World War III has already started

It’s the infrastructure, stupid

If you had slept through the last few years you might not have noticed, but our planet is spiraling into global crisis.

According to the Geneva Academy, there are currently 110 nations involved in armed conflict, more than at any time since World War II. And while the Ukraine war tops most of the lists, the scale of that war is actually far broader than you might think. That is, unless you live in Europe. Russia has been sabotaging European infrastructure since the Ukraine war began, and the continent is now in the middle of the largest military buildup since World War II.

What’s the rush?

Let’s strip away all the political niceties and diplomatic triple speak: War is coming.

The first waves of global war are already lapping across Europe, and the tsunami is on its way. NATO expects a massive Russian invasion by 2029, and they’re preparing for it. And it won’t stop in Europe. The United States is NATO’s most important member State.

What should we do?

For those of us who are not members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this question may seem moot.

It’s not. Let’s take a quick look into the future.

It is not difficult to predict the Kremlin’s strategy. Russia has been working on destroying Ukraine’s utilities since 2022 when they started the war, and their sabotage attacks across Europe are also focused on infrastructure. When the tsunami hits, it will be directed at the soft underbelly of modern nations: the high-tech interconnected infrastructures that keeps them alive and functioning. And the first target, as we’ve seen, will be the power grid.

With its massively redundant, Soviet era legacy, Ukraine’s grid has been fortunate to have remarkable resilience. Unfortunately, very few modern countries have this advantage.

A call to action

Here’s the key:

Since you’re reading this article, you probably have the imagination to recognize the urgency of this situation. And that means there’s a good chance you may be willing to do what you can to help. So here are some ideas.

Given the limited time we have, Europe, the United States and partner nations should be using this opportunity to proactively invest in hardening their power grids, gas pipelines and related assets. The focus? For years resilience advocates have been pointing to a short list of the most critical needs.

Cyber and EMP hardening

Aggressive, ubiquitous cyber protection and prioritized EMP hardening of critical grid nodes, generating stations and gas pipeline facilities.

Robust blackstart enhancement

Greatly expanded availability of blackstart (grid restart) assets. This will need to include accessory capabilities, such as, grid-wide deployment of a corporate-owned, fully interoperable communication system that will operate through any attack and continue to function for the weeks or months it will take for grid restart. Also essential: Long duration-operable emergency power for key grid facilities.

Chaos management system

In any full grid blackout, the scale of the chaos will make it impossible for unaided humans to know what decision chains will navigate around problems in interconnected infrastructures and supply chains, and optimize recovery. It will be critical to have a widely deployed multi-sector AI-enabled chaos management system that can provide interdependency-informed situational awareness and decision support for operators of critical facilities, in every interdependent infrastructure company.

Each of these capabilities is available or possible with current technology. EIS Council, in particular, is leading collaborative initiatives in each of these. What is missing?

Resilience investment is never easy. Willingness to recognise and address a crisis almost always waits for the 20:20 hindsight that inevitably follows the disaster.

To prevent a disaster that could mean the end of our civilization, we’ll need to do better.

Among the family of initiatives needed, incentivization through enhanced regulatory policies will be key. And for that to happen it will take the broadest possible public support, to encourage both the public and private sectors to take this on as an urgent, critical priority.

Each of us, in the context of our jobs, our connections within our communities and our interaction through social media, can be part of a broad effort to call for and encourage these measures.

With the report recently revealed of NATO’s extraordinary race to prepare for global war, it has become more than clear that this is urgent. If our way of life is to survive, each of us needs to get involved. Meaning to act, to do something – whatever we can – to help move this forward

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By: Avi Schnurr