UAE Calls For 'Cyber Geneva Convention' To Treat Major Cyberattacks As Acts Of War

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The UAE has called for a new international“Cyber Geneva Convention” to establish rules for cyberwarfare and recognise major attacks on critical digital infrastructure as acts of war, as artificial intelligence increasingly compresses the time available to respond to threats.

Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of the UAE Cyber Security Council, said there had been several initiatives at the United Nations to establish such a framework, but no convention currently exists.

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“Now we need that cyber-Geneva convention to help many states build up their investments and to that digitisation's aspect to really ensure, is that any attack to any of those assets will be considered again a really an active war, if it goes to that level,” Al Kuwaiti said, calling for rules that would help countries protect their digital assets and establish when an attack should be considered an act of war.

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Al Kuwaiti was speaking on the second day of the Hili Forum during a session titled“Data, Drones, Digital (Dis) Order” in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, September 8, where experts discussed how AI, cyberwarfare and autonomous systems are changing the nature of modern conflict as the UAE faces sustained cyber threats alongside physical attacks.

The discussion comes after Dr Anwar Gargash said on Monday, September 7, that Iran launched 3,300 missiles and drones at the UAE during the recent conflict, with most targeting civilian infrastructure and the majority intercepted by the country's air defences.

Why countries need multiple layers of defence

The scale of those attacks, panellists said, highlighted the need for countries to build multiple layers of defence and develop the ability to process huge volumes of data quickly.

Daniel Mouton, Vice President and Chief Executive, Middle East, Lockheed Martin, said the 3,300 threats represented an extraordinary volume compressed into a six-week period, making it impossible for any single defence system or operator to manage them alone.

He said the fact that most of the attacks were intercepted and critical infrastructure protected demonstrated the value of layered defences, integrated systems and coordinated decision-making.

The targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure also gave the issue a moral dimension that is not always captured in technical discussions about defence, he said. Mouton said the UAE had relied on multiple sources and partners, with integration and shared data helping operators distinguish between threats and determine where interceptions were needed.

The same principle applies in cyberspace, Mouton said, where defenders have only a short window to identify and respond to an attack.

Importance of strategic autonomy

That need for speed and resilience also extends to the technology underpinning critical infrastructure.

Talal AlKaissi, CEO of Core42 and Acting Group Chief Global Affairs Officer at G42, said strategic autonomy increasingly had to be understood in technological terms.“When we talk about sovereignty in the AI era, we are increasingly talking about sovereignty over decision-making."

AI is becoming a decision-making layer across financial services, healthcare, logistics, government, critical industries and the military, he said.

Strategic autonomy did not mean isolation or trying to build every component domestically, AlKaissi said. Instead, countries needed to ensure critical capabilities remained available under geopolitical constraints and retain the ability to make independent decisions.

He also outlined the concept of“digital entities” or“digital embassies”, which could allow countries to replicate critical digital capabilities outside their borders while retaining sovereignty and reducing single points of failure.

The approach would require both digital and physical protection of critical infrastructure, he said.

“No one architected the data centre, thinking that you would have kinetic threats,” AlKaissi said, pointing to the emergence of cheap drones as a potential threat to infrastructure that was traditionally viewed as purely digital.

He said the UAE could develop a reference architecture for protecting digital infrastructure against such threats.

Closer cyber and air-defence cooperation among Gulf countries

The discussion then turned to whether the lessons from recent attacks could be shared across the Gulf, including through closer cooperation on cyber and air defence.

Mouton said the UAE had demonstrated the value of integrating cyber and air-defence capabilities and suggested that some of those lessons could be shared across the GCC.

A common architecture could allow countries to share selected datasets and early-warning information without necessarily exchanging complete intelligence packages, he said.

Meanwhile, Al Kuwaiti said the UAE's approach was based on partnerships, including cooperation between the public and private sectors as well as international partners.

He also stressed the importance of data classification, privacy, cloud sovereignty and encryption laws in determining how countries protect sensitive digital assets.

As the discussion moved from defence systems to AI, the panellists repeatedly returned to the role of humans as artificial intelligence becomes more capable.

Mouton said autonomous systems could process and disaggregate complex information much faster than humans, but decisions involving lethal force must remain with people.“There always has to be a human in the loop when it comes to a decision to use, certainly for the use of lethal force."

He said AI could help humans process information quickly enough to make decisions in situations where the volume and speed of data would otherwise make that impossible.

“The fundamental decision... final stage... lethal operation... as long as human being is making the decision,” he said. "Ultimately, it has to be a human being, otherwise, we give up our moral responsibility.”

AlKaissi agreed that international principles governing AI-enabled warfare were urgently needed, comparing the issue to Al Kuwaiti's call for a cyber Geneva Convention.

“There's absolutely a need for something similar... to define those norms and behaviour,” he said.

Ambassador Yoo Jeh Seung, former Ambassador of Korea to the UAE, said AI was compressing the time available for decision-making across the military and diplomatic spheres.

He said AI-enabled digital systems could accelerate the cycle of collecting, verifying and sharing information before a decision was made, but that this also created new vulnerabilities.

The role of digital diplomacy

The panel also highlighted the role of diplomacy in preventing cyber incidents from escalating into wider conflict.

Al Kuwaiti said digital diplomacy was one of the pillars of the UAE's national cybersecurity strategy, alongside governance, agile policies and laws, partnerships, innovation and sovereignty.

He said the human factor remained critical, calling for greater awareness and empowerment of people, particularly younger generations.

The discussion ended with the panellists stressing that resilience in the AI era would depend on decisions taken before a crisis.

AlKaissi said the UAE's preparedness was the result of strategic decisions made years earlier, pointing to investments in defence systems, energy infrastructure and nuclear power as well as preparations for the AI era.

“That foresight vision and execution of powers didn't start yesterday, it didn't start on February 28, it started years ago,” he said.

He pointed to the defence systems put in place as deterrents, the pipeline built for Fujairah and the nuclear power plant as examples of long-term decisions that contributed to resilience during the recent conflict.

Those investments, he said, showed how long-term foresight, planning and execution could help a country withstand emerging threats.

The challenge now, he added, was to apply the same approach to the protection of the UAE's digital infrastructure as the threat environment evolves.

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