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Posted on 10/10/2026 11:43:35 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Sweden and Denmark are pouring money into defense, tightening ties with each other and Europe—and moving beyond the U.S. It’s paying off.
COPENHAGEN and STOCKHOLM—Sweden’s central bank has been worrying about what cashless consumers would do if an emergency such as a Russian cyberattack took down the electrical or communications grid.
And so as of July, Swedish consumers can buy essential goods using their Mastercard and Visa cards without a network connection. The central bank (the Riksbank) wants to go further by enabling offline purchases with Swish, a local mobile payments system that bypasses the Visa and Mastercard networks altogether.
“What this whole geopolitical situation has brought about is that you need to be redundant in your operations,” the governor of Riksbank, Erik Thedéen, explained in an interview.
“If we look on our payment system, it happens to be that we have two credit cards that are from the same country, the U.S.,” he said. “I think we should keep that in mind.”
The initiative, in its own small way, shows how much this corner of the world has changed. Few countries thrived as much from globalization and the end of the Cold War as the Nordics—Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland.
That world is gone. Russia threatens their territory, China threatens their markets, and they can no longer count on the U.S. to defend either. A recent visit to Denmark and Sweden showed me how they are pivoting to this new reality: sinking more money and manpower into defense; tackling vulnerabilities in payment systems, supply chains and trade relations; and integrating their economies, defense industries and militaries more tightly with each other and Europe.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
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I wonder if they would eat a ham sandwich if offered.
Are they saying European networks are vulnerable to Russian cyberattacks?
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