Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Her new book, The Undersea War, is out later this year.   Since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow and crucial passage at the mouth of the Persian Gulf — has become extremely dangerous to pass. “Sanctioned tanker laden with flammable gas runs Hormuz gauntlet,” read one shipping headline just last week. And as the number of ships weighing whether to attempt this voyage grows, the escalating situation will have painful implications for global shipping as well as the world’s economies — and Europe won’t be immune. The ship in question was the Danuta I, a recently sanctioned LPG carrier likely “laden with Iranian LPG,” Lloyd’s List, a maritime news service, reported. Perhaps the ship’s owners felt they could take the risk precisely because the ship was transporting Iranian petroleum gas, and Iran — situated on one side of the strait, with Oman on the other — is the actor most likely to attack any ships sailing through. Indeed, the government in Tehran has vowed to attack any ship trying to transit the strait, through which some 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas passes on its way from the Persian Gulf to global markets. Large volumes of aluminum and fertilizer pass through the strait as well. Or rather, those are the transit volumes under ordinary circumstances. As of Feb. 28, conditions in the Strait of Hormuz have been decidedly extraordinary. “Right now, ships waiting to transit both on the inside and outside of the Hormuz are awaiting developments and not transiting,” said Svein Ringbakken, CEO of maritime war-risk insurer DNK. “Shipowners take the Iranian threats that ships will be attacked seriously and factor these into their risk assessments.” Even when covered by war-risk insurance (yes, it’s available in wars, including this one), shipowners are highly cautious when it comes to active war zones like the strait. “They’re primarily concerned about ensuring the safety of their crews. To await developments is natural in an early phase of the conflict with major combat operations ongoing,” Ringbakken explained. Only a few ships have been able and willing to transit the strait since clashes began, and like the Danuta I, most of them were shadow vessels transporting Iranian oil. Even if ships in the Gulf only continue to be hit by occasional drone and missile strikes, they, their crews and their cargoes will suffer. | Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2025 The obvious question now is how long the conflict will last. Five days in, nine ships had already been hit or directly targeted in the strait or surrounding waters, with three crew members killed. And while U.S. President Donald Trump has said the war may last up to four to five weeks, wars famously deliver no certainty. Furthermore, because shipping is global by its very nature, Europe will be affected as well. A Swedish-owned tanker, the Stena Imperative, which was transporting oil for the U.S. military, is among the vessels that have been struck. Meanwhile, many more ships waiting north and south of the strait are either owned or flagged in Europe, or are carrying cargo bound for the continent — mostly oil and gas, and possibly aluminum and urea, a nitrogen fertilizer crucial to global agriculture and thus food security. Fortunately, the EU and the U.K. import most of their aluminum and urea from other countries, but they do import significant amounts of diesel, gasoline, oil, jet fuel and kerosene from the Gulf states. Also, while many of the ships idling at the strait’s southern entrance (southeastern, to be precise) will likely leave if the war lasts longer than, say, the end of this week, it’s a different story for the several thousand ships still inside the Persian Gulf. They’re trapped there, and the dangers in the strait mean most don’t dare transit it to reach their next destinations — let alone get back to the Gulf to collect more. War insurance would cover damage to the ship and cargo, but no war insurance can bring lives back. “A prolonged suspension of ship transits, particularly oil and gas tankers, could have a profound effect on energy prices,” Ringbakken pointed out. Indeed, on March 6, Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad Sherida al-Kaabi told the Financial Times that the war in the Middle East could “bring down the economies of the world.” All Gulf energy exporters would declare force majeure and shut down production within days, he said. Iran has already demonstrated that it’s willing to retaliate against U.S. and Israeli attacks by striking Gulf countries. If the war continues, it may well decide to launch a campaign against selected vessels in the Gulf. To be sure, targeting merchant vessels violates international law — but Iran has never been a stickler for international rules, and it’s unlikely to fully commit to them now, especially after Trump recently told journalists he doesn’t “need international law,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth openly dismissed “stupid rules of engagement” when speaking about the war against Iran. Imagine constant assaults on ships in the Persian Gulf — ships that represent virtually every country on the planet and are laden with cargo bound for worldwide destinations. If that comes to pass, European leaders wouldn’t be the only ones pleading with Trump to end the war. In fact, the whole world would join Qatar’s energy minister in sending distress signals. (Such strikes would also result in devastating oil spills.) Even if ships in the Gulf only continue to be hit by occasional drone and missile strikes, they, their crews and their cargoes will suffer. So would the economy — including America’s. While Trump may not care about international law, he does care about the stock market — and a large chunk of the world’s stock markets depend on the Strait of Hormuz. Let’s hope he heeds that call.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Her new book, Undersea War, is out later this year. