Greece’s National Cyber Security Authority has warned that the country is facing mounting digital threats at a time when global cyber tensions between East and West are intensifying. Speaking to Euronews Next, Michael Bletsas, who heads the authority, said Greece occupies a vulnerable position at Europe’s southeastern frontier and must manage risks that many of its European partners underestimate.

“Athens has an additional aggressive neighbour, which our European partners do not perceive as hostile,” Bletsas said, noting that Greece’s challenges differ sharply from those confronting northern European states.

Positioned at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Greece has become a frontline state in the expanding arena of cyber conflict. Bletsas said that while countries around the Baltic Sea face incidents that resemble hybrid warfare — including attacks on critical infrastructure — Greece so far has not experienced sabotage of that kind. Instead, it is grappling with a surge in digital criminal activity.

“What is most visible right now is cybercrime. We have too much activism, cyberactivism, vandalism and denial-of-service attacks,” he said. These incidents, he added, typically do not leave lasting damage and can be resolved quickly, but their frequency is increasing.

The rise in cybercrime, he noted, is being accelerated by artificial intelligence, which is giving criminal networks new tools and capabilities. “We are seeing a big increase in attacks, and of course, we have a lot of espionage,” he said, describing a landscape where hostile actors exploit Greece’s strategic location and digital vulnerabilities.

Bletsas also cautioned that Greece cannot claim neutrality in the geopolitical struggle playing out in cyberspace. “We have lost it here and too much,” he said, pointing out that Athens must manage threats from an assertive neighbour to the east—threats he believes other European governments do not always acknowledge or fully assess.

He stressed that cyber defence must be treated with the same seriousness as physical security. “Separating the physical from the digital world is one and the same. The nervous system is more extensive than what we have in the real world. We should think of security in the same terms,” he said.

As cyberattacks grow more sophisticated and more frequent, Greece finds itself on the front line of a conflict unfolding largely out of public view. Digital warfare, Bletsas warned, is not a distant threat but an active battle. For Greece, the challenge now is to determine the alliances, strategy and preparedness needed to withstand an evolving and increasingly complex cyber landscape.

Google’s AI chatbot Gemini has become the company’s most-searched topic of the year, topping its annual “Year in Search” report and drawing worldwide interest following the launch of its newest model, Gemini 3.

The tech giant released its list of global search trends for 2025, highlighting terms that saw a sharp and sustained rise in traffic compared with the previous year. Leading that list was “Gemini,” outpacing major global events and prominent public figures, including “India vs England” in men’s cricket and “Charlie Kirk,” the American commentator killed in September.

Search activity tied to Gemini rose noticeably in September after Google unveiled a series of AI-focused upgrades across Chrome, Search, Android and other core products. That surge continued through autumn as attention swung toward the debut of Gemini 3, the latest version of the company’s advanced AI system built on Alphabet’s in-house chips.

Gemini 3 quickly drew an array of high-profile endorsements. OpenAI chief Sam Altman praised its abilities, while Nvidia highlighted its performance gains. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff went so far as to say he planned to stop using ChatGPT after testing Gemini, describing its improvement in speed, reasoning, and multimedia output as transformative.

Among the major changes, Google added Gemini 3 directly into its search engine through an “AI mode,” allowing responses powered by the model to appear natively in results. It also introduced new automated coding tools and a platform called Google Antigravity to support agent-based development.

According to Google, Gemini 3 can work with far fewer prompts than earlier versions and is designed to handle complex ideas with stronger logic and broader multimodal abilities. Independent evaluations appear to validate that claim. The model scored highest on the Humanity’s Last Exam benchmark, surpassing OpenAI’s GPT-5 Pro, and ranked first on several tests measuring reasoning strength and short-form factual accuracy.

The launch has sparked significant tension across the AI landscape, placing new pressure on OpenAI, which has dominated the market for two years with ChatGPT. The company is already facing criticism surrounding GPT-5’s tone, along with legal challenges from families who allege the chatbot played a role in relatives’ deaths.

Reports this week said Altman told staff on December 1 that OpenAI had issued a “code red,” shifting resources toward improving ChatGPT’s quality and slowing other planned products, including advertising features, AI agents and a personal assistant tool.

Google, meanwhile, is positioning Gemini 3 as its most capable system to date, backed by strong early adoption and a surge in global user interest that has placed it at the center of the year’s technology conversation.