Ron Deibert urges infosec professionals to confront political threats to democracy at Black Hat 2025.
A call to action from the cybersecurity stage
Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, is warning the cybersecurity community that the United States is experiencing a “descent into a fusion of tech and fascism” — and that the industry must not remain on the sidelines.
Speaking ahead of his Black Hat keynote in Las Vegas, Deibert stressed that the risks to democracy and civil liberties are cybersecurity issues that demand attention.
“I think alarm bells need to be rung for this community,” Deibert said, urging professionals to avoid enabling authoritarianism and, ideally, to help reverse it.
Politics enters the cybersecurity sphere
Historically, the U.S. cybersecurity industry has kept politics at arm’s length. But recent events — including the Trump administration’s political targeting of former CISA directors Chris Krebs and Jen Easterly — have brought politics into the heart of the security world.
- Krebs was fired in 2020 for debunking false election fraud claims and was later investigated after Trump’s 2024 reelection, prompting his resignation from SentinelOne.
- Easterly publicly urged the community to defend institutional integrity, warning against the sidelining of experienced, mission-driven leaders. Her own offer to join West Point was rescinded in July under political pressure.
Deibert’s message aligns with Easterly’s: cybersecurity professionals must recognize when broader democratic safeguards are under attack.
Threat to threat intelligence teams
Deibert expressed concern that major tech firms — Meta, Google, Apple — could scale back or dismantle their threat intelligence teams, which are crucial for tracking state-backed hackers and commercial spyware vendors like NSO Group.
These teams have been pivotal in:
- Detecting and exposing government spyware attacks.
- Notifying victims, such as the 1,400 WhatsApp users targeted by NSO Group in 2019.
- Identifying attacks on journalists, activists, and dissidents.
With tech companies already cutting content moderation and safety teams, Deibert fears threat intelligence groups could be next.
A market failure for civil society security
Deibert described a “huge market failure” in providing cybersecurity for global civil society — communities unable to afford corporate security services. As hostile actors escalate attacks and supporting institutions decline, he urged companies to fill the gap through pro bono work.
“This market failure is going to get more acute,” he warned, adding that defending liberal democracy depends on these contributions.
The stakes for cybersecurity professionals
Deibert’s underlying warning: the “traditional” security problems of malware, phishing, and ransomware are now intertwined with the erosion of checks, balances, and oversight in democratic systems.
At Black Hat, he plans to challenge the audience to see defending democracy not as a political distraction, but as a core part of the cybersecurity mission.
