According to Emilio Iasiello in his most recent post – “What’s Really Behind WhisperGate Attacks Against Ukraine?” – Belarus is the latest move by Russia on the cyber front in the highly charged gray-zone conflict between Russia and the West.  If so, Sweden is NATO’s biggest strategic move.  And Sweden may be more a rook than a pawn.

As a result, activity and movements – both military and cyber, strategic and operational/tactical – in Sweden in this current climate in Europe are vital OSINT tracking mechanisms.

The Revenge of Geography

Sweden’s Importance to NATO’s Defense of the Baltics – Foreign Policy Research Institute https://t.co/Gijk1cWsRK

— Darius Semaška (@DariusSemaska) September 30, 2017

“Geography and history demonstrate that we can never discount Russia. Russia’s partial resurgence in our own age following the dissolution of the Soviet Empire is part of an old story. Russia.” – Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

Felix Chang from the Foreign Policy Research Institute clearly articulates Sweden’s strategic position in the Baltic Sea:  “Spanning the length of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Sweden’s geography dominates much of the Baltic Sea, a fact that NATO has long appreciated. Early on in the Cold War, NATO recognized that Sweden could serve as a valuable location for early warning facilities to monitor the Soviet Union in peacetime and for combat aircraft to interdict Soviet lines of communications across Germany and Poland in wartime.”

As OODA CTO Bob Gourley first reported in The OODA C-Suite Report: Operational Intelligence for Business Leaders:

“Movement of Swedish infantry units onto the Island of Gotland in the Baltic sea by a US C-17 is an indicator of the nature of the changing tensions and the preparation for war in the region. Sweden has articulated a position of armed neutrality for 200 years, and never officially joined NATO, but has been an observer of NATO and closely cooperates. This move is defensive in nature but highly unusual and will be noted by Russia.”

Gotland is the closest part of Sweden to Russia.  Sweden began to reinforce its military presence on the island after the failed talks in Geneva between NATO, the United States, and Moscow.

21st Century Russian Gray-Zone Tactics

“Nothing is True and Everything is Possible”  –  Peter Pomerantsev

Besides the website defacement and WhisperGate malware cyberattacks in Ukraine on January 14th, kinetic and cyber activities in Sweden are also cause for concern.

Mysterious Drone Incursions Confirmed Over Sweden’s Nuclear Facilities

As reported by the Drive on December 15th:

“Swedish law enforcement officials have confirmed that unidentified drones have been seen in the airspace over multiple nuclear power facilities early in the evening of Friday, January 14. An investigation has been launched by Sweden’s National Operations Department (NOA), but so far no suspects have been identified.

“The Swedish Police Authority says the drones were seen over two separate nuclear facilities: one in the city of Forsmark and another over Oskarshamn. There are reports that a third nuclear facility at Ringhals had similar incursions, but Swedish police have yet to confirm that drones were in fact seen there. According to Reuters, the facility at Forsmark is the nation’s largest producer of energy  The drone incursions come on the heels of an announcement by Sweden’s Lieutenant General Michael Claesson, Chief of Joint Operations for the Swedish Armed Forces, that the nation would be bolstering its visible military presence on the island of Gotland in response to increasing numbers of Russian landing craft passing through the Baltic Sea.”  (1)

This exploration of energy facilities by drone in Sweden is consistent with the “active scanning and testing of the network infrastructure of energy enterprises” in Ukraine through the network access afforded the infiltrators by the cyber attacks in Ukraine on that same day, Friday, January 14th.   As was noted by a Ukrainian official in our coverage of the attacks: “….the informational narratives that accompanied [the WhisperGate attack] indicate that this was a red herring to cover up for more destructive actions…which…we will feel in the near future. And, with high probability, this may be in the energy sector, since the vulnerabilities used for the attack on January 14 are also present in some energy enterprises…the active scanning and testing of the network infrastructure of energy enterprises that day were unprecedented. And there are also many other indicators that have been recorded as evidence of this threat.” (2)

‘War Is Coming’: Mysterious TikTok Videos Are Scaring Sweden’s Children

Source: https://twitter.com/emlukina/status/1482265905006583809

As first reported in Defense One, by Elisabeth Braw, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on Sunday, January 16th (after the cyber-attacks and drone activity of the 14th of January):

“In Sweden, unusual anxiety is afflicting children and young teenagers. Some can’t sleep. Some ask their parents if Russia is about to attack their country. Where did they get that idea? TikTok.   “War is coming,” say some of the videos that the social-media platform is feeding to young Swedes. Other videos tell their Swedish users that Russian forces will bomb their country or even invade. No wonder the children are becoming anxious. The Chinese-owned, algorithm-driven platform is, in fact, the perfect tool for a country wishing to weaken another country’s morale.

