IIEA Talks

Elisabeth Braw's new book, The Undersea War, explores the underwater infrastructure that supports everyday life – and takes the reader beneath the waves to reveal a hidden conflict. In her remarks she will examine how the undersea cables transmit that nearly all the world's data while intercontinental pipelines carry two-thirds of the world's oil and gas, and discuss how decades of apparent calm, mysterious damage to cables has revealed a growing struggle for control beneath the waves. Ireland, which is a global cable junction but has weak national defence, is particularly exposed. Kyle Mattews, the Executive Director of the Montreal Institute for Global Security, will respond and reflect upon the risks facing transatlantic subsea cables in the North Atlantic.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Her work focuses on defence against gray-zone and hybrid threats as well as the intersection of geopolitics and the globalized economy. She leads the Transatlantic Security Initiative’s “Threats to the global maritime order” project. Braw is also a columnist with Foreign Policy and Politico Europe.

Kyle Mathews is the Executive Director of the Montreal Institute for Global Security. His work focuses on international security, emerging technologies, and countering authoritarianism. He recently held the position of McConnell Professor of Practice at McGill University. He is a member of the Global Diplomacy Lab and the BMW Foundation’s Global Responsible Leaders network. He is currently a member of the Government of Canada’s Cross-cultural Roundtable on Security. He is a recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal for his work to advance human rights.

For much of the past two decades, discussions of Latin American democracy have centred on decline — elected autocrats, weakened institutions, and a slide toward competitive authoritarianism. Building on joint work with Scott Mainwaring, Dr Bizzarro contends that the more common, and in some ways more troubling, pattern is not democratic collapse but stagnation. He argues that most of the region's democracies are neither dying nor deepening: they are stuck — hobbled by entrenched elites who block reform, governments that fail to deliver, and weak states that neither fully protect rights nor fully provide security. Dr Bizzarro examines what this stagnation costs: economically, in slower growth; politically, in eroding support for democratic institutions and the rise of anti-system outsiders; and internationally, in a region less able to anchor democratic norms abroad. This event examines why Latin American democracy's central problem may not be a single dramatic crisis, but a long, quiet plateau whose consequences deserve closer attention.

Dr Bizzarro is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston College, and for the 2026-2027 academic year, a Visiting Professor at Yale University. A comparativist working on Latin America, his research explores the nature, causes, and consequences of democracy and political parties across the region. He completed his Ph.D. in Harvard University's Department of Government in 2023 and was previously a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale's Jackson School of International Affairs. His work has appeared in the Journal of Democracy, World Politics, and Electoral Studies, and he is co-authoring a book with Scott Mainwaring on democratic deepening in Latin America.

In recent years, there has been a growing focus by governments on the criticality of offshore data cables, and the risks which they face. From accidental damage to acts of sabotage, the risks to undersea data cables continues to capture attention. In this panel discussion, experts from industry, government, and academia share their perspectives on the risks to underwater cables, and on how to ensure that this infrastructure remains secure and reliable.

Speakers include:

Sandra Delaney, General Council at EXA Infrastructure
Camino Kavanagh, Senior Fellow with the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) and a Visiting Senior Fellow with the Dept. of War Studies, King’s College London.
Margaret Stanley, Director of the Maritime Security Unit at the Department of Defence

In his remarks to the IIEA, Minister Valys presents Lithuania’s priorities for its upcoming Presidency of the Council of the EU, with a focus on the work in the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) and General Affairs Council (GAC) in Cohesion configuration. Taurimas Valys elaborates on Lithuania’s priorities in ECOFIN, regarding continued support for Ukraine, the Savings and Investment Union (SIU), taxation, and the 2028-2034 EU budget and own resources, as well as the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and Cohesion Policy in GAC (Cohesion). Taurimas Valys is the Minister of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania. He has more than 20 years of management experience in finance and previously served as Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, responsible for economic diplomacy, defence industry and diaspora. He has also served as an adviser to the Prime Minister on economic diplomacy and state-owned enterprise efficiency. Taurimas Valys holds degrees in International Relations and Political Science.

Keynote Address by Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, Minister for Health followed by a fireside chat with Audrey Carville.