The city’s then-Mayor Gavin Newsom had made disaster preparedness a key part of his program and to this day, I know exactly what items to always have at home in case of a crisis: Water, blankets, flashlights, canned food and a hand-cranked radio. And those items are the same, whether the crisis is an earthquake, a cyberattack or a military assault.
Other earthquake-prone cities and regions disseminate similar preparedness advice — as do a fast-growing number of countries, now facing threats from hostile states. Poland, as it happens, published its new leaflet just a few days before Russia’s drones entered its airspace.
But these preparedness instructions have generally focused on citizens and households; businesses have to come up with their own preparedness plans against whatever Russia or other hostile states and their proxies think up — and against extreme weather events too. That’s a lot of hostile activity. In the past couple years alone, undersea cables have been damaged under mysterious circumstances; a Polish shopping mall and a Lithuanian Ikea store have been subject to arson attacks; drones have been circling above weapons-manufacturing facilities; and a defense-manufacturing CEO has been the target of an assassination plot; just to name a few incidents.
It’s no wonder geopolitical threats are causing alarm to the private sector.
Global insurance broker Willis Towers Watson’s 2025 Political Risk Survey, which focuses on multinationals, found that the political risk losses in 2023 — the most recent year for which data is available — were at their highest level since the survey began. Companies are particularly concerned about economic retaliation, state-linked cyberattacks and state-linked attacks on infrastructure in the area of gray-zone aggression.
Yes, businesses around Europe receive warnings and updates from their governments, and large businesses have crisis managers and run crisis management exercises for their staff. But there was no national preparedness guide for businesses — until now.