Children and teenagers suddenly overcome by a fear of war, in a country that last saw a war more than two centuries ago and last mounted major territorial defenses in the 1980s? Someone is trying to weaken Sweden’s resolve by frightening children. To be sure, anyone might be concerned by news reports of the past week’s failed NATO-Russia negotiations, Russia’s veiled threat of “catastrophic consequence”, and Poland’s warning that Europe is on the brink of war. But few children, tweens, and teens read the newspaper: in Sweden, three percent do so on a daily basis. Some 30 percent, by contrast, use TikTok.

So who’s behind the frightening videos? As with most other disinformation, no country has claimed responsibility, but Russia has a clear interest in sowing fear and confusion in a country that has in recent years begun to rebuild its defenses. Just last week Sweden moved additional soldiers to its Baltic Sea island of Gotland. The source of the TikTok fear campaign could, of course, also be another country wishing to weaken Sweden’s resolve—China comes to mind—or it could simply be TikTik malcontents with nothing better to do. But in the fight against disinformation, the most pressing goal isn’t finding the perpetrator, it’s finding an antidote to the lies.” (3)

A Reinvigorated 20th Century Swedish Total Defence Model and the Innovative Swedish Psychological Defence Authority

“A nation’s cognitive infrastructure includes the mental capacities of the citizens and the decision-making ability of people, organizations, and our government. – – Bob Gourley, OODA CTO

Bob elaborates further in his framing of cognitive infrastructure:  “It also includes the information channels used to feed decision-making capabilities and the education and training systems used to prepare people and organizations for critical thinking.  In a free society, it is the job of the citizen to decide what their role is in the cognitive infrastructure.”

Sweden has a cognitive infrastructure defensive posture in place.  AEI Fellow Braw went on to report:

“The Swedish Psychological Defense Agency was launched on New Year’s Day to strengthen the public’s resilience to disinformation. Importantly, it will also conduct the complicated work of identifying and exposing the perpetrators of disinformation. With the TikTok disinformation campaign in full swing, the Psychological Defense Agency will need to swiftly issue advice – on TikTok perhaps – to children, teenagers, parents, and teachers.  Indeed, other countries should consider a similar move. If the war-anxiety machine hasn’t already reached their children, it will soon. Social media makes the adage that all is fair in love and war easier than ever to implement.”

The Psychological Defence Authority has a uniquely Swedish historical pedigree:  it is a direct descendant of the Swedish Cold War entity known as the Board for Psychological Defence from the 1950s and 1960s.  The Swedish Total Defence concept also dates to the 1940s (see also 4). Colonel Mikael Johnsson explains:   “[Total Defence] is rooted in the idea that all elements of society have a duty to prepare to support the armed forces at times of crisis.”  Or, according to Dr. Björn von Sydow in the NATO Review,  Total Defence is concerned with “mobilizing the whole of society.”

In our recent post, National Cognitive Infrastructure Protection:  What Can We Learn from the Swedish Psychological Defence Authority?, we contextualized the launch of the Psychological Defence Authority relative to other recent efforts by the Swedes.  According to rusi.org, “in a piece of landmark legislation in 2015, Sweden boosted its defence spending; reinstated conscription, albeit a more selective version than in the past; and revitalized its Total Defence concept, remodeled to meet today’s spectrum of threats. Key to rebuilding this policy was the need to reinstate its Cold War practice of running regular national resilience exercises.”

A seminal Total Defence 2020 Exercise, a yearlong Swedish military exercise (of which Colonel Johnsson was the military co-chair of the exercise planning group), provided the actionable insights for the establishment of the Swedish Psychological Defence Authority:  

“The first major lesson of the exercise was that it is extremely difficult to communicate clear messages to the population of a free society against the background noise of sustained disinformation campaigns. This was not a surprise to the Swedish authorities but proved far more significant than they expected. As a result, [Nils Svartz, co-chair of the evaluation branch from the Swedish Civil Contingency Agency] reported that his government has decided to establish a psychological defence agency to combat this problem.

The second major lesson was that, with the advent of hybrid and grey-zone warfare, the transition period when the armed forces move from supporting civil society to being supported by civil society has become more complex but nonetheless must be seamless and flexible. It may also call for the central government to take tighter control than normal over lower levels of government during a crisis.”

Sweden distributes 'be prepared for war' leaflet to all 4.8m homes https://t.co/sV9A8olVF8

— The Guardian (@guardian) May 21, 2018

As early as 2018, and for the first time since 1943,  Sweden distributed ‘be prepared for war’ leaflet to all 4.8m homes in the country:  “In the last week of May 2018, all (4.9 million) households in Sweden received the brochure If the crisis or war comes home. The brochure is community information from the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, MSB.”

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