Monday February 06, 2023
As we continue our passage East past the southern tip of India towards Malaysia we once again loose an hour of sleep.
We attended the lecture by Dr. Bob Donaldson who spoke about Cyber-Space and the threat environment we live in. The American CIA / Intelligence expert gave some frightening statistics about Cyber Security. In 50 years since the first Email was sent the volume has grown by 135% each year and is now some 30 billion messages a day. Over 55% of the world, some 4.6 billion people use the internet. It is truly an amazing revolution in a very short period of time. Cyber crime in it’s many forms is on the rise not only at the “retail” / individual / small company level but almost every major corporation in the world has been subjected to some form or cyber crime. Governments have major ministries to use cyber warfare both as a defensive as well as offensive mechanism. Today, we were told, the USA has the power to close down all Russian electrical grid and it is clear that Russia did indeed meddle in USA elections.
The second lecture was by the British Diplomat and intelligence expert Andrew Barber who discussed who won the intelligence war. The main players in the intelligence war – 1) USA, UK, NATO 2)North Korea, 3) China and 4) Russia & its Allies – not necessarily in that order are spending and have been spending vast sums of money on all types of intelligence. Russia had many more “human spies” in the Western Alliance than NATO had in the East. To respond, high level surveillance and monitoring encrypted outgoing traffic from Russian embassies and consulates in friendly countries provided a great deal of information until it was discovered. All very disturbing but fascinating to hear the details.
We decided to lunch on the very hot top deck Boardwalk Cafe, which is only open when the weather is pleasant and usually not on transatlantic voyages. During the afternoon, we did our usual activities when Anne goes to the gym and Roger works on the Blog. This evening’s entertainer was a French lady Camille Mesnard who sang Opera, Musical theatre and other genres in both French and English and even threw in an Italian song and Ave Maria. Very entertaining
The spare ship’s propellers on the deck.
Roger & Anne Travels 