Cyber Warfare Targets Climate Weaknesses

"An empty bar is a terrible thing to waste." — Fictional Intelligence column

The Loui Bar scene in Brussels and a late-2030s awards ceremony

Half a decade after an unnamed war ended, a quiet, private awards ceremony at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels prompted a late-evening meeting in the Loui Bar at the Steigenberger Icon Wiltcher’s grand hotel. The narrative places the moment in the late 2030s and describes Sgt. Tomec Majka of Poland’s JW FORMOZA naval commando unit waiting in a plush leather club chair for a driver, still wary after missions on three continents and “a war” that had been officially over for four months but remained clouded by disinformation and damage to computer systems and cloud networks.

Sgt. Tomec Majka and undersea fiber-optic cable defense in the Baltic Sea

Tomec is being decorated, the story says, for defending fiber-optic cable taps that ran through the Baltic Sea. Those taps, and the microsecond advantage they provided in transmission time, are described as having produced a “vital edge” for a NATO artificial intelligence–driven campaign. The text is explicit: some of the war’s most important battles were fought hand‑to‑hand in the icy waters above “glass threads” carrying petabytes of data across the seabed.

Aniek Rasmussen and the Dutch Joint Sigint Cyber Unit’s civilian-infrastructure work

Aniek Rasmussen is identified as a member of the Dutch Joint Sigint Cyber Unit and is described as working in “cyber defense, civilian infrastructure, mostly.” She recounts a concerted response to a coordinated campaign that combined cyber intrusions with information operations timed to exploit a heat wave. In the narrative she says, “We were subjected to an info-op campaign during the heat wave. They wanted to cause societal unrest, if not collapse.”

Wing Commander James Crick, 617 Squadron RAF, and unconventional F-35B missions

Wing Commander James Crick of 617 Squadron RAF, who flies F-35Bs, frames his wartime missions differently from conventional expectations. Rather than close-air support or air-to-air fights, he says he and his squadron were “sucking up electronic emissions to track those sub-swarm motherships,” leading sorties that gathered emissions for campaign purposes. He describes leading a few of those missions and “making it back,” and he credits Rasmussen and signals teams for the broader success.

How private-sector companies, public institutions, and allied intelligence agencies cooperated

The narrative details the operational model Rasmussen and others used to blunt the combined cyber and information campaign. They “coordinated with private-sector companies and public institutions and allied intelligence agencies and hacker collectives,” the text says, sharing data on “everything” from incoming threats to best practices. They also sent teams of experts to work on-site at targeted networks. Rasmussen frames that openness and pooling of information as decisive: “That was our advantage in the end. The enemy had to keep their operations behind the veil, while we could pool all our information, ideas, and resources—as long as we broke down the bureaucratic and organizational culture barriers.”

The account makes it clear this cooperation was not merely technical but organizational: crisis forced a breakdown of normal barriers across sectors and nations. James Crick frames the moment starkly: had the attack continued another few days, “I’m pretty certain the alliance would have collapsed.”

Heat, disinformation, and the fragility of civilian systems

The narrative repeatedly links extreme weather to escalatory risk. Characters reference a recent “heat disaster” and a specific memory: “It was 41 degrees Celsius in Krakow,” Tomec recalls, with his parents panting in their apartment. The attackers, according to the story, timed a cyber campaign to coincide with that heat wave, targeting not only power systems but also air‑conditioning systems in care homes, hospitals, schools, and government facilities. The combined technical and information operations sought to amplify societal stress during a climate-driven crisis.

Rasmussen’s description of the response—meetings, shared data, onsite teams, and cross‑sector coordination—presents a playbook for defending civilian infrastructure when environmental stressors and adversary operations intersect.

The account raises a pointed question about resilience: can alliances and cross‑sector networks maintain the rapid, high‑trust information sharing and on‑site technical cooperation that the narrative credits with averting collapse? The story ends with the same small gestures that sustained people through crisis—ice in a glass, a shared drink—underscoring how mundane comforts and meticulous technical work combined to prevent a larger breakdown.

Read the original Fictional Intelligence column on Defense One