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a thoughtful and stirring speech at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, speaking of “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.” Though he didn’t mention the U.S. by name, it was clear Washington’s recent behavior had driven him to this conclusion. The speech didn’t please U.S. President Donald Trump, who went on to call Carney ungrateful and threatened to impose 100-percent tariffs on Canada if it struck a trade deal with China — even though Washington itself has been conducting a series of trade talks with Beijing. Trump appears willing to harm America’s allies in ways that once seemed inconceivable, and threats — as we’ve learned — are his way, with many of them are directed at allies. The threat against Canada, for example, came just days after Trump reminded luminaries at the World Economic Forum in Davos that he was very serious about annexing Greenland. And that was after he’d threatened new U.S. tariffs against European nations voicing support for Denmark. Tariffs for European friends are, of course, already a reality. In late January, the U.S. president told an interviewer he imposed 39 percent tariffs on Switzerland after its president “rubbed me the wrong way.” All of this is why we need to start looking somewhere we haven’t had to before: at the bottom of the ocean, at undersea cables — more specifically, at the U.S. firms owning undersea cables. Google & Co. aren’t just tech giants, they’re now cable giants too. And if the White House were to instruct them to disconnect the nations it wanted to hurt, those countries would find themselves in very serious trouble. The speech didn’t please U.S. President Donald Trump, who went on to call Mark Carney ungrateful and threatened to impose 100-percent tariffs on Canada if it struck a trade deal with China. | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images Back in the 1850s, when undersea telegraph cables were first invented, they were owned by a small number of pioneering private companies. Because the prospect of international telegraph traffic was enormously appealing, a couple of them managed to attract government backing for their more audacious undertakings. Later on, as cable traffic developed and grew, it mostly became the domain of state-owned postal services, since they were also in charge of telegraph services. And when undersea telephone cables arrived in the mid-20th century, they were mostly helmed by government-owned telephone companies. Nowadays, we have several hundred data cables on the seabed because that’s how the Internet travels. For decades, telephone companies around the world teamed up to buy and operate them. More recently, however, tech companies, television providers and a whole host of other companies solely in the business of owning and operating subsea cables have also joined in. Since undersea cables are expensive and — for the most part — connect two or more countries, such international consortia make sense. Unsurprisingly, some of these consortium participants are American. But these days, some of the most powerful cables being installed have only one kind of owner: a U.S. tech giant. Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft already co-own numerous subsea cables with other firms, but now they’re striking out on their own: Google, the leader of the pack, already operates a cable connecting South Carolina with Bermuda and Portugal, and it’s about to add more, including the only cable connecting Florida and Europe. Amazon will be the sole owner of a new cable connecting Ireland and the U.S., and Meta is working on Waterworth — a massive 50,000-kilometer cable circling the globe. These wealthy firms indisputably have the money, and their assumption that AI will further accelerate data use is also beyond argument. The tricky part is the state of the world. Back in the 1850s, when undersea telegraph cables were first invented, they were owned by a small number of pioneering private companies. | The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images Subsea cables functioned swimmingly during the harmonious post-Cold War years because nations were eager to get along and increase prosperity. In the past three years, however, we’ve received regular and dramatic reminders that people, perhaps at the behest of a hostile state, can damage these cables. That’s why we need to worry about the prospect of a new geopolitical risk on the seabed — the risk that a country may decide to harm other nations by exploiting the cables’ ownership. China and the U.S. already lean on their cable owners not to connect any upcoming cables with the respective other country. And while many Western nations have grown wary of close ties with China, Trump’s recent conduct suggests they should be concerned about data-cable dependence on the U.S. as well. U.S. cable owners are in the business of business, not geopolitics. But if the U.S. president, perhaps enraged by the comments of a European leader, were to tell tech giants to block the continent from the cables they own or co-own, would they really defy his instructions? Based on their behavior leading up to Trump’s second inauguration — where the CEOs of Amazon, Meta and Google stood behind him at the ceremony — it’s safe to say the answer is a likely “no.” European banks and officials are already thinking along such lines when it comes to the dominance of U.S. payment cards like Visa. They have, according to the Financial Times, “become increasingly concerned that US payment companies’ power could be weaponised in the event of a serious breakdown in relations.” Indeed, on Feb. 19,  Britain’s banking bosses will meet to discuss a U.K. alternative. It would be privately owned and backed by the government, the Guardian reports. On the seabed, we also need to prepare accordingly. That includes helping European companies form alliances that can compete with the Silicon Valley hegemons-in-waiting.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning book “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. You may have heard that some unsavory ships have been navigating our waters, smuggling drugs and other goods, damaging underwater infrastructure and sometimes just lurking, perhaps conducting surveillance. Many of these ships turn up in Irish waters, which are home to multiple undersea cables. But while Ireland has a tiny navy to deal with these unwanted visitors, it does have another formidable resource that helps keep its waters safe: its fishermen. And for the sake of national security, let’s hope this shrinking tribe manages to renew its ranks. In January 2022, Ireland was facing a terrible dilemma: The Russian Navy had just announced it was going to hold an exercise in Irish waters. Conducting wargames in the exclusive economic zones of other countries is legal, but guests ordinarily ask for permission — and Russia definitely wasn’t a welcome visitor. Like the rest of Europe, Ireland was gripped with fear that Russia was about to invade Ukraine and perhaps other countries. Dublin politely asked the Russian Navy to refrain from holding its exercises, but to no avail. The wargames were going to take place. But then the Irish government received assistance from an unexpected source. The country’s fishermen declared they wouldn’t allow the exercise to happen: “This is the livelihoods of fishermen and fishing families all around the coastline here,” announced Patrick Murphy, chief executive of the Irish South and West Fish Producers Organisation, on RTE radio. “It’s our waters. Can you imagine if the Russians were applying to go onto the mainland of Ireland to go launching rockets, how far would they get with that?” The fishermen, Murphy explained, would take turns fishing around the clock. The maneuver made it impossible for the Russians to perform their exercises, and Moscow ended up cancelling the wargames. The