Security at the frontier

Increasing global connectivity has brought with it a new range of security threats that were unfathomable just decades ago. Global reliance on the internet and on virtual networks has revealed a range of new cyber vulnerabilities and threats, including to critical infrastructure and the Internet of Things (IoT).Cyber technology has brought with it a new security focus on outer space, which has become key to the functioning of national and international infrastructure on the ground. Furthermore, technologies using the electromagnetic spectrum, which are increasingly integral to military operations, create new challenges and adversarial threats including the prospect of electronic warfare.These challenges have expanded geographically too, as countries explore new physical frontiers, like the Arctic, as regions of strategic interest. This conference report, comprising of four expert essays and a meeting summary, draws upon Chatham House’s December 2020 conference ‘Security at the Frontier’,1 to examine the latest developments in cyberspace, outer space, the Arctic and electronic warfare, and considers how best the UK and Japan might respond to these challenges.