Norway's Military to Increase Readiness, Likely to Activate Home Guard

And thus the dogs of war howl a tad louder, with generals, experts, and journos in agreement that 'something™' must be done

Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.

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Grid Providers to Change Readiness Levels: ‘We must prepare for war’

By Ole Kristian Svalheim, NRK, 1 Dec. 2024 [source]

This is what Kristin Aadland, head of the grid company BKK, said. The statement comes in the wake of an increasingly uncertain situation in Europe.

At Statnett’s autumn conference this week, where security was the main theme, Aadland encouraged grid companies to think in new ways.

‘We recognise our social responsibility in peacetime, crisis, and, war. In Western Norway, we recognise our responsibility for the power supply to critical national installations [that won’t include you and me, folks: the likes of us, we get to pay higher ‘fees’ but we won’t get power in crisis and war]. That said, the times in which we find ourselves require us to present a completely different picture’, says the BKK CEO.

Sabotage Threats on the Rise

Last month, PST [Norway’s counter-intel/terrorism outfit] warned power companies that the threat of sabotage from Russia has increased in recent years [re-read this, if necessary: ‘the threat of’ has increased; no actual sabotage was presented to the public, with the notable exception, of course, of the Nord Stream bombing /sarcasm].

‘Their [Russia’s] intention is to create fear and uncertainty. Uncertainty about whether the authorities are able to deliver security and safety’, said PST's Director of Counterintelligence, Inger Haugland, during Energidagene [the annual convention of power companies alluded to earlier].

Earlier this year, Nettselskapet AS in Trøndelag, which owns and operates the power grid that covers Norway’s fighter base, Ørland Air Station, found several objects that do not belong in the power grid, according to Teknisk Ukeblad.

Among the objects was a mobile phone transmitter, which was found inside a station in the same area as the airbase [Trøndelag county is about 44,674 square kilometres big, and please re-read the above claim and ask yourself: what’s the likelihood of finding ‘several objects that do not belong in the power grid’ on any given day in an area about as large as Switzerland] .

They never found out who owned the transmitter…

The government says it is taking the power supply situation very seriously.

‘We are working continuously on this and are in close dialogue with NVE [Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate], which has operational responsibility for power supply preparedness. We are also in contact with the security services’, says Elisabeth Sæther, State Secretary at the Ministry of Energy [note here that NVE is a Directorate under the aegis of the Dept. of Energy, hence its head and doings aren’t under the same level of scrutiny vs. parliament as the dept. itself: this is a common ‘trick’ to avoid too close scrutiny (think, e.g., in US parlance, ‘federal commissions’, such as the SEC, FEC, or the like].

‘In their opinion, the systems for managing emergency preparedness for power are good. The systems are robust and can handle extreme weather and deliberate actions’, says Sæther [so, why the ‘panic™’ and fearmongering?]…

‘High Time’

Lieutenant Commander and researcher at the Norwegian Naval Academy, Tor Ivar Strømmen, thinks it’s high time to think about emergency preparedness around the installations.

He believes that preparedness in most areas of Norwegian society is ‘hair-raisingly poor’.

‘We should have started actively building up preparedness as early as 2013 with Crimea, and in any case after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022,’ says Commander Tor Ivar Strømmen. [what a clown: there were no Russian forces in Crimea in 2013—and note that ‘even’ NATO sock puppet Jens Stoltenberg has said that the war in Ukraine ‘started in 2014’]

‘We have a certain ability to prevent weather damage, but we are terribly bad at preventing damage from unwanted actions [quick, spend more on the military—the left-wing gov’t proposed an 18% hike in military spending year-over-year]. Today, so much is digitised. So we also need to look more at cyber security and how we can repair damage’, he says.

Lieutenant Colonel Palle Ydstebø is head of the land forces section at the Norwegian Military Academy and one of the country’s best experts on the war in Ukraine. He agrees with the idea of strengthening preparedness around critical infrastructure.

‘Not only to withstand environmental damage, such as floods or landslides, but also to protect against physical or digital vandalism and sabotage in peacetime’, he says, reminding us that a well-secured infrastructure is better able to tolerate a war than one that is merely cheap to run.

