Estonia’s cyber ambassador on digitalization, punching upwards and outing GRU spies

Over the best part of the last four years, Tanel Sepp, Estonia’s inaugural ambassador-at-large for cyber diplomacy, has helmed a surprisingly effective diplomatic enterprise. Estonia has an outsized footprint among international efforts to address the problems of digital statecraft — including recently identifying three officers working for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. He is set to leave the role in August and head to Seoul to become the country’s ambassador to South Korea.

Sepp argues that Estonia’s diplomatic footprint exists because of, rather than despite, its size; with a population of just 1.3 million, Estonia is the third-smallest country in the European Union, ahead of only Malta and Luxembourg. Sepp attributes this overperformance to Estonia seizing the moment when it regained its independence in 1991 and became relentlessly focused on digitization, partially to address the economic impact of Russian occupation. In 2007, following a political decision to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial, the country faced a series of punitive cyberattacks crippling this prized digital infrastructure. The incident highlighted how critical cybersecurity was to Estonia’s wellbeing. The political scene in Tallinn has now been awake to those risks for much longer than they have approached the pressing end of agendas in Washington, Westminster or Brussels. 

Most recently, the full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine has reminded Estonians of their own families being torn apart by deportations during Soviet occupation. Sepp is proudest of his team for their work on the Tallinn Mechanism, an effort to support Ukraine’s civilian cyber resilience amid ongoing Russian attacks. By the Estonian government’s own estimates, alongside this civilian and humanitarian assistance, its military assistance for Ukraine has been equivalent to more than 1.4% of its GDP — smaller in real terms than many other state donors, but proportionately the most generous of any.

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