Germany’s BND Calls for More Operational Freedom as Russian Hybrid Threats Intensify
At the Munich Security Conference (Feb 14–16), Germany’s foreign intelligence chief Martin Jäger (BND) urged Berlin to grant its intelligence services more operational freedom to counter the rising tempo of Russian “hybrid” threats—cyberespionage, sabotage, and influence operations targeting Germany and Europe. In remarks reported by Reuters, Jäger argued that the current posture is too passive for the threat environment, and cited a sharp data point: German authorities registered 321 sabotage acts in 2025, with many cases suspected to be Russia-linked. He also pointed to uncovered Russian influence operations tied to Germany’s 2025 election cycle.
Importantly, Jäger’s call lands in a political moment where the German government has already been discussing reforms to expand intelligence agency scope—an issue shaped by Germany’s post–World War II commitment to strict oversight and civil-liberty protections. Reuters also linked this debate to wider political momentum for strengthening intelligence capabilities in response to “systemic” threats.
Hybrid warfare is designed to create pressure without triggering a conventional response: it stays below the threshold of war, yet aims to change political decisions, weaken cohesion, and degrade trust over time.
What “Operational Freedom” Means in the Hybrid Threat Era
When intelligence leaders ask for more operational freedom, they rarely mean “more surveillance for its own sake.” In the current European context, it usually implies some combination of:
- Faster authorities to detect and disrupt hybrid operations before they mature (rather than only investigating after damage).
- Broader technical powers to track and attribute cross-border operations that use proxies, cutouts, and criminal intermediaries.
- More flexible cooperation mechanisms with domestic security, law enforcement, and European partners.
- Sharper countermeasure options—including proactive disruption of infrastructure used for cyber operations.
The Trigger: Sabotage, Cyberattacks, and Political Influence
Jäger’s remarks were tied to a pattern of incidents in Germany that authorities increasingly treat as a coordinated “pressure campaign.” The 321 sabotage figure has been reported both via Reuters and German media reporting cited by Clean Energy Wire/ARD as cases registered by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The key point is less the number itself and more what it implies: frequent incidents aimed at critical systems create a persistent sense of vulnerability—and force governments to burn resources on constant triage.
Sabotage
Small-to-medium disruptions against rail, energy, logistics, or industrial assets can create outsized psychological impact—shaping public perception of “state control” and reliability.
Cyberespionage
Reconnaissance and persistence inside public-sector or supplier networks enables long-term intelligence collection and creates “options” for future coercion during geopolitical crises.
Influence Operations
Campaigns aimed at elections and public narratives can polarize society, lower institutional trust, and amplify divisions—without needing to compromise a single server.
What Russia Gains From Hybrid Operations
Hybrid operations are not random aggression. They are a strategic method for gaining advantage under escalation constraints. Russian hybrid activity—when attributed—typically seeks one or more of the following outcomes:
- Deterrence-by-disruption: increase the perceived costs of supporting Ukraine or sustaining sanctions.
- Strategic distraction: force leadership attention and budgets into internal security firefighting.
- Societal polarization: undermine unity and consensus formation inside democratic institutions.
- Intelligence dominance: map European critical infrastructure dependencies and supply chains for crisis leverage.
- Deniable coercion: apply pressure while maintaining plausible deniability through proxies and ambiguous signatures.
The genius of hybrid war—strategically, not morally—is that it turns ambiguity into a weapon: governments must act with incomplete certainty, while adversaries exploit the lag between suspicion, proof, and response.
Why Germany’s Debate Is Uniquely Difficult
Germany’s intelligence ecosystem operates under some of Europe’s most cautious oversight traditions, shaped by historical experience with authoritarian surveillance. This has produced strong legal and parliamentary controls—but hybrid threats compress decision timelines. As Reuters noted, long-standing domestic sensitivities around surveillance are now colliding with political momentum for reform.
In practice, Germany faces a three-part operational dilemma:
1) Speed vs. Authorization
Hybrid operations move fast. Legal workflows and cross-agency coordination can be slower than the attack cycle, especially when the hostile activity is distributed across cyber, physical sabotage, and information operations simultaneously.
