Wire reporting: (Reuters, via Al-Monitor)

The U.N. Security Council held an open debate on Thursday on how new technologies affect maritime security, UN News reported⁴.

UN News said cheap drones, autonomous vessels and cyberattacks are altering both threats to shipping lanes and the means to defend them, with implications for seafarers, trade and food and energy supplies⁴.

Greece holds the Council presidency this month. Arab News published a U.N. photograph of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis chairing the session, titled Emerging Technologies and Maritime Security².

Al-Monitor and Arab News carried a Reuters dispatch saying Mitsotakis, speaking as president of the Council, urged a worldwide pause in attacks on civilian commercial shipping after a Greek-flagged container vessel was sunk by a drone off Bulgaria^1,2.

The reprints dated that appeal to Wednesday and said he called targeted attacks on civilian commercial shipping unacceptable and a reminder of the need for a global maritime truce^1,2.

Neither UN News nor the Reuters copy named the vessel or who launched the drone^1,2,4.

UN News noted the Council’s first thematic maritime-security meeting was in August 2021 and that the International Maritime Organization’s first safety code for autonomous ships took effect on July 1⁴.

The original Reuters.com page could not be read in full from this desk³.