No Shots Fired: 5 Ways Ireland Could Be Hit Without a War

The prediction

A handful of tech giants carry our economy, and they spook easily. Expect pressure aimed at them, through spy ships, legal threats and plain fear, until boardrooms abroad ask whether Ireland is still worth the risk. And it won't only come from our enemies.

Why they're here

The multinationals are here for low tax, EU membership, English and neutrality. Underneath all of that is one quiet promise: Ireland is safe and stable. That promise is worth a fortune. Foreign-owned multinationals paid €28.8 billion, 87% of all corporation tax, in 2025 [1]. Three firms alone paid 46% of it in 2024 [2].

What those companies actually run on is cables and power. Subsea cables carry more than 99% of international data, and roughly three-quarters of transatlantic cables pass near Irish waters [3]. Data centres used 23% of our metered electricity in 2025, nearly as much as every home in the country combined [4].

Who's been looking

In November 2024 the Russian spy ship Yantar turned up just north of Dublin, near the cables linking Ireland and Britain, with gas pipelines in the same area [5]. It flew drones in Irish-controlled waters before the LÉ James Joyce escorted it out at 3am [6]. It had already been seen loitering over cables off Cork in 2021 [7].

Who's guarding them

Ireland spends 0.2% of GDP on defence, the lowest in the EU, against an average of 2.2% [8]. The Naval Service has 833 people when it should have 1,094 [9]. One security expert called our strategy one of "sticking plasters and Hail Marys" [10].

Friends can squeeze too

When Ireland moved to ban goods from Israeli settlements, US lawmakers and pro-Israel groups warned that American companies here could fall foul of US anti-boycott laws [33]. Our own embassy in Washington and the IDA warned of consequences too [34]. Officials were reportedly swayed by the argument that the bill could scare off investment, and services were cut from it [35]. No cable was cut. The threat to the tech giants was enough.

The prediction

Drones aimed at our electricity and water. Not cables on the seabed, but the plants and substations on land that a whole region depends on. Our systems have very little slack. The Liffey supplies about 85% of greater Dublin's drinking water, for over 1.7 million people, through two treatment plants that run at close to full capacity with no spare built in [30]. When the Leixlip plant broke down in 2019, 615,000 people were put on a boil water notice [30]. That was an accident. Picture the same outcome on purpose.

It's been tried

In July 2020, a drone modified to short out transformers or power lines was found on a roof near a Pennsylvania substation. The FBI and Homeland Security called it the first known drone built to target energy infrastructure in the US, and warned there would be more [31]. In Ukraine, Russian drone and missile strikes on the grid have cut power to 800,000 people in Kyiv in a single attack [32].

And it's been here

When President Zelensky landed in Dublin last December, drones reached the spot where his plane was expected, missed it, then circled the LÉ William Butler Yeats, which had been secretly deployed offshore. The ship had no way to disable them, and the decision was made not to shoot [11]. The President of the European Council called it another Russian hybrid attack [12].

Fire in the post

Across Europe, parcels packed with sex toys and cosmetics hid incendiary devices designed by Russian military intelligence. Three went off at courier depots in Britain, Germany and Poland [13]. The people carrying them weren't spies. They were locals recruited online, and recruiters have even asked targets whether they had friends in the IRA [14].

The prediction

Another ransomware attack shuts down a hospital group, a transport network or a council. This time with a state behind it, or a state happy to look the other way. Expect it to land when it hurts most: a storm, a heatwave, the winter flu peak.

It's been tried

In May 2021, the HSE had to shut down every IT system it had after a Conti ransomware attack [15]. The gang had been inside the network for eight weeks, and warnings were raised but nobody acted [16]. The bill now stands at €102 million, with another €657 million needed over seven years to fix the gaps [17].

Conti was a Russia-based criminal gang, not a proven state operation. That makes the point sharper. A criminal crew did this for money. Imagine what a state could do with a reason.

The prediction

"Irish" news pages run from abroad will pour fuel on the next protest, riot or election row. The posts will look local, sound angry, and arrive just as tempers are already high.

It's been tried

In 2024, France warned Dublin about an "Irish" news site that went live the same day as copies aimed at Portugal and Cyprus, all hosted on Russian IP addresses [18]. In 2025, footage of disorder in Ireland was pushed by Russian state media and the "Pravda" network, sites dressed up as local outlets [19].

The bot farm that "died"

In October, Ukrainian drones knocked out Yandex data centres in Russia. Charts of collapsing Russian bot traffic went viral and people celebrated the death of the troll farms [20]. It was mostly wrong. The drop was slower web crawling, the robots that index pages for search engines. Ukraine's own monitors found suspected bot posts were back above normal within two days [21]. We believed it because we wanted to. That hunger is exactly what disinformation feeds on.

And then, coincidentally

Six days after the Yandex strike, Ukraine's own lifeline was throttled. Overnight on 14 October, without warning, Starshield, the military version of Starlink, was capped at speeds that wrecked drone missions and the interceptors Ukraine uses against Russia's jet-powered drones [22]. Musk and the White House both denied responsibility [23]. Then on 24 October, Musk said he had "closed a loophole" that let Ukraine use Starlink offensively [24].

The prediction

An affair or a money scandal lands right before a key vote, a planning decision or a tax fight. It will look like ordinary politics. The question to ask is who benefits from the timing.

It's been tried

The Sunday Times reported that Russian intelligence used a honeytrap to recruit an Irish politician during the Brexit talks [25]. China's United Front network has been reported trying to influence Irish politicians [26]. In Belgium, a Chinese intelligence officer ran a former senator as an asset for over three years [27].

For hire, not just for state

Private intelligence firms sell the same service. Harvey Weinstein hired Black Cube to bury the allegations against him, and the same firm was reportedly hired to dig up financial or sexual dirt on Obama officials, by a client with commercial interests [28]. Black Cube denied targeting them [29].