creativity of these gutsy fishermen made global news, but away from the headlines, they and their colleagues in other countries have long been aiding national security. In the early hours of Oct. 28, 1981, two Swedish fishermen on their daily round off the coast of Karlskrona noticed something unusual. They decided to alert the authorities, and the navy dispatched a vessel. What the fishermen had spotted turned out to be the U137 — a Soviet nuclear submarine that had run aground. The incident demonstrated several things: First, fishermen know their countries’ waters like almost no one else and notice when something is out of the ordinary. Second, the navy — or the coast guard — can’t be everywhere all the time. And third, fishermen can perform a vital service to national security by alerting authorities when something doesn’t look right. The grounded U137 wasn’t a one-off. In fact, fishermen keep a vigilant eye on their surroundings on behalf of their compatriots all the time. Stefano Guidi/Getty Image Ireland’s large number of undersea cables is the result of the country’s strategic location at the westernmost end of the north Atlantic and its need for top-notch connectivity to service its high-tech economy. Indeed, the republic has marketed its connectivity — and low corporate taxes — so successfully that a host of U.S. tech firms and other corporate giants have set up European hubs there. But its waters cover a vast 880,00 square kilometers. That’s a challenge for the Irish Naval Service, which has a small fleet of eight patrol vessels, and such a shortage of sailors that it can’t even crew those few vessels. Despite placing a few orders for maritime equipment recently, it’s in no position to detect all the suspicious activity taking place in Ireland’s waters. That’s where the fishermen come in. Because they spend so much time at sea — some 200 days in the average year — they are adept at spotting drug boats or, say, potential saboteurs. When the authorities detect something unusual, perhaps via radar, they often ask fishermen what they’ve seen. “People ring us up and say: ‘Did you notice ABC?’,” Murphy told me. “Then we send them pictures. A lot of fellas send in pictures and tracking. WhatsApp is very good for this.” This monitoring, Murphy said, isn’t just a phenomenal alert system. “It’s a deterrent.” We’ll never know how many unwelcome visitors that vigilance has deterred. But in keeping their eyes open, fishermen perform an indispensable service to Irish security — and it costs the government nothing. As unwanted visitors keep turning up in our waters, such contributions to national security are becoming increasingly essential all around Europe. There’s just one problem: The fishing profession is losing manpower. In Ireland, the fishing fleet has shrunk from some 400 vessels to just over 100 in the past two decades due to economics, foreign competition, fishing quotas and maritime regulations. From a security perspective, this continued decline of Irish — and European — fishermen is dangerous. They’re the best soldiers we never knew we had.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. It was hardly the kind of peace and cheer one hopes to see leading up to Christmas. But on Dec. 7, the second Sunday of Advent, a collection of telecoms masts in Sweden were the site of a strange scene, as a foreign citizen turned up and began taking photographs. The case became widely known two days later, when the CEO of Teracom, a state-owned Swedish telecom and data services provider, posted an unusual update on LinkedIn: Company employees and contracted security had helped detain a foreign citizen, CEO Johan Petersson reported. They had spotted the foreigner taking pictures of a group of Teracom masts, which are sensitive installations clearly marked with “no trespassing” signs. After being alerted by the employees, police had arrested the intruder. “Fast, resolute and completely in line with the operative capabilities required to protect Sweden’s critical infrastructure,” Petersson wrote. But his post didn’t end there: “Teracom continually experiences similar events,” he noted. “We don’t just deliver robust nets — we take full responsibility for keeping them secure and accessible around the clock. This is total defense in practice.” That’s a lot of troubling news in one message: a foreign citizen intruding into an area closed to the public to take photos of crucial communications masts, and the fact that this isn’t a unique occurrence. Indeed, earlier this year, Swedish authorities announced they had discovered a string of some 30 cases of sabotage against telecoms and data masts in the country. How many more potential saboteurs haven’t been caught? It’s a frightening question and, naturally, one we don’t have an answer to. It’s not just communications masts that are being targeted. In the past couple years, there have been fires set in shopping malls and warehouses in big cities. There have been suspicious drone sightings near defense manufacturing sites and, infamously, airports. Between January and Nov. 19 of this year, there were more than 1,072 incidents involving 1,955 drones in Europe, and as a group of German journalism students have established, some of those drones were launched from Russian-linked ships. And of course, there has been suspicious damage to undersea cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea and off the coast of Taiwan. I’ve written before in this publication that Russia’s goal with such subversive operations may be to bleed our companies dry, and that China seems to be pursuing the same objective vis-à-vis certain countries. But when it comes to critical national infrastructure — in which I could include institutions like supermarkets — we need them to work no matter what. Imagine going a day or two or three without being able to buy food, and you’ll see what I mean. The upside to Teracom’s most recent scare was that the company was prepared and ultimately lost no money. Because its staff and security guards were alert, the company prevented any damage to their masts and operations. In fact, with the perpetrator arrested — whether prosecutors will decide to charge him remains to be seen — Teracom’s staff may well have averted possible damage to other businesses too. Moving forward, companies would do well to train their staff to be similarly alert when it comes to saboteurs and reconnaissance operators in different guises. We can’t know exactly what kind of subversive activities will be directed against our societies, but companies can teach their employees what to look for. If someone suddenly starts taking pictures of something only a saboteur would be interested in, that’s a red flag. Indeed, boards could also start requiring company staff to become more vigilant. If alertness can make the difference between relatively smooth sailing and considerable losses — or intense tangling with insurers — in these geopolitically turbulent times, few