“It’s like wrecking a car to steal a pair of sunglasses. The sunglasses are the ransom. The damage to the car is fifty to seventy-five billion dollars a year.” — Anja Shortland

Cybercrime is booming. Ransomware attacks — where criminal gangs encrypt your servers and hold your data hostage until you pay — cost victims somewhere between fifty and seventy-five billion dollars a year in damage. The hackers themselves pocket around a billion. As Anja Shortland, professor of political economy at King’s College London and author of Dark Screens: Hackers and Heroes in the Shadowy World of Ransomware, puts it: “it’s like wrecking a car to steal a pair of sunglasses.” The sunglasses are the ransom. The wrecked car is the damage to the rest of us.

Shortland is an expert in extortive crime — transactions where a legal entity has to make a deal with a criminal group under conditions of zero trust. She has studied kidnap for ransom, Somali piracy, art theft, and now the booming business of ransomware. What fascinates her is not the crime itself but the institutions that emerge in the space between the legal world and the criminal underworld: the insurance companies that price the risk, the negotiators who manage the transaction, the norms that make it possible for a corporation to pay a criminal gang and actually get its data back. In Russia, hacking Westerners isn’t even a crime. In North Korea, it’s an actual department with a small army of government employees. In Iran, it’s a foreign policy. Criminality, Shortland thus argues, is defined by whoever holds power.

The game-changer, she argues, is cryptocurrency. Without it, ransomware doesn’t work — you can’t move money anonymously at scale without it. Regulate cryptocurrency, and you take the profit motive out of most of what she studies. The irony is that the current American administration is amongst the most crypto-friendly in history. Meanwhile, AI — specifically Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, the hacking model that was leaked rather than released — is about to give criminals tools that only well-resourced banks and corporations can currently deploy defensively. So cybercrime will continue to boom. Expect a pile-up of wrecked cars on our information highway.
Five Takeaways

• We Know You Can Pay a Million. Ransomware gangs study victims for weeks before setting a demand — cash flow, reserves, insurance coverage. The demand lands on the painful side of affordable. The negotiation that follows operates under zero trust. Both parties want a deal.

• In Russia, It’s Not a Crime. Hacking Westerners is not considered criminal in Russia. In North Korea, it is a government department and state revenue stream. The line between crime and legitimacy is drawn by whoever holds power. You cannot extradite a North Korean government employee.

• Insurance Orders Criminality. Insurance companies are not passive bystanders — they are market-makers. By pricing the risk and negotiating on behalf of victims, they create the norms that make criminal markets function. Most people think insurance is boring. They are not thinking about this.

• Cryptocurrency Is the Real Game-Changer. Without cryptocurrency, ransomware doesn’t work. You can’t move money anonymously at scale without it. Regulate it, and you take the profit motive out of most cybercrime. The irony: the current American administration is among the most crypto-friendly in history.

• Claude Mythos and the Asymmetric AI Problem. A well-resourced bank can use Anthropic’s leaked hacking AI defensively. A local hospital or dental practice cannot. The hackers will eventually get it. The debate about who should be allowed to use it hasn’t happened. That is what worries Shortland most.

About the Guest

Anja Shortland is a Professor of Political Economy at King’s College London and the author of Dark Screens: Hackers and Heroes in the Shadowy World of Ransomware (Princeton University Press, US edition April 2026) and Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business.

References

Dark Screens by Anja Shortland (Princeton University Press, April 2026)
Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984)

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: cybercrime is on the rise
00:01:48 Extortive crime and zero trust
00:04:22 Insurance as market-maker
00:05:18 Hero hackers to villain hackers
00:06:48 $1B to hackers, $75B in damage
00:07:53 How ransoms are set
00:15:00 In Russia, not a crime
00:18:00 North Korea: government department
00:26:00 Insurance, negotiators, norms
00:34:26 Claude Mythos
00:39:33 Regulation
00:41:05 Cryptocurrency: the game-changer
00:41:43 Trump, crypto, and the distinction