Crisis Lab Podcast Season 4 Episode 18
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Kyle King: [00:00:00] Sweden's observable shift that we can see suggests one nation has answered that question.
They're not waiting for the next crisis to prove their current structures to be inadequate. They're rebuilding governance models to match the world as it is, not as they wish it were for emergency management professionals the Swedish approach offers not a blueprint to copy, but a mirror reflecting what sustained gray zone pressure demands.
Hi everyone. This is Kyle. Welcome to the Christ LED Podcast. I'll be your host today. And I just wanted to cover another one of our articles that we published recently, which is how we're transitioning from emergency management to security governance and what Sweden's specific transformation tells us about the gray zone reality.
Throughout 2025, Russia has conducted systemic campaigns across European civilian infrastructure that reveal fundamental flaws in how nations approach crisis management in September alone, 19. To 23 [00:01:00] drones violated Polish airspace. GPS jamming affected 123,000 flights across the Baltic region, and Copenhagen and Oslo.
Airports shut down for hours due to coordinated drone activity, and Russian fighter jets violated Estonian airspace again. So what makes these incidents significant isn't their individual impact, but the way they're orchestrated. Each event requires responses from civilian authorities. For example, aviation control, maritime border surveillance, or border security cybersecurity teams, ~all while preventing the recovery periods.~
~Emergency management systems or traditional crisis management systems largely depend upon. ~And this isn't crisis management as we've known it. It's sustained operational pressure designed to overwhelm coordination systems built for discrete events. And so traditional emergency management would handle these as separate and distinct issues.
We have different agencies with different expertise and different response plans. But in the gray zone, as we call it, they're all the same crisis, and that's exactly [00:02:00] what they're designed to be. When coordination systems break under continuous pressure. Really becoming a type of problem that we're having to deal with.
Denmark learned this reality when drones shut down. Copenhagen Airport Aviation authorities activated standard protocols as they normally would. But this wasn't a standard incident. It connected to things like the shadow fleet movements and Danish waters. It connected to cyber probes hitting government networks and intelligence suggesting there are coordinated operations across many fronts.
Danish officials assessed the drone incidents as hybrid warfare involving systemic approaches by professional operators, not isolated events, but patterns spanning aviation disruption, and maritime operations. The challenge exceeded any single agency's capability. And also if you think about the follow on effects like a domino, so to speak, across having to shut down an airport and stranded travelers, it becomes a robust challenge that [00:03:00] extends beyond a single agency.
So aviation authorities needed maritime intelligence, for example. Port security required cyber threat awareness. Border control depended on supply chain data organizational charts that work well during peace time, showing how we function as an organization become rather obsolete under sustained sort of multi-domain pressure in this gray zone reality.
Professionals will have to adapt. Baltic states, created informal coordination mechanisms moving faster than bureaucracy would typically allow. Danish and Swedish maritime authorities shared shadow fleet intelligence in near real time and Polish and Lithuanian transport officials are coordinating alternative routes ~for.~
~Before formal agreements actually exist. And so ~these aren't policy decisions. They're more like survival responses, happening because existing structures can't handle the continuous operational tempo that we're starting to see emerge in this new reality. And so what we're seeing from Sweden.
Something quite interesting. So while emergency management professionals across Europe [00:04:00] Improvise Solutions, Sweden appears to be systematically rebuilding its entire approach, reports from Swedish government publications and international observers suggest something remarkable, which is a nation treating gray zone reality now is a temporary disruption that they have to contend with.
But as a type of new normal, which is requiring a significant governance shift, or at least to me, I think it's significant in, in terms of the effort. And so. In late 2022, Sweden implemented what external sources would describe as a major structural reform of civil defense and crisis preparedness.
Then in December, 2024, their parliament approved what's being reported as the most substantial defense reinforcement since the Cold War, with more than $16 billion or equivalent dollars, , for military defense, and nearly 4 billion for civil defense by 2030. The striking element isn't the money. It's what appears to be a fundamental reorganization of how emergency and crisis management integrates into national governance.
And this is [00:05:00] something that we've been discussing at Crisis Lab, and so the total defense integration model that is being developed. It's quite interesting. So external observers note that Sweden has reintroduced what they call total defense, a Cold War concept being adapted for gray zone reality.
And from what we can see in published materials, this approach directly addresses that specific coordination failure other nations are experiencing by eliminating traditional separation between military defense and civilian crisis management. According to Swedish government materials distributed to every household in their country.
Their model operates on a simple principle of during times of crisis or war. We all need to contribute to Sweden's resilience. Reports suggest Sweden is implementing legal frameworks, establishing that all residents can be called upon during crisis or war, not just emergency services anymore.
This creates distributed capacity rather than centralized surge responses that burns out sustained pressure over time. Again, [00:06:00] the new emerging trend and so observable structural changes. What we're seeing coming outta Sweden. So from external reporting, several concrete organizational shifts really stand out, one is that there's a unified authority structure.
Sweden's civil contingencies agencies reportedly being renamed effective. January, 2026 to explicitly signal its civil defense role. The agency appears to be establishing 26 preparedness sectors spanning energy, food, water, transport, healthcare and financial systems, each with designated agencies responsible for continuity.
Under all conditions, not just emergencies. And then there's something highly unique, which is something that, we often talk about at Crisis Lab that's emerging from our international work is the municipal integration Reports indicate every Swedish municipality must maintain crisis management.
