter session (October-December 2025) calendar! This year, the sessions explore state use and regulation of cyber surveillance and intelligence collection capabilities.
Our fantastic line of speakers will share their work on the proliferation and use of commercial spyware, Ukrainian intelligence disclosures, and US as well as EU efforts to regulate cyber surveillance technologies. Join us at the one-hour sessions to find out how digital and emerging technologies are reshaping global security and governance!
Mythical Beasts and Where to Find Them: Diving into the Depths of the Global Spyware Market
October 2, 16:00-17:00 CET
Speaker: Jen Roberts (Cyber Statecraft Initiative)
Discussant: Julian-Ferdinand Vögele (Recorded Future)
Mythical Beasts: Diving into the Depths of the Global Spyware Market dives into the growing and evolving global market for spyware and the challenges policymakers face to curb the proliferation and misuse stemming from it. The report builds on the first publication of its kind on this topic, Mythical Beasts and Where to Find Them: Mapping the Global Spyware Market and Its Threats to National Security and Human Rights, which outlined spyware vendors and their complex networks of holding companies, investors, suppliers, and partners. In total, this new edition of the Mythical Beasts project surveys 562 entities across 46 countries from 1992-2024. It discusses new trends in the global spyware market, including the role of investment and the role of resellers and brokers within this ecosystem. We observed: The United States is now the largest investor in this sample of the spyware market, overtaking Israel — despite US-led efforts to combat spyware proliferation; US-based investments in spyware vendors increased by 20 new entities in 2024 alone, revealing a stark enforcement and policy gap; resellers and brokers are playing a far more critical role in the spyware market than previously understood, obscuring relationships between vendors and end users; new entities have been identified in Japan, Malaysia, and Panama, demonstrating an increasingly globalized market.
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Export controls and spyware: Enhancing oversight, transparency and restraint
October 23, 16:00-17:00 CET
Speakers: Mark Bromley and Giovanna Maletta (SIPRI)
Discussant: Aude Géry (GEODE – Géopolitique de la Datasphère)
The proliferation and misuse of spyware and other cyber-surveillance tools pose significant threats to human rights and national security. Export controls and sanctions are critical components of wider attempts to regulate the production and trade in these tools and to prevent exports that are likely to be misused. Further expansions in the use of sanctions and export controls have been encouraged by recent multilateral initiatives. However, export controls and sanctions are complex instruments, and to deploy these tools effectively, states require a deeper understanding of how they work and what they can and cannot achieve.
This new report from SIPRI reviews the content of the export controls and sanctions that have been applied to the trade in spyware and other cyber-surveillance tools. The analysis is supported by a detailed study of the types of spyware and other cyber-surveillance tools that have been captured by export controls and sanctions, and a mapping of the location of the companies that produce these tools. The report presents recommendations aimed at improving the consistency and effectiveness of efforts to use export controls and sanctions to tackle the proliferation and misuse of spyware and other cyber-surveillance tools, highlighting steps that can be taken at the national, multinational and European Union levels.
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Positionality and Performance: Intelligence Disclosure in Ukraine’s Nation-Branding Strategy
November 27, 16:00-17:00 CET
Speaker: Quentin Jalabert (Leiden University)
The study of intelligence disclosure has largely focused on its role in setting and upholding international norms (Carnegie and Carson 2019; 2020; Pauly and Nutt 2021), its use in coercive diplomacy (Riemer 2021; Sobelman and Riemer 2023), or as a tool to support foreign policy decisions (Dylan and Maguire 2022; Schrijver 2024). This article, however, proposes to move beyond the commonly attributed motive behind some of Ukraine’s intelligence disclosures—namely, the creation of a coherent narrative to garner international support—by engaging with ontological security studies and drawing on nation-branding theory to inform our understanding of Ukraine’s post-2014 strategy to reposition itself within the international system.
It highlights the central role played by intelligence disclosures in the initial success of this strategy in the years following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These disclosures enabled Ukrainian authorities to assert their agency and present themselves as an independent, responsible actor in global governance, while simultaneously contributing to the dialectical stigmatization of Russia. This dual effect supported the successful rebranding of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s rebranding is understood here as an effort to break away from the colonial lenses that have historically shaped perceptions of the country’s expected role and assigned position in the international order. Through the Ukrainian case, this article demonstrates that intelligence disclosure can, under certain circumstances, be mobilized by subaltern states as part of a broader strategy to modify their position within international hierarchies.
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Dangerous by Design: What makes commercial spyware so prone to abuse?
December 11, 16:00-17:00 CET
Speaker: Natalia Krapiva (Access Now)
Discussant: Fionnuala Ni Aolain (University of Minnesota)
There has been greater awareness of the threats that the proliferation of commercial spyware poses to human rights, democracy, and national security in recent years, which spurred heated debates about what measures are needed to address these threats. While governments like the E.U. and the U.S have been regulating these technologies through sanctions and export controls, many civil society groups have pushed for a moratorium or even a ban, arguing that spyware technologies, like NSO’s Pegasus spyware, are fundamentally incompatible with human rights. The paper examines the claims of some of the “ban” proponents and highlights the particular aspects of these technologies that make them especially dangerous and require strict regulations, if not an outright ban. The paper will rely on the out of court witness statements, in court testimonies, and other legal documents from the WhatsApp v. NSO legal case, Italy’s parliamentary committee on security (COPASIR) report on the investigation into Italy’s use of Paragon’s spyware, and interviews with researchers and technologists.
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