The Arctic region is transforming as receding sea ice and technological progress create new access and vulnerabilities. Simultaneously, Russia and China are developing additional capabilities to support their Arctic operations and presence and advance their hybrid threat tools.

This Hybrid CoE Paper presents Russia’s and China’s long-term objectives in the Arctic, assessing how their capability, technology and infrastructure development, as well as broader civil-military cooperation, create the potential for future hybrid threats. The paper focuses primarily on civilian and multipurpose capabilities that support situational awareness, navigation and other activity in maritime and coastal environments.

A key thesis of the paper is that beyond their potential for physical operations or military use Russia’s and China’s evolving capabilities can be leveraged to establish an advantage or dominance in information, logistics, communications and data flows in the Arctic, and to create socioeconomic dependencies. The paper calls for cooperation and coordination between affected democratic countries, and cooperation with Indigenous and other local stakeholders.