The director of Citizen Lab, one of the most prominent organizations investigating government spyware abuses, is sounding the alarm to the cybersecurity community and asking them to step up and join the fight against authoritarianism.
On Wednesday, Ron Deibert will deliver a keynote at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, one of the largest gatherings of information security professionals of the year.
Ahead of his talk, Deibert told TechCrunch that he plans to speak about what he describes as a “descent into a kind of fusion of tech and fascism,” and the role that the big tech platforms are playing, and “propelling forward a really frightening type of collective insecurity that isn’t typically addressed by this crowd, this community, as a cybersecurity problem.”
Deibert described the recent political events in the United States as a “dramatic descent into authoritarianism,” but one that the cybersecurity community can help defend against.
“I think alarm bells need to be rung for this community that, at the very least, they should be aware of what’s going on and hopefully they can not contribute to it, if not help reverse it,” Deibert told TechCrunch.
Historically, at least in the United States, the cybersecurity industry has put politics — to a certain extent — to the side. More recently, however, politics has fully entered the world of cybersecurity.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into former CISA director Chris Krebs, who had publicly rebuffed Trump’s false claims about election fraud by declaring the 2020 election secure. Trump later fired Krebs by tweet. The investigation ordered by Trump months after his 2024 reelection forced Krebs to step down from SentinelOne and vow to fight back.
In response, Jen Easterly, another former CISA director and Krebs’ successor, called on the cybersecurity community to get involved and speak out.
“If we stay silent when experienced, mission-driven leaders are sidelined or sanctioned, we risk something greater than discomfort; we risk diminishing the very …