TPI co-hosted The Svalbard Consensus? workshop in London on November 19th-20th. Funded by the Royal Navy, and held in partnership with Loughborough University, the workshop was built around a full day of expert briefings and a multi-stage strategic crisis simulation. 

The simulation examined how emerging technologies, critical infrastructure, and climate change are reshaping security dynamics in the Arctic. As sea ice retreats and access to new routes and resources expands, Svalbard has become a focal point for Russian military pressure, growing Chinese interest, and increasing technological vulnerabilities. 

Participants, including high-level military and policy practitioners, responded to a series of escalating crisis injects including extreme weather, Russian submarine operations, and Chinese vessel activity, while managing pressure on technology-dependent systems central to Svalbard’s survival. These included subsea communications cables, satellite ground infrastructure, energy generation and fuel logistics, and digitally enabled supply chains for food and water. 

The Royal Navy-funded exercise builds on TPI’s expertise in technology-driven strategic simulations, using immersive scenarios to test how actors operate under conditions where civilian and military technologies, from satellites to undersea cables, become central targets and sources of escalation. Insights from the simulation will build on summer workshops with members of Congress in DC and policy makers in Iceland, to inform TPI’s ongoing work on Arctic security, emerging technologies, and critical infrastructure resilience. 

Find out more about the work of the TPI Geopolitics and Technology Hub here: https://publicpolicy.cornell.edu/btpi/research-hubs/geopolitics-and-technology/