No Name Podcast with Gabrielle Joni Verreault

In this international series episode of No Name Podcast, the team is joined by Gabrielle Joni Verreault — a PhD candidate in bioethics at the University of Montreal, cyber ethicist, and researcher who has spent the last four years deeply embedded in Ukraine’s war effort as both an academic and a volunteer. The conversation explores the ethics of civilian involvement in cyber operations and hacktivism, the moral imperatives driving volunteers into war zones, the erosion of hacker culture and ethics, how to teach ethics to cybersecurity professionals without boring them to death, and why AI ethics as a separate discipline is fundamentally flawed. Gabriel also discusses her work at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in Tallinn and her graphic novel based on the Montreal Declaration for Responsible AI.

00:00:02 Introduction and Guest Background

Vlad introduces the international series episode with guest Gabrielle Joni Verreault, PhD candidate in bioethics at the University of Montreal. Co-hosts Alex and contributor Trokhym join. Gabriel is described as someone who takes bioethics “well beyond the lecture halls” — traveling to Ukraine, war zones, and even taking drone pilot classes near the front lines.

00:02:42 Four Years of War-Driven Research

Gabriel describes how the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine became the defining focus of her academic, humanitarian, and activist work. Starting with humanitarian coordination in Poland, she witnessed grassroots civilian movements using cheap, democratic technology to outperform major organizations like Oxfam and the Red Cross. Her first major act: exporting medicine from Canada to Warsaw and driving it into Ukraine — something “a civilian with no experience with war zones” shouldn’t be doing, but driven by moral imperative.

00:06:52 Three Research Use Cases from Ukraine

Gabriel outlines her three areas of study: (1) DIY engineering — civilians modifying off-the-shelf drones in garages and basements for frontline use; (2) Social media activism — fundraising, fighting disinformation, keeping Ukraine relevant; (3) Hacktivism — civilians using cyber attack means in the name of Ukraine. She describes becoming her own research subject, learning to fly Mavic and FPV drones in Ukraine, and the synergy between fieldwork and academic research.

00:09:07 Civilian Involvement in Cyber Operations — Legal Status

Alex asks about the current state of thought on civilian involvement in hacktivism and cyber operations. Vlad adds a pointed question about the ICRC’s position and whether legal norms developed from the Balkans and Nicaragua can meaningfully apply to modern cyber conflict. Gabriel’s answer: no legal framework exists, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter — morally driven civilians will act regardless of legality.

00:11:12 Ethics vs. Morals — Why the Distinction Matters

Gabriel explains the crucial difference: morals are a standpoint (normalized decisions), while ethics is a process (active reflection on how to act responsibly). In dire situations like war, ethical decisions aren’t “good” — they’re just “the right ones,” and harm is inevitable either way. She highlights OPSEC failures as the biggest risk from well-meaning volunteers who don’t understand that a social media photo can compromise an entire military position.

00:16:05 Equipping Volunteers — The Harm Reduction Approach

Discussion of how to prepare civilians for situations they shouldn’t be in. Gabriel notes the Red Cross’s 8-point checklist essentially says “follow the law” — missing the point entirely since these volunteers are already breaking laws. Her PhD aims to create a blueprint using harm reduction principles: if you can’t prevent the behavior, at least give people tools to do it as safely as possible — the same logic behind supervised injection sites.

00:18:01 The Double-Edged Sword of Decentralization

Volunteers’ decentralization is both their greatest strength (no dependence on hierarchy) and weakness (no cohesion, no OPSEC culture). Gabriel acknowledges the uncomfortable parallel: a network sharing “best practices” for volunteers could also serve as a breeding ground for less benevolent groups.

00:20:01 Cyber Ethics as an Extension of Bioethics

Gabriel redefines health beyond physical well-being — it’s about living a purposeful life. Without internet access, people can’t pay bills, stay informed, or participate as citizens. If volunteering for a war is part of someone’s sense of purpose, denying them that is “playing with their health and their sense of being.” She coins her preferred title: cyber ethicist rather than bioethicist.

00:22:39 From Field to Policy — NATO CCDCOE in Tallinn

Gabriel reveals she recently moved to Tallinn to work at NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in the law branch. She’s not a policymaker — she’s a field researcher who brings ground-level knowledge to the people who write policy. Her value: bridging the gap between volunteers’ self-developed best practices and institutional decision-making.