2) Attribution vs. Actionability
Hybrid actors intentionally use proxies, criminal groups, and cutouts to blur responsibility. Democracies prefer evidence-grade certainty, but deterrence often requires action under probabilistic attribution.
3) Prevention vs. Civil Liberties
Prevention can require intervention before a “completed crime” exists—especially for sabotage planning and election manipulation. The more preventive a system becomes, the more it must prove transparency and oversight to remain legitimate.
What “Operational Freedom” Must Include
If Germany expands powers, credibility will depend on clear scope limits, strong auditing, and measurable success criteria. Otherwise reforms risk political backlash that adversaries can exploit through disinformation.
The Broader European Context: From “Incident Response” to “Persistent Defense”
Jäger’s stance fits a wider European shift: governments increasingly view hybrid threats as a continuous condition of security, sometimes described as “permanent competition.” This means critical infrastructure and democracy protection are now treated as strategic defense lines—not just domestic policy areas.
As a result, European states are evolving toward a model that blends:
- National resilience (infrastructure hardening, continuity planning, supply chain scrutiny)
- Intelligence-led defense (proactive detection and disruption of hostile networks)
- Public narrative protection (rapid exposure of influence operations and coordinated inauthentic behavior)
- Collective security (NATO/EU information sharing, joint attribution, sanctions, and coordinated responses)
What “Proactive Countermeasures” Could Look Like
Germany’s debate increasingly revolves around how far intelligence services should go beyond monitoring to actively counter hybrid operations. A professional, defensible approach typically involves a ladder of response options—starting with low-risk measures and escalating with oversight:
Tier 1: Defensive Hardening and Rapid Attribution Support
- Improved threat intelligence sharing to critical infrastructure operators and suppliers.
- Faster cross-agency fusion between intelligence, cybersecurity agencies, and law enforcement.
- Technical attribution assistance, including infrastructure mapping and malware/campaign clustering.
Tier 2: Disruption and Denial Operations
- Targeted takedowns of adversary infrastructure (where legal and international frameworks allow).
- Blocking/neutralizing command-and-control nodes used for cyber operations.
- Preemptive disruption of known proxy networks and logistics used for sabotage facilitation.
Tier 3: Strategic Counter-Influence and Exposure
- Public attribution and exposure of influence operations to remove deniability (when evidence supports it).
- Sanctions coordination and diplomatic consequences.
- Election security coordination to harden parties, platforms, and local administrators against manipulation.
What Critical Infrastructure Defenders Should Do Now
Regardless of where Germany lands on intelligence reforms, the operational reality is that hybrid threats concentrate on the same targets: energy, transport, telecom, defense suppliers, government services, and the companies that keep them running. Practical defense is therefore as much about engineering resilience as it is about stopping intrusions.
Cybersecurity Priorities (High-Impact, Realistic)
- Edge-device hygiene: inventory, patching, and hardening for VPNs, firewalls, routers, and OT gateways—common pivot points in state campaigns.
- Identity hardening: MFA enforced everywhere, privileged access segmentation, continuous monitoring for anomalous sign-ins.
- Supplier controls: third-party access restrictions, continuous assessment, and contractual security baselines.
- Detection engineering: tuned alerts for lateral movement, persistence, and low-and-slow exfiltration rather than only “big bang” malware.
- Incident readiness: crisis playbooks that assume multi-vector pressure (cyber + physical + influence) at the same time.
Resilience Priorities (The “Hybrid War” Layer)
- Operational continuity: redundancy for essential services and tested failover paths.
- Physical security coordination: integrate cyber and physical incident reporting; sabotage and cyber often share timelines.
- Communications discipline: pre-approved public messaging to prevent adversaries from shaping the narrative during crises.
- Election-adjacent hardening: monitoring for coordinated inauthentic behavior and phishing targeting political staff.
The Strategic Bottom Line
Jäger’s Munich Security Conference intervention is a signal that Germany is recalibrating toward a more operational, proactive security stance as Russian hybrid threats intensify. The cited sabotage numbers and the focus on influence operations reinforce the underlying assessment: hybrid conflict is no longer a “future risk.” It is a present condition.
The decisive question for Germany—and for Europe—is how to design intelligence reforms that are strong enough to deter and disrupt hostile operations while remaining compatible with democratic oversight, civil liberties, and long-term public trust.
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