SolarWinds, and also the recent Microsoft Exchange hack, have again rekindled the debate about the nature of such operations and how to respond to them. Many analysts say they are plain espionage operations – and therefore a normal, if undesirable, part of international relations – but many others are wondering whether operations such as these push beyond the boundaries of what is considered ‘normal espionage’.

In this fourth episode, we share the audio recording of our recent live online event on cyber espionage, taped on 15 April while the US government came out with the formal attribution of the SolarWinds hack to Russia and announced sanctions for this specific hack and other transgressions, featuring speakers Russell Buchan (Senior Lecturer in Law at University of Sheffield), Ciaran Martin (Professor of Practice in the Management of Public Organisations at Oxford University & former CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre, GCHQ), Ellen Nakashima (National Security reporter for The Washington Post) and Ronald Prins (Co-Founder Hunt & Hackett, formerly founder & director of Fox-IT & former member of the Dutch review committee on the intelligence and security services), and hosted by Dennis Broeders, Senior Fellow of The Hague Program for Cyber Norms and Professor of Global Security and Technology at Leiden University.

Listen to our fourth episode on SoundCloud, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.