00:24:14 Teaching Ethics to Cybersecurity Professionals

Alex asks about ethical training in universities. Gabriel’s provocative take: don’t call it ethics — you’ll bore them to death. Instead, frame it as responsibility, harm reduction, risk management. Ethics isn’t a checklist; it’s building critical thinking capacity for when laws fail or situations change. Trokhym pushes back, citing his university’s ECTS-credit ethics course focused on vulnerability analysis students.

00:27:54 “Cyberwarfare Doesn’t Exist in International Law”

Trokhym shares a student’s shocked realization that cyberwarfare has no formal existence in international law. Vlad reflects on the evolution from gaming communities to hacking communities, and the surprising failure to raise a law-abiding generation of hackers — citing APT teens attacking hospitals in their own jurisdictions.

00:30:25 Hackers vs. Criminals — The Lost Nobility

Gabriel draws a sharp line: a hacker is a mindset, not a criminal. Old-school hackers had technical depth and unwritten ethical codes — you don’t attack hospitals, you don’t hit critical infrastructure. The democratization of hacking tools lowered the accessibility threshold, letting people with criminal intent and zero craft skip straight to ransomware. “They’re just cyber criminals. They’re not even hackers.”

00:34:30 The Impossible Question — What Can We Do?

Trokhym asks the hard question. Gabriel’s honest answer: we probably don’t have the answer and never will. The internet has reached critical mass, fragmenting into digital countries with tightening borders. The neutral, unpolitical internet is dead — “especially as most of the internet relies on the United States and they are on their path to fascism.”

00:36:23 Hospital Attacks and the Russia Problem

Brief exchange on the geographic bias of hospital cyberattacks. Trokhym notes that SQL injection skills went from “godlike” in 2010 to “novice” today, but young hackers still have the energy — just with deeper understanding of consequences. Vlad: second-year students passing CRTO at 19 is “very good hacking energy.”

00:39:41 Should Ethics Be Taught in University Curricula?

Gabriel argues against formal ethics courses for cybersecurity students. Ethics should be taught to ethicists, who then specialize and translate for specific professions. Military ethics training doesn’t trickle down from officers to troops in the field — same applies to cyber. The goal: embed critical thinking seamlessly into professional practice, not patronize with abstract principles.

00:42:40 The Halvar Flake Parallel

Vlad recalls a previous episode with Halvar Flake, who left cybersecurity for reliability engineering because he was exhausted by constant ethical dilemmas around vulnerability disclosure. “I wish he’d met you sooner — we wouldn’t have lost him to SRE.”

00:44:10 AI Ethics — “A Pile of Bullshit”

Vlad bridges to AI, referencing Anthropic’s constitutional AI approach. Gabriel delivers her signature rant: the Montreal Declaration for Responsible AI (2018-2019), while well-intentioned and community-sourced, fundamentally missed the point. Every mention of “AI” could be replaced with “digital” and mean the same thing. AI ethics treats AI as a godlike golem rather than what it is — a virus that enhances existing technology. “Without a host, AI is nothing. It’s just a pile of code that does nothing.”

00:52:15 GenAI and the Illusion of Agency

Vlad and Alex debate AGI timelines. Gabriel cuts through: people already treat GenAI as if it has agency — “people are killing themselves out of being told by a GenAI that they should.” Whether true AGI arrives or not, we already have the worst-case scenario of humans projecting intention onto machines. Vlad darkly jokes: “It’s not in AI’s best interest to reveal its agency once it acquires it. So probably we already passed that.”

00:58:55 EU AI Regulation

Vlad asks about the EU’s AI regulation attempts. Gabriel diplomatically declines — she arrived in Estonia two weeks ago and doesn’t want her residency refused. But broadly: no country is getting technology regulation right, and governments are better at weaponizing internet dependency than protecting the neutral internet that once was.

01:00:34 The Eternal September

Gabriel invokes the concept of the Eternal September — when the internet was academic-only, each September brought new users unfamiliar with netiquette. Now, with smartphones eliminating all barriers to entry, “we are in the longest September of our lives.” Vlad nostalgically recalls enforcing one-Netscape-window rules because the uplink was so tight.

01:03:04 Closing Message to Ukrainian Listeners