boards would ignore it. And being able to demonstrate such preparedness is something companies could highlight in speeches, media interviews and, naturally, their annual reports. Insurers, in turn, could start requiring such training for these very reasons. After serious cyberattacks first took off, insurers paid out on their policies for a long time, until they realized they should start obliging the organizations they insure to demonstrate serious protections in order to qualify for insurance. Insurers may soon decide to introduce such conditions for coverage of physical attacks too. Even without pressure from boards or insurers, considering the risk of sabotage directed at companies, it would be positively negligent not to train one’s staff accordingly. Meanwhile, some governments have understandably introduced resilience requirements for companies that operate crucial national infrastructure. Under Finland’s CER Act, for instance, “critical entities must carry out a risk assessment, draw up a resilience plan and take any necessary measures.” The social contract in liberal democracies is that we willingly give up some of our power to those we elect to govern us. These representatives are ultimately in charge of the state apparatus, and in exchange, we pay taxes and obey the law. But that social contract doesn’t completely absolve us from our responsibility toward the greater good. That’s why an increasing number of European countries are obliging 19-year-olds to do military service. When crises approach, we all still have a part to play. Helping spot incidents and alerting the authorities is everyone’s responsibility. Because the current geopolitical turbulence has followed such a long period of harmony, it’s hard to crank up the gears of societal responsibility again. And truthfully, in some countries, those gears never worked particularly well to begin with. But for companies, however, stepping up to the plate isn’t just a matter of doing the right thing — it’s a matter of helping themselves. Back in the day, the saying went that what was good for Volvo was good for Sweden, and what was good for General Motors was good for the U.S. Today, when companies do the right thing for their home countries, they similarly benefit too. Now, let’s get those alertness courses going.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Russia’s shadow fleet just won’t go away. Countries in the Baltic Sea region have tried virtually every legal means of stopping this gnawing headache for every country whose waters have been traversed by these mostly dilapidated vessels — and yes, sinking them would be illegal. Now, these rust buckets are starting to cause an additional headache. Because they’re usually past retirement age, these vessels don’t last long before they need to be scrapped. This has opened a whole shadow trade that’s bound to cause serious harm to both humans and the environment. Earlier this month, the globally infamous Eagle S ship met its end in the Turkish port of Aliağa. The bow of the 229-meter oil tanker was on shore, its stern afloat, with cranes disassembling and moving its parts into a sealed area. The negative environmental impact of this landing method “is no doubt higher than recycling in a fully contained area,” noted the NGO Shipbreaking Platform on its website. But in the grand scheme of things, the Eagle S’s end was a relatively clean one. The 19-year-old Cook Islands-flagged oil tanker is a shadow vessel that had been transporting sanctioned Russian oil since early 2023. It then savaged an astonishing five undersea cables in the Gulf of Finland on Christmas Day last year, before being detained by the Finnish authorities. People are willing to own shadow vessels because they can make a lot of money transporting sanctioned cargo. However, as the tiny, elusive outfits that own them would struggle to buy shiny new vessels even if they wanted to, these ships are often on their last legs — different surveys estimate that shadow vessels have an average age of 20 years or more. Over the last few years, Russia’s embrace of the shadow fleet for its oil export has caused the fleet to grow dramatically, as tanker owners concluded they can make good money by selling their aging ships into the fleet. (They’d make less selling the vessels to shipbreakers.) Today, the shadow fleet encompasses the vast majority of retirement-age oil tankers. But after a few years, these tankers and ships are simply too old to sail, especially since shadow vessels undergo only the most cursory maintenance. To get around safely rules, less-than-scrupulous owners often sell their nearly dead ships to “final journey” firms, which have the sole purpose of disposing of them. | Ole Berg-Rusten/EPA For aged ships, the world of official shipping has what one might call a funeral process: a scrapping market. In 2024, 409 ships were scrapped through this official market, though calling it “official” makes it sound clean and safe, which, for the most part, it isn’t. A few of the ships scrapped last year were disassembled in countries like Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, which follow strict rules regarding human and environmental safety. A handful of others were scrapped in Turkey, which has an OK record. But two-thirds were scrapped in Southeast Asia, where the shipbreaking industry is notoriously unsafe. To get around safely rules, less-than-scrupulous owners often sell their nearly dead ships to “final journey” firms, which have the sole purpose of disposing of them. These companies and their middlemen then make money by selling the ships’ considerable amount of steel to metal companies. But in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — the latter is the world’s most popular shipbreaking country — vessels are disassembled on beaches rather than sealed facilities, and by workers using little more than their hands. Of course, this makes the process cheap, but it also makes it dangerous. According to the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, last year, 15 South Asian shipbreaking workers lost their lives on the job and 45 were injured. Just one accident involving an oil tanker claimed the lives of six workers and injured another six. This brings us to the shadow fleet and its old vessels, as they, too, need to be scrapped. But many of them are under Western sanctions, which presents a challenge to their owners since international financial transactions are typically conducted in U.S. dollars. Initially, I had suspected that coastal nations would start finding all manner of shadow vessels abandoned in their waters and would be left having to arrange the scrapping. But as owners want to make money from the ships’ metal, this frightening scenario hasn’t come to pass. Instead, a shadow shipbreaking market is emerging. Open-source intelligence research shows that shadow vessel owners are now selling their sanctioned vessels to final-journey firms or middlemen in a process that mirror the official one. Given that these are mostly sanctioned vessels, the buyers naturally get a discount, which the sellers are more than willing to provide. After all, selling a larger shadow tanker for scrap value and making something to the tune of $10 to $15 million is more profitable than abandoning it. And how are the payments made? We don’t know for sure, but they’re likely in crypto or a non-U.S. dollar currency. These shady processes make the situation even more perilous for the workers doing the scrapping, not to mention for the environment. “Thanks to a string of new rules and regulations over the past five decades, shipping has become much safer, and that has reduced the number of accidents significantly in recent decades,” explained Mats Saether, a lawyer at the Nordisk legal services association in Oslo. “It’s regrettable that the shadow fleet is reversing this trend.” It certainly is. Indeed, the scrapping of shadow vessels is a practice that demands serious scrutiny. Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch and other NGOs could do a good deed for the environment and unfortunate shipbreaking workers by conducting investigations. And surely the Bangladeshi government wouldn’t want to see Bangladeshi lives lost because Russia needs oil for war? Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch and other NGOs could do a good deed for the environment and unfortunate shipbreaking workers by conducting investigations. | Ole Berg-Rusten/EPA There’s an opportunity here for Western governments to help too. They could offer shadow vessel owners legal leniency and a way to sell their ships back into the official fleet — if the owners provide the authorities with details about the fleet’s inner workings and vow to leave the business. Does that sound unlikely to succeed? Possibly. But that’s what people said about Italy’s pentiti system, and they were proven wrong. Besides, the shadow fleet is such a tumor on the shipping industry and the world’s waterways that almost any measure is worth a try.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Over the past two years, state-linked Russian hackers have repeatedly attacked Liverpool City Council — and it’s not because the Kremlin harbors a particular dislike toward the port city in northern England. Rather, these attacks are part of a strategy to hit cities, governments and businesses with large financial losses, and they strike far beyond cyberspace. In the Gulf of Finland, for example, the damage caused to undersea cables by the Eagle S shadow vessel in December incurred costs adding up to tens of millions of euros — and that’s just one incident. Russia has attacked shopping malls, airports, logistics companies and airlines, and these disruptions have all had one thing in common: They have a great cost to the targeted companies and their insurers. One can’t help but feel sorry for Liverpool City Council. In addition to looking after the city’s half-million or so residents, it also has to keep fighting Russia’s cyber gangs who, according to a recent report, have been attacking ceaselessly: “We have experienced many attacks from this group and their allies using their Distributed Botnet over the last two years,” the report noted, referring to the hacktivist group NoName057(16), which has been linked to the Russian state. “[Denial of Service attacks] for monetary or political reasons is a widespread risk for any company with a web presence or that relies on internet-based systems.” Indeed. Over the past decades, state-linked Russian hackers have targeted all manner of European municipalities, government agencies and businesses. This includes the 2017 NotPetya attack, which brought down “four hospitals in Kiev alone, six power companies, two airports, more than 22 Ukrainian banks, ATMs and card payment systems in retailers and transport, and practically every federal agency,” as well as a string of multinationals, causing staggering losses of around $10 billion. More recently, Russia has taken to targeting organizations and businesses in other ways as well. There have been arson attacks, including one involving Poland’s largest shopping mall that Prime Minister Donald Tusk subsequently said was definitively “ordered by Russian special services.” There have been parcel bombs delivered to DHL; fast-growing drone activity reported around European defense manufacturing facilities; and a string of suspicious incidents damaging or severing undersea cables and even a pipeline. The costly list goes on: Due to drone incursions into restricted airspace, Danish and German airports have been forced to temporarily close, diverting or cancelling dozens of flights. Russia’s GPS jamming and spoofing are affecting a large percentage of commercial flights all around the Baltic Sea. In the Red Sea, Houthi attacks are causing most ships owned by or flagged in Western countries to redirect along the much longer Cape of Good Hope route, which adds costs. The Houthis are not Russia, but Russia (and China) could easily aid Western efforts to stop these attacks — yet they don’t. They simply enjoy the enormous privilege of having their vessels sail through unassailed. The organizations and companies hit by Russia have so far managed to avert calamitous harm. But these attacks are so dangerous and reckless that people will, sooner or later, lose their lives. There have been arson attacks, including one involving Poland’s largest shopping mall that Prime Minister Donald Tusk subsequently said was definitively “ordered by Russian special services.” | Aleksander Kalka/Getty Images What’s more, their targets will continue losing a lot of money. The repairs of a subsea data cable alone typically costs up to a couple million euros. The owners of EstLink 2 — the undersea power cable hit by the Eagle S— incurred losses of nearly €60 million. Closing an airport for several hours is also incredibly expensive, as is cancelling or diverting flights. To be sure, most companies have insurance to cover them against cyber attacks or similar harm, but insurance is only viable if the harm is occasional. If it becomes systematic, underwriters can no longer afford to take on the risk — or they have to significantly increase their premiums. And there’s the kicker: An interested actor can make disruption systematic. That is, in fact, what Russia is doing. It is draining our resources, making it increasingly costly to be a business based in a Western country, or even a city council or government authority, for that matter. This is terrifying — and not just for the companies that may be hit. But while Russia appears far beyond the reach of any possible efforts to convince it to listen to its better angels, we can still put up a steely front. The armed forces put up the literal steel, of course, but businesses and civilian organizations can practice and prepare for any attacks that Russia, or other hostile countries, could decide to launch against them. Such preparation would limit the possible harm such attacks can lead to. It begs the question, if an attack causes minimal disruption, then what’s the point of instigating it in the first place? That’s why government-led gray-zone exercises that involve the private sector are so important. I’ve been proposing them for several years now, and for every month that passes, they become even more essential. Like the military, we shouldn’t just conduct these exercises — we should tell the whole world we’re doing so too. Demonstrating we’re ready could help dissuade sinister actors who believe they can empty our coffers. And it has a side benefit too: It helps companies show their customers and investors that they can, indeed, weather whatever Russia may dream up.