Dr. Ahana Datta Fasel

Biography

Dr Ahana Datta Fasel was the UK Government's first ethical hacker, the FT’s cyber chief, and is the author of Full Stack Spies: Cyber Espionage in the Age of US-China Competition. She advises governments and industry on geopolitical, AI and systemic risk strategies at the intersection of technology and statecraft, examining how the political, social and commercial life of nations is fundamentally intertwined with the digital, how cyber espionage has become an instrument of great-power competition, and why trust is the decisive strategic asset in an unstable world.

In government, Ahana served across the Ministry of Justice and Cabinet Office before helping to launch the National Cyber Security Centre. She then joined the Financial Times as their cyber chief, overseeing the security of the newsroom and publishing infrastructure at one of the world's most trusted international business and economic news outlets. She also serves as a non-executive director at a leading global digital rights charity, adviser to deep tech startups, and strategic adviser on national security and resilience to the UK body for research, innovation and international partnerships. She has held fellowships at Cornell, Cambridge, Imperial, and Durham universities, and has regularly appeared on the BBC, Monocle, and Times Radio.

In her acclaimed book Full Stack Spies, Ahana traces the shift from tactical hacking to structural, strategic cyberattacks as instruments of statecraft and competition. The book examines how cyber espionage has become entangled with the decision-making of states and leaders, hackers and technology companies, revealing the paradox at the heart of a new digital conflict: that nations must cooperate to compete. She explores how the intensifying cat-and-mouse scenario between the United States and China creates consequences across geopolitics, global trade and finance, military and security, societies and critical infrastructure, making cyber security more difficult, expensive and unpredictable for organisations worldwide.

Ahana considers how cyber espionage reflects the psychology, culture and strategic priorities of the states that conduct it, moving beyond treating cyber operations as isolated, even abstract security problems. She explores China's cyber ecosystem, the human motivations behind hacking operations, and why the line between peace and conflict in the digital age has become increasingly blurred. Combining geopolitical analysis with practical insights into how technology, intelligence operations and state behaviour interact, she offers organisations a practical framework for understanding and navigating strategic risk in a world where the boundaries between cyber, economic and traditional conflict continue to dissolve.