'Not at War, But Not at Peace'
Germany's top cyber warfare commander has a message for Canada and its Western allies: the digital battlefield is already active, even if the guns haven't started firing.
Vice-Admiral Thomas Daum, speaking with CBC News, put it bluntly — "We are not at war, but we're not at peace either." It's a warning that resonates deeply at a moment when European and North American nations are accelerating rearmament and rethinking their defence postures in response to growing aggression from Russia and other adversaries.
Attacks Are Relentless — and Targeted
Daum described a threat landscape that is both constant and evolving. Cyber intrusions aren't just going after military networks or government servers. They're targeting defence industries, logistics and supply chains, and increasingly, ordinary citizens — anyone whose devices, credentials, or habits might provide a foothold into a larger system.
This broad targeting strategy reflects a sophisticated understanding of how modern democracies work. An employee at a defence contractor clicking a phishing link can expose far more than their own inbox. In interconnected supply chains, a single compromised vendor can open doors into critical infrastructure across multiple countries.
The Human Problem
For all the investment in firewalls, threat detection software, and encrypted communications, Daum identified human error as the single most persistent vulnerability.
It's a finding that will be familiar to cybersecurity professionals in Canada, where government agencies and private sector firms have repeatedly flagged social engineering, weak passwords, and unpatched systems as the most common entry points for attacks. No amount of technical sophistication fully compensates for a workforce that clicks first and thinks second.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security has consistently echoed this concern in its annual threat assessments, noting that state-sponsored actors — particularly from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea — are actively probing Canadian networks across sectors ranging from energy to finance to health care.
Why This Matters for Canada
Canada's geographic proximity to the United States and its membership in NATO and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance make it both a target and a critical node in Western cyber defence. As Europe rearmed in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Canada committed to increasing its own defence spending — and that means its defence industries and government networks become higher-value targets.
The rearmament wave isn't just about tanks and fighter jets. It's generating enormous flows of sensitive procurement data, technical specifications, and contractor communications — exactly the kind of information adversaries want to steal, corrupt, or hold for ransom.
The Bigger Picture
Daum's interview is a reminder that the grey zone between peace and conflict isn't a theoretical concept — it's the operational reality that Canadian cybersecurity professionals, intelligence officers, and defence contractors are navigating every single day.
Allies sharing intelligence, coordinating incident responses, and hardening shared infrastructure isn't optional anymore. It's the baseline requirement for defending democratic societies that depend on digital systems for nearly everything that matters.
As Daum's warning makes clear, the adversaries aren't waiting.
Source: CBC News Politics. Read the original report.