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Seven years ago, Sweden made global headlines with “In Case of Crisis or War” — a crisis preparedness leaflet sent to all households in the country. Unsurprisingly, preparedness leaflets have become a trend across Europe since then. But now, Sweden is ahead of the game once more, this time with a preparedness leaflet specifically for businesses. Informing companies about threats that could harm them, and how they can prepare, makes perfect sense. And in today’s geopolitical reality, it’s becoming indispensable. I remember when “In Case of Crisis or War” was first published in 2018: The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, or MSB, sent the leaflet out by post to every single home. The use of snail mail wasn’t accidental — in a crisis, there could be devastating cyberattacks that would prevent people from accessing information online. The leaflet — an updated version of the Cold War-era “In Case of War” — contained information about all manner of possible harm, along with information about how to best prepare and protect oneself. Then, there was the key statement: “If Sweden is attacked, we will never surrender. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.” Over the top, suggested some outside observers derisively. Why cause panic among people? But, oh, what folly! Preparedness leaflets have been used elsewhere too. I came to appreciate preparedness education during my years as a resident of San Francisco — a city prone to earthquakes. On buses, at bus stops and online, residents like me were constantly reminded that an earthquake could strike at any moment and we were told how to prepare, what to do while the earthquake was happening, how to find loved ones afterward and how to fend for ourselves for up to three days after a tremor. The city’s then-Mayor Gavin Newsom had made disaster preparedness a key part of his program and to this day, I know exactly what items to always have at home in case of a crisis: Water, blankets, flashlights, canned food and a hand-cranked radio. And those items are the same, whether the crisis is an earthquake, a cyberattack or a military assault. Other earthquake-prone cities and regions disseminate similar preparedness advice — as do a fast-growing number of countries, now facing threats from hostile states. Poland, as it happens, published its new leaflet just a few days before Russia’s drones entered its airspace. But these preparedness instructions have generally focused on citizens and households; businesses have to come up with their own preparedness plans against whatever Russia or other hostile states and their proxies think up — and against extreme weather events too. That’s a lot of hostile activity. In the past couple years alone, undersea cables have been damaged under mysterious circumstances; a Polish shopping mall and a Lithuanian Ikea store have been subject to arson attacks; drones have been circling above weapons-manufacturing facilities; and a defense-manufacturing CEO has been the target of an assassination plot; just to name a few incidents. San Francisco’s then-Mayor Gavin Newsom had made disaster preparedness a key part of his program. | Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images It’s no wonder geopolitical threats are causing alarm to the private sector. Global insurance broker Willis Towers Watson’s 2025 Political Risk Survey, which focuses on multinationals, found that the political risk losses in 2023 — the most recent year for which data is available — were at their highest level since the survey began. Companies are particularly concerned about economic retaliation, state-linked cyberattacks and state-linked attacks on infrastructure in the area of gray-zone aggression. Yes, businesses around Europe receive warnings and updates from their governments, and large businesses have crisis managers and run crisis management exercises for their staff. But there was no national preparedness guide for businesses — until now. MSB’s preparedness leaflet directed at Sweden’s companies is breaking new ground. It will feature the same kind of easy-to-implement advice as “In Case of Crisis or War,” and it will be just as useful for family-run shops as it is for multinationals, helping companies to keep operating matters far beyond the businesses themselves. By targeting the private sector, hostile states can quickly bring countries to a grinding and discombobulating halt. That must not happen — and preventing should involve both governments and the companies themselves. Naturally, a leaflet is only the beginning. As I’ve written before, governments would do well to conduct tabletop preparedness exercises with businesses — Sweden and the Czech Republic are ahead on this — and simulation exercises would be even better. But a leaflet is a fabulous cost-effective start. It’s also powerful deterrence-signaling to prospective attackers. And in issuing its leaflet, Sweden is signaling that targeting the country’s businesses won’t be as effective as would-be attackers would wish. (The leaflet, by the way, will be blue. The leaflet for private citizens was yellow. Get it? The colors, too, are a powerful message.)

