Fireside chat: Cross sector collaboration and cyber defence capabilities for critical infrastructures: Supply chains, subsea cables and resilient compute

Modern critical infrastructure resilience extends far beyond corporate IT networks. Today’s smart transport, aviation and maritime logistics depend directly on fragile global foundations: subsea data cables, specialized semiconductor pipelines, cloud compute nodes and dual use. In an era of heightened geopolitical friction and hybrid threats, disruptions to these shared backbones pose systemic risks to European security and economic continuity.

In this high level fireside chat, Holger Spohn (NATO) and Ulrich Seldeslachts (LSEC) bridge cyber defense with commercial and industrial reality. Following a 15 minute framing of the strategic landscape, highlighting subsea cable vulnerabilities, compute dependency and dual use supply chain resilience, the session opens into an interactive debate. Holger and Ulrich will challenge the CISOs, transport authorities and critical infrastructure operators in the room to examine their own operational readiness and cross-sector response capabilities under crisis conditions.