A Cyber Risk-Pool Method for SIDS

There is no shortage of analysis regarding the traditional vulnerabilities of Small Island Developing States and Territories (SIDS). What eludes us is agreement on the solutions and consensus on the way forward during the infosphere revolution. The burden now is to subscribe to the digital reforms needed to offer the digital citizen of SIDS a future, unlike the past.

Within the cybersecurity sphere, the literature shows that AI is taking on a malevolent and offensive character. This role is unfurling in parallel with deploying and developing defensive AI systems to enhance resilience in withstanding attacks, robustness in averting attacks, and counter threats as they emerge across attack planes.

A combined offensive-defensive AI approach specific to SIDS requires a Pool Asset Structure Model. Such a plan can include enhancements like Data Embassies, and collaborative, investible large-scale projects that can be executed simultaneously across multiple SIDS to address common digital vulnerabilities.

To achieve umbrella credibility, SIDS can pool their digital risks and design sustainable goals-oriented digital projects that can attract capital from donor agencies beyond what would be possible with single-jurisdiction investment methods. This risk-pool method will build collaboration and cooperation across SIDS jurisdictions.

Caribbean SIDS can also consider aligning these digital infrastructure projects with the Bridgetown Agenda that calls for urgent reform of the international financial architecture (IFA) during the ecological and digital twin transitions.

The digital nature of AI facilitates its use for legitimate purposes as well as to commit criminal offenses that involve deep fakes and fake news. A look at serious and organized crime highlights how types of technological crime correlate with particular criminal organization topologies.

This type of analysis deepens our understanding of how AI may play a role in criminal organizations like drug cartels which are resource-rich and highly organized. On the other end of the spectrum, we find “ad hoc” criminal organizations on the dark web that offer what Europol calls “crime-as-a-service.” Such criminal services are sold to pieceworkers who contribute to an overall criminal act.

These service providers also exist on a continuum from tightly knit to very fluid organizations. SIDS must deepen their understanding of these dimensions of AI crime to be able to track and disrupt the inevitable future growth of AI crime in SIDS.

Internet use in the world’s fifty-seven SIDS has outpaced the world average over the past ten years. Internet use in SIDS grew by 8.4 per cent annually between 2014 and 2023, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) report “Measuring Digital Development – Facts and Figures: Focus on SIDS,” (5 th March 2024). The accelerated growth trajectory surpasses the global annual growth rate of 6.7 per cent.

However, digital infrastructure, capacity, and pricing remain key hurdles to connectivity in SIDS. Only 85 per cent of the SIDS population had access to a mobile broadband network. This is below the global average of 95 per cent.

In addition, in rural communities of SIDS, only 43 per cent of the citizens had access to 4G. Also, the entry-level costs to a fixed-broadband basket in a typical SIDS was above the world’s median price, while the price of the data-only mobile broadband was almost twice that of the world’s median. Moreover, there is a stark contrast between rural and urban populations, according to the ITU report.

Urban populations were twice as likely to access the Internet as the rural population (84 per cent compared with 44 per cent). The SIDS Internet Usage Gap results from barriers that include the lack of affordability, digital skills, and relevant content. Eighteen per cent of the population in the SIDS had access to the Internet but did not use it.

In the cybersecurity sphere, AI is taking on a new façade. It is not implausible to use AI to initiate massive scalable autonomous cyber-attack campaigns against thousands of targets simultaneously. These autonomous operations will overtake the human-level campaigns we now experience.

SIDS manage 22 per cent of the world’s Exclusive Economic Zones. The legal maritime framework endows these large water states with significant quasi-territorial rights over a substantial portion of the world’s oceans. As negotiations continue over the extended continental shelf, the scope of large water states’ sovereign rights is set to expand even further.

In 1992, the UN identified SIDS as countries having unique social, economic, and environmental challenges. These special circumstances touched on issues surrounding populations, geographies, remoteness, and acute exposure to external shocks. Many of these have gained prominence in policy and legal developments in ocean affairs, such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Ocean Decade), and the 2023 Agreement under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction.

However, the unique circumstances of these large ocean states must now go beyond those related to only oceans and seas and include cybersecurity risks in the age of AI. Enhancing the cybersecurity resilience, capacity, and capabilities of SIDS is fundamental to addressing the vulnerabilities arising from the future digital environments of Small Island Developing States and Territories.