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Between January and April of this year, an astounding quarter of all flights in the eastern Baltic Sea region experienced GPS disturbances. And the fact that these incidents haven’t resulted in any aviation disasters so far is thanks to pilot skill. This is yet another example of Russia’s callous disregard for human life. The Kremlin knows that the impacted countries would never countenance doing the same to Russian aviation. But collectively, we can still blunt the harm of these dangerous tactics. When I boarded a flight to Helsinki and back again last month, I did so without any fear, as I knew the pilots were highly skilled and up-to-date with their training. That’s a good thing because Finland is one of half a dozen countries currently experiencing an extraordinary surge in GPS interference. According to the Swedish National Television, 122,607 flights in Swedish, Finnish, Polish and Baltic airspace were affected by GPS disturbance during the first four months of 2025. In April, more than 27 percent of all flights were affected, and in some places, the figure was up to 42 percent. It didn’t use to be like this. Though most countries experience occasional GPS blips, constant disturbances aren’t a regular part of daily life in any peaceful part of the world. But in aviation — and shipping — 2023 was the last somewhat normal year for the Baltic Sea region, at least in terms of GPS. That year, the Swedish Transport Agency received reports of 55 incidents resulting from both GPS jamming — which blocks crucial positioning signals — and GPS manipulation, which distorts them. Since then, the interference has grown at a mind-boggling rate, reaching 495 cases in 2024. And during the first four months of this year, the Swedish Transport Agency received a staggering 733 reports of incidents in Swedish airspace. The authorities know the source of the disturbances: They’ve traced them to devices in Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Smolensk and Rostov. The latter three cities have military installations, and Kaliningrad is practically an arms depot. Blocking or manipulating GPS helps Russia protect such installations, presumably against Ukrainian drones. But the scale of this jamming and spoofing is massive, and it poses risks to civilian pilots, airline and shipping crews, passengers and anyone else who depends on the global positioning system. Of course, pilots are trained to smanually operate their aircraft whenever such problems occur, but GPS exists for a reason: It makes flying safer and more efficient. Without it, pilots need a line of sight, and they need to be able to interact with systems on the ground. That often means having to wait to land, which also creates additional carbon emissions. But what does Russia care about carbon emissions? The war in Ukraine has been an environmental disaster. It’s a mind-boggling situation we’re in: Persistent GPS interference that endangers both aviation and the environment, and yet, we can’t stop it. An astounding quarter of all flights in the eastern Baltic Sea region experienced GPS disturbances. | Johannes Simon/Getty Images No, we really can’t. Commentators and members of the public often complain that European leaders are spineless, that they don’t take action or recognize the threats facing their countries — but they do. They recognize the threats posed by foreign militaries, as well as nonmilitary aggression like GPS jamming, gig agents, the shadow fleet, the weaponization of migration and much else. They’re aware that Russia’s GPS interference poses an immediate and unnecessary risk to aviation and shipping across Europe and not just the Baltic Sea region, as the jammers can reach far into the continent. But what would we do about such activities if we were in charge? Retaliate by jamming GPS in Russian airspace and risk the lives of airline passengers there? Hire gig agents to set fire to Russian shopping malls or plant parcel bombs on airliners? I think not. Such actions are immoral, unethical and unworthy of liberal democracies — and they would trigger dangerous escalation by Russia or whichever country we’d be trying to punish for its dirty aggression against us. But while governments can try to find ways of blocking GPS jammers, putting the shadow fleet out of business and so on, the rest of us can be vigilant and aware of our surroundings. If we see someone behaving suspiciously, we can report it to the authorities. If the aircraft we’re on needs a bit longer to land, we can refrain from bickering with the flight attendants or the ground staff. We can thank the pilots. National security is a collective undertaking. Being our usual self-centered selves simply won’t do when other countries are on the attack.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that our transition away from fossil fuels won’t be possible without electric cars (EVs). Pulling ahead in this field, China has recently been making EVs that are far cheaper than Western-manufactured ones, and much of it comes down to one humble yet indispensable component: the battery. But now, thanks to one small town in Norway, it seems there might yet be hope for Europe, and for a greener future without risky dependencies on China. Oh, how the times have changed. Four years ago, Tesla was the world’s largest all-electric car brand, followed by China’s state-owned SAIC, Volkswagen, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi and BYD ( another Chinese manufacturer). Today, five of the world’s 10 biggest EV brands are Chinese — and it’s not because buyers specifically want Chinese cars. It’s simply because they’re cheaper. Take, for example, BYD’s Dolphin Surf. Available in Europe as of this summer, these cars start at €22,900. That’s significantly less than Tesla models — and a couple other Chinese EVs are cheaper still. One reason for all this is that their batteries — that all-important part of an EV — cost less. For the past few years, Chinese makers have been switching to so-called LFP batteries, which are different from the NMC batteries most Western cars still use. LFP stands for lithium iron phosphate, and batteries made with these components aren’t just cheaper but last longer, thus making them more sustainable too. (NMCs still get more usage out of each charge, which makes them better for longer drives, but that gap is narrowing.) Given their focus on price, it’s not surprising Chinese brands have so massively adopted LFP batteries. “[China has] a huge cost advantage through economies of scale and battery technology. European manufacturers have fallen well behind,” David Bailey, a professor of business and economics at Birmingham Business School told the BBC. “Unless they wake up very quickly and catch up, they could be wiped out.” But there’s good news for Western EV makers: a renewable-energy company called Å Energi — a Norwegian hydropower giant — has been thinking ahead precisely along these lines. Four years ago, Å Energi teamed up with ABB, Siemens, the Danish pension fund PKA and the Norwegian investment firm Nysnø to form Morrow Batteries. Majority-owned by Å Energi, Morrow is based in the picturesque town of Arendal on Norway’s south coast, and it recently began producing LFP batteries for energy storage systems — think sun and wind energy that needs to be stored after being captured in solar panels and wind turbines — as well as for defense equipment. If all goes according to plan, Morrow will then expand to vehicles, with plans to build another three LFP facilities in Arendal before 2029. Of course, this company won’t be able to match China’s formidable LFP production on its own  — and yet, it exists. It exists because Å Energi dared to commit to this new technology, because the Norwegian government agreed to grant a loan, and because the EU decided to support the undertaking too. Four years ago, Tesla was the world’s largest all-electric car brand, followed by China’s state-owned