Venezuela’s acting vice-president Delcy Rodríguez has announced the creation of a National Office for Cyber Defence and Security, a new body intended to strengthen protection of the country’s cyberspace. The declaration, made on January 28, follows a disruptive event in the early hours of January 3 that Rodríguez said should provide lessons for future defence planning.
Rodríguez framed the office as an instrument to marshal scientific and technological expertise alongside military resources. She urged Venezuelan scientists and technologists to work closely with the country’s Military Scientific Commission to consolidate defensive capabilities in the technology sector and jointly safeguard national cyberspace.
The announcement comes against a backdrop of chronic infrastructure weaknesses in Venezuela. Recurrent power outages, reliances on ageing state systems and an economy squeezed by sanctions have left digital and physical networks exposed, while past attacks and outages have highlighted gaps in incident response and resilience.
Establishing a centralised cyber-defence office is as much about organisation and signalling as it is about technical fixes. Centralisation can streamline command-and-control for incident response and clarify lines of responsibility, but it also concentrates authority over information flows and could widen the intelligence and surveillance remit of security services.
Regionally and geopolitically, Caracas’s move will attract attention. States facing sustained digital threats typically seek partnerships to build capacity; Venezuela’s longstanding security ties with Russia and China make technical cooperation with those actors a realistic possibility. That choice would shape not only the tools and doctrines Caracas adopts but also the regional balance of cyber influence and norms.
For observers, the key questions are whether the new office will materially improve resilience, how it will be staffed and governed, and whether its remit will be defensive only. Expect a short-term push to shore up critical infrastructure and formalise incident response, followed by a longer, politically charged debate over oversight, civil liberties and the potential expansion of offensive cyber capabilities.