Councils conduct risk assessments every four years and demonstrate readiness for both discreet events and the sustained pressure. The shocks as we [00:07:00] know 'em in the United States and the stressors. And so this shifts local government into crisis governance infrastructure rather than just emergency response and coordination as a one-off discrete event.
Now, then there's private sector organizations. Swedish materials suggest critical infrastructure operators have preparedness obligations legally integrated into civil defense, moving beyond compliance and into partnership. And then you can take that down to the next level of household preparedness. And so the widely reported distribution of if crisis or war to 5.5 million households, states explicitly that citizens should be self-sufficient for at least one week.
This isn't just guidance, it's the foundation of a system designed to function when centralized services are overwhelmed. Perhaps most Tellingly Sweden has published multiple reports explicitly analyzing Ukrainian experiences to inform their reforms. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency released findings in 2023 and 2025, examining how Ukraine's defense has [00:08:00] held under sustained pressure.
Three lessons appear to be driving these types of reforms in Sweden. First of all. Civilian populations and infrastructure will be directly targeted in gray zone operations and wartime scenarios. Traditional assumptions that rear areas remain safe. Don't hold at all. Second, early preparation enables wartime resilience.
You cannot improvise total defense after the pressure is being applied and these events begin. Third civil defense requires both adaptability and endurance. Surge capacity isn't enough when operations sustain for months or even years. So looking beyond Sweden, what makes Sweden's approach significant isn't that it's uniquely Nordic. It's that they appear to be treating gray zone reality as a permanent operating condition, requiring governance change rather than temporary crisis. This distinction matters.
Merchant management built on surge capacity assumes crisis will end. If [00:09:00] you've listened to our podcast before, we've mentioned this many times, but the staffing will actually just rotate home. They deploy and they go back home, and then they go back to their normal job. Systems will recover, but when pressure persists across multiple domains for weeks or months, traditional models simply can't keep up.
They tend to collapse, and so you can't surge indefinitely. Finland, Norway and Denmark are reportedly implementing similar total defense concepts, creating regional coordination that addresses the informal Baltic cooperation mechanisms. Emergency managers are already creating by necessity. So there's five patterns that I think are worth watching from Sweden's observable approach that transcend the national context of this focus for today.
So it's integration over coordination. Rather than coordinating emergency management with security agencies during a crisis, integrate emergency management into security governance permanently. Sweden's approach appears to place both military and civil defense under unified ministry of defense oversight.[00:10:00]
That's fit for their nation and their regulations. Distributed capacity over centralized surge capabilities is the next thing we see. Legal frameworks establishing whole of society responsibilities. Create depth. When everyone has defined roles during a crisis, you're not dependent on burning out your specialists.
Sector resilience over agency response. Instead of emergency services responding to failures or incidents, establish sector level preparedness obligations, energy, food, water, transportation, healthcare, each maintains continuity planning for sustained operations under pressure.
And then there's the integration, which I think is extremely important of the municipal crisis governance type of infrastructure. So turning local government from emergency coordination and emergency response. To embedded crisis governance and capability overall. This means councils reoccurring assessments and demonstrated readiness as standard governance functions rather than just one-off [00:11:00] discreet requirements.
Then number five, we have private partnership over regulatory compliance. Critical infrastructure operators become civil defense partners with legal preparedness obligations, not just regulated entities that emergency managers coordinate with during an incident. The fundamental question is really with us today,
the challenge facing emergency management isn't whether Sweden's specific approach is replicable anywhere else. Different legal systems, political cultures and threat perceptions will produce different solutions in every country. But the question is whether emergency management as a profession recognizes that this type of gray zone reality requires a governance change, not just improved emergency response,
2020 Baltic incidents revealed what Sweden appears to have already concluded. When adversaries can sustain multi-domain pressure indefinitely, emergency management must evolve from episodic response coordination to continuous security governance and partnership. Denmark couldn't coordinate its way out of these.
Drone operations are [00:12:00] multi-domain. Attacks that they were seeing, shadow flee movements and cyber intrusions happening simultaneously. Neither can any other nation relying on structures designed for discrete events. The professionals adapting through informal coordination, cross board intelligence sharing and improvised solutions.
They're already writing the new operating procedures. The question is whether institutions will formalize these adaptations or force emergency managers. Departments and responders to keep improvising around structures that no longer match this type of operational reality. Sweden's observable shift that we can see suggests one nation has answered that question.
They're not waiting for the next crisis to prove their current structures to be inadequate. They're rebuilding governance models to match the world as it is, not as they wish it were for emergency management professionals the Swedish approach offers not a blueprint to copy, but a mirror reflecting what sustained gray zone pressure demands.
Fundamental rethinking of where emerging management sits, governance, how capability is distributed across society, and what prepared means when a [00:13:00] crisis doesn't end. The infrastructure for that evolution already exists in the informal coordination networks. Baltic professionals are building. The cross domain intelligence sharing that happens despite bureaucratic boundaries in the private sector.
Partnerships formed by necessity. What's missing is the institutional recognition that these aren't temporary workarounds they're the foundation of a new era of emerging management's evolution from where discrete events to embedded security, governance and partnership.
And so some nations are making. That evolution, explicit, others are letting it emerge from practitioner rapid adaptation. Both paths lead to the same destination. Emergency management as a field needs to become more integral to how governments maintain authority and provide services under continuous pressure, not just during declared emergencies.
So really the only question remains is how much practitioners will have to improvise before institutions need to catch up. So that's all for today. Thanks for listening to Christ Lab Podcast. If you got any questions you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening [00:14:00] and we'll see you next time.