SAIC. | Allison Dinner/EPA To date, the path to EV batteries has been strewn with grand ambition and, alas, bankruptcies. In the past couple years alone, Northvolt in Sweden and Britishvolt in the U.K. have both gone bust. But as technical as it may sound, LFP batteries are the surest way for Europe to reduce its dependence on Chinese EVs. So, if Morrow succeeds, and is perhaps joined by one or two new European battery-makers, Europe’s EV manufacturers will be better able to compete with Chinese rivals. To be viable, the green transition has to be a collective undertaking. It’s no surprise that this pioneering LFP factory is located in Norway, as the country has made EV adoption a priority. In 2023, nine in 10 cars sold in the country were already EVs, and the Norwegian government wants all newly sold cars to be zero-emission by the end of this year. Norway doesn’t have any significant car manufacturers, and unlike most battery-makers, Morrow isn’t owned by a car manufacturer. But LFP batteries look certain to be the future in all kinds of applications — and Norway is grabbing that opportunity. Morrow’s factory, or factories, may lose money at first, but in the long run, they’ll be a benefit to their owners and to Norway — not to mention Western consumers. Even more crucially, the arrival of a battery factory in Arendal points to a fundamental reality: that to do the right thing for our supply chains and, in many cases, the climate, companies need to team up with unexpected partners, and occasionally with the government too. In today’s climate, so to speak, business plans can no longer solely focus on immediate profit.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. For many locals the world over, this summer — just like every summer and, indeed, every month — tourism brings misery rather than enjoyment. In Barcelona, locals fed up with overtourism took to the streets in protest. In Genoa, Lisbon and the Canary Islands, they did the same. And in Venice, locals were enraged their city had to play backdrop to tech billionaire Jeff Bezos’s wedding party. Copenhagen, however, has turned the tourism curse on its head, inviting visitors to do good deeds for the city and be rewarded for it in return. And it’s time other cities got similarly creative. “During 2024, the Spanish tourism sector experienced its best year since 2019. Its contribution to GDP rose by almost 8% to €248.7 billion, or 15.6% of the economy. It also employed 3 million people, nearly 14% of the country’s total jobs,” the World Travel & Tourism Council reported in May. For many Spaniards, though, this hardly feels like good news. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. To them — and to locals in many other cities tourists like to visit — what it actually means is overcrowding, lack of housing and constant littering. It’s a cursed bargain, tourism: It brings in cash and jobs, but the more tourism you get, the more locals’ discomfort turns to misery. These days, even the trails leading up to the Himalayas are tainted by litter — and don’t even mention Instagram tourism. But tourism doesn’t need to be this destructive. Switzerland, for example, has begun giving rail discounts to those who book a stay at sustainable hotels, and it charges anyone visiting the Lake Brienz pier, which was made famous by the Korean drama “Crash Landing on You,” 5 Swiss francs. The proceeds are then invested in local infrastructure. Copenhagen’s approach is even more innovative. Last year, the Danish capital launched CopenPay, a scheme that invites tourists to do good deeds for the city — and get rewarded. “All you need to do is, for instance, bike instead of drive, help maintain the city, work in an urban garden or take the train to Copenhagen instead of flying, stay longer at the destination,” CopenPay explains. The initiative was launched as a four-week pilot program last year, and this summer it expanded to nine weeks, with 100 attractions participating — a fourfold increase. For instance, as part of CopenPay, there are currently 15 different opportunities to clean up litter across the city, one of which is to “Clean the harbor with GreenKayak and enjoy a free non-alcoholic drink and rye bar with your Smørrebrød purchase at Hallernes Smørrebrød.” While I can’t speak for everyone, to me, cleaning the harbor in central Copenhagen by kayak certainly sounds like an exciting undertaking I’d do for free — though I’d also happily claim the beverage. And if that doesn’t quite strike your fancy, you can help clean the harbor by self-sailing boat too. And picking up litter is just the beginning. If you bike or use public transport to get to the National Museum, you get a free ice cream with your entry ticket. If you arrive in Copenhagen by train or electric car, you get similarly rewarded. There are free bike rentals, free yoga sessions, free guided tours, all waiting to be claimed. Visitors arriving by train from abroad can even get free surplus meals at Copenhagen Central Station. There are free bike rentals, free yoga sessions, free guided tours, all waiting to be claimed. | Mads Claus Rasmussen/EPA You get the idea: Be a good citizen while you visit, and good things will come your way. And hopefully the impact of CopenPay — and other similar initiatives currently in the works — won’t stop there. Imagine if participants start thinking differently about their role as tourists. Once you take part in city maintenance as a temporary sanitation worker, perhaps you start viewing your surroundings less as an Instagram commodity and more as a local community worth protecting. Imagine what such participatory schemes could do for other tourist destinations, especially those most affected by throngs of oblivious visitors. I’ve long wondered how Romans can be so tolerant of the throngs that crowd their beautiful piazzas and narrow streets. How could the local government convince visitors to stop congregating and littering in front of Fontana di Trevi? Perhaps they should introduce a scheme inviting tourists to pick up litter and intimately get to know a street or two, or perhaps sweep the floor of one of the city’s many stunning churches, or tend to part of a graveyard. It would certainly be a memory to tell one’s friends about. Yes, there are reasons why such initiatives may not work. Dishonest tourists will claim to have done a good deed when they haven’t — CopenPay, for example, operates on an honor system. But tourism isn’t just a burden to locals, it’s a burden on our planet. It emits some 8 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide and is 20 percent more carbon-intensive than the average for the global economy. Offering tourists the opportunity to pick up litter as they explore local waterways may not work for every town and city, but each destination can easily come up with its own innovative ideas. Just imagine cities full of visitors who bring a helping hand as well as their cash. That ought to be tourism we can live with.