The Security Challenge of Disruptive Technologies

Abstract

Dynamic changes that characterize the modern security environment have been significantly driven and shaped by the rapid pace of technological development. Of particular importance is the emergence and development of technologies that revolutionary change the character of the security environment - disruptive technologies.

The paper analyzes disruptive technologies aimed at the automation, acceleration and autonomy of the data processing process, decision-making abilities, and actions independent of human factor. These technologies affect all spheres of social life and subsequently security.

Unlike previous disruptive technologies that influence security driven by the states and their defense sectors, the recent technologies are predominantly developing in private sector. This fact leads the countries to dependency on the private sector, and face them with significant challenges in identifying threats, its content and possible responses. Technologically less developed countries are particularly vulnerable.

Based on the hypothesis of how disruptive technologies influence the design of security environments, an analysis of strategic security documents of Croatia, the USA, Russia, China, NATO, EU, and the states from the Croatian neighborhood has been conducted to determine if these countries recognize disruptive technologies as a security threat and how they approach them.

The research has shown that Croatia does not recognize disruptive technologies as a specific threat. The analysis also indicates that, in the case of technologically less developed countries, such as the case of Croatia, security communities such as the EU or NATO provide a platform for responding to those threats.