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It was with boyish excitement that I clambered down the narrow stepladder and into the control room of FNS Pori, one of four fast attack crafts in the Finnish navy. The commander explained the latest missile systems to our small group: Sailors are taught to operate the ship not just from state-of-the art sensors, but also from paper, in the event of GPS denial. All eventualities are being rehearsed in the gray zone of almost-war.

These vessels spend most of the time patrolling the Gulf of Finland and the archipelago of small islands that straddle the Russian, Estonian, and Finnish borders. Russia is constantly testing how far it can go. The top brass of Finland’s military wants you to understand the acuteness of the danger.

It was with boyish excitement that I clambered down the narrow stepladder and into the control room of FNS Pori, one of four fast attack crafts in the Finnish navy. The commander explained the latest missile systems to our small group: Sailors are taught to operate the ship not just from state-of-the art sensors, but also from paper, in the event of GPS denial. All eventualities are being rehearsed in the gray zone of almost-war.

These vessels spend most of the time patrolling the Gulf of Finland and the archipelago of small islands that straddle the Russian, Estonian, and Finnish borders. Russia is constantly testing how far it can go. The top brass of Finland’s military wants you to understand the acuteness of the danger.

Undersea War: The Battle to Control the Cables and Pipelines That Connect Our World, Elisabeth Braw, PublicAffairs, 368 pp., $34, October 2026

I was at the Helsinki Security Forum, a gathering of government and industry representatives and military experts from around the world, earlier this month as it focused on the war in Ukraine and the Kremlin’s many open provocations across Europe and into the Arctic. Among this group, “hybrid warfare,” as a term, is now frowned upon.

It hasn’t worked in terms of galvanizing publics into appreciating the acuteness of the danger: It seems too remote and does not impart immediacy. Even the discovery........

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