‘Hopefully, our readiness is so good and convincing that we avoid the war and don’t have to spend many times more as fighting the war’, says Lieutenant Colonel Palle Ydstebø [this is insanity writ-large: we must prepare for war to avoid it is a time-honoured adage, but what Lt. Col. Ydstebø says here is that there’s a marginal utility/price to prevention vs. fighting].

Lieutenant Commander Strømmen says sabotage is a tool to reduce both the ability and willingness to support Ukraine in the war.

‘Espionage and intelligence used to be something the Russians tried to keep hidden. Now they are much more active and dare to take risks’, he says [Keep in mind that there is no evidence save the alleged Nord Stream bombing that this is what ‘ze Rooskies’ are actually doing in/to Norway at this point].

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Comments by Norway’s Energy Ministry

This section also comes from the above-linked NRK article, but I put it here to differentiate more clearly between the (editorialising) slander masquerading as ‘news™’ vs. what the minister actually stated:

[NRK] What do they think of the BKK CEO’s statement that we must prepare for war?

[Elisabeth Sæther, State Secretary] ‘It’s quite clear that the world is more unsettled and more incapacitated than it was just a few years ago. The energy policy situation has changed dramatically in recent years. This also means that energy and security policy are closely linked [they always were]. With the new threat picture as a backdrop, grid companies have an important responsibility. Security and emergency preparedness in the power supply is a task the government takes very seriously. We work continuously on this and maintain a close dialogue with NVE, which has operational responsibility for power supply preparedness. We are also in contact with the security services.

[NRK] Should the grid companies, which are responsible for power supply to critical national installations, increase their preparedness?

[Elisabeth Sæther, State Secretary] I would like to emphasise that power supply companies, including grid companies, have long been more vigilant when it comes to both physical facilities and ICT security. This was reinforced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The utilities have also been asked to review their contingency plans.

[NRK] How seriously do they view the emergency preparedness situation today?

[Elisabeth Sæther, State Secretary] We’re in regular contact with NVE and the security services concerning the assessment of the emergency preparedness situation. The systems for ensuring emergency preparedness and security of supply for electricity in Norway are good. A number of different incidents and risks have been taken into account, both in terms of robustness of the systems, preventive security work, recovery after incidents, and so on. The system is set up to handle both natural events, such as extreme weather, and deliberate acts.

I call—boilerplate reassurances and vacuous word salad.

There’s nothing concrete in these comments, with perhaps the one—most plausible—deduction that this is a kind of predictive programming used to later justify grid providers (which here, in New Public Management Scandinavia, are all ‘outsourced’ to subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises) hiking fees citing ‘security concerns’.

Bottom Lines

To me, this seems like a kind of psy-op to advance grifting off consumers.

This doesn’t mean that there are no real-world concerns, but in terms of evidence or the like, well, this falls well short.

Moreover, given the appearance of these two fine, honourable experts™ telling us that the military needs, desperately so, more money, and further militarise everything, albeit in a public-private partnership:

The BKK CEO believes that there needs to be a review of how the grid companies protect their installations, but also a new way of thinking about national preparedness [so, this most likely means writing ‘safety plans’, much like for, say, hospitals during the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Pandemic™’: this will create quite ‘something to do™’ for contractors].

Aadland is pleased with the ambitious long-term plan for the Norwegian Armed Forces, but calls for more comprehensive plans at national level.

She hopes that Norway can be inspired by Sweden, which has [re]activated the civil service [orig. sivilplikt, Sweden’s replacement for military service/obligation to serve w/o guns] to protect the electricity supply and has identified resources to carry out repair work in a crisis.

‘They have mapped resources in Sweden that can be called upon in a repair phase in a war situation in the electricity supply industry. By having dedicated resources that they are now training and practising to call on in the event of a war situation,’ she says.

The Civil Service existed in Sweden from 1937 through 2014, and now it’s been re-activated to prepare, White Helmet Style, for conflict. This happened after a national review in 2019, hence before Sweden talked about NATO membership. Funny that, eh?

I expect Norway and the other Nordics to follow-suit and ramp up the bellicose rhetoric before too long.

As an aside, I live close to a hydroelectric power station, and I’ll now keep an eye out on military personnel checking on, well, the flow of water, I suppose. That will make me feel safe in case of a Russian attack.