Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO.
Seven years ago, Sweden made global headlines with “In Case of Crisis or War” — a crisis preparedness leaflet sent to all households in the country.
Unsurprisingly, preparedness leaflets have become a trend across Europe since then. But now, Sweden is ahead of the game once more, this time with a preparedness leaflet specifically for businesses.
Informing companies about threats that could harm them, and how they can prepare, makes perfect sense. And in today’s geopolitical reality, it’s becoming indispensable.
I remember when “In Case of Crisis or War” was first published in 2018: The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, or MSB, sent the leaflet out by post to every single home. The use of snail mail wasn’t accidental — in a crisis, there could be devastating cyberattacks that would prevent people from accessing information online.
The leaflet — an updated version of the Cold War-era “In Case of War” — contained information about all manner of possible harm, along with information about how to best prepare and protect oneself. Then, there was the key statement: “If Sweden is attacked, we will never surrender. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”
Over the top, suggested some outside observers derisively. Why cause panic among people?
But, oh, what folly!
Preparedness leaflets have been used elsewhere too. I came to appreciate preparedness education during my years as a resident of San Francisco — a city prone to earthquakes. On buses, at bus stops and online, residents like me were constantly reminded that an earthquake could strike at any moment and we were told how to prepare, what to do while the earthquake was happening, how to find loved ones afterward and how to fend for ourselves for up to three days after a tremor.
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.
MSB’s preparedness leaflet directed at Sweden’s companies is breaking new ground. It will feature the same kind of easy-to-implement advice as “In Case of Crisis or War,” and it will be just as useful for family-run shops as it is for multinationals, helping companies to keep operating matters far beyond the businesses themselves.
By targeting the private sector, hostile states can quickly bring countries to a grinding and discombobulating halt. That must not happen — and preventing should involve both governments and the companies themselves.
Naturally, a leaflet is only the beginning. As I’ve written before, governments would do well to conduct tabletop preparedness exercises with businesses — Sweden and the Czech Republic are ahead on this — and simulation exercises would be even better.
But a leaflet is a fabulous cost-effective start. It’s also powerful deterrence-signaling to prospective attackers. And in issuing its leaflet, Sweden is signaling that targeting the country’s businesses won’t be as effective as would-be attackers would wish.
(The leaflet, by the way, will be blue. The leaflet for private citizens was yellow. Get it? The colors, too, are a powerful message.)
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