In an era of renewed global competition, crisis, and conflict, digital and emerging technologies are increasingly shaping—if not transforming—how power is exercised, contested, and legitimized. We are delighted to announce a line-up of fantastic speakers for the Winter/Spring Virtual Routes Colloquium Series who will examine these developments. Upcoming sessions will cover topics including Iran’s integration of offensive cyber capabilities into military strategy, the role cyber capabilities played in the January 2026 U.S. intervention in Venezuela, narratives of legitimization in the Israel–Palestine conflict, and cyber statecraft under conditions of systemic competition. Hope to see you there!
Strategic Alignment: Explaining Iran’s Integration of Offensive Cyber Operations into its Military Strategy
Eugenio Lilli, Lecturer and Program Director of the Master in American Politics and Foreign Policy, University College Dublin
February 18, 16:00-17:00 CET
This session discusses Iran’s increasingly assertive use of offensive cyber-operations (OCOs) and their integration into its military strategy. It argues that the rise of Iranian OCOs is best understood through strategic alignment: the convergence between Iran’s cyber-behavior and the logics of asymmetry, ambiguity, escalation control, and strategic depth that have long characterized Iranian strategic thinking. To assess this explanation, the article reviews the literature on Iranian OCOs, discusses the four core logics underpinning Iran’s strategy, and tests strategic alignment against both theoretical insights from the cyber-literature and empirical evidence from two cases: the 2020 operations against Israel’s water infrastructure and the 2022 attacks on Albania’s government websites. A separate section examines the June 2025 war between Iran and Israel, highlighting the limits of integrating OCOs into fast-paced wartime operations. The article concludes that both theory and practice corroborate strategic alignment as a plausible explanation for Iran’s growing reliance on OCOs.
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Layered Ambiguity: US Cyber Capabilities in the Raid to Extract Maduro from Venezuela
Louise Marie Hurel, Cyber & Tech team, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)
April 1, 16:00-17:00 CET
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Narratives of Legitimization: The Israeli Occupation of Palestine in Entertainment and the News
Sina Ritt, PhD candidate, University of Zurich
April 16, 16:00-17:00 CET
This session explores the dialogue between popular culture and news media within the context of conflict. Employing a qualitative comparative approach, it analyses the portrayal of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in the television show Fauda and the social media content of the New York Times, respectively. Despite their distinct formats and purposes, both Fauda and the New York Times’ Instagram presence target a politically progressive, globally aware audience in the in-between of information and entertainment media. Focusing on depictions of violence, women, religion, and solidarity, this chapter highlights the similarities in narratives of legitimization, humanization, and dehumanization across media formats and time. Arguing that the repetition and similarity of narratives across media is crucial in constructing the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Hereby, both cases exemplify the role of popular culture, art, and media between information and entertainment in constructing and distributing narratives and imag(inari)es, in dialogue.
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Rethinking Cyber Statecraft
Andre Barrinha, Reader, University of Bath
May 2026
In the last two decades, states have grasped the importance of cyberspace as a strategic environment. Much academic work has analysed the concrete dimensions of state cyber activities, such as offensive cyber operations, the development of cyber commands, and the emergence of cyber diplomacy. However, the literature has no adequate conceptual systematisation to fully grasp the plethora of options, actions and practices that states employ for strategic purposes in this environment. Indeed, this leads to a diminished conceptual toolbox for academia and policy. This paper addresses this issue by proposing a research agenda centred on the concept of cyber statecraft as the array of state-led attempts to ultimately achieve goals in the cyber strategic environment through interaction with other actors. It provides three main contributions to this literature. First, it offers a precise and comprehensive definition of cyber statecraft, distinguishing the concept from related terms. Second, it constructs a conceptual model that enhances the study of cyber statecraft through ‘repertoires’—the actions of actors and their knowledge of execution—within the strategic realm of cyberspace. Lastly, it sets out a research agenda that invites methodological and theoretical diversity.
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