In Arctic, this will take the form of new submarines, surface vessels, planes and military bases. In addition, we should expect development and testing of new, advanced weapon systems in our neighborhood.

Digital China

As for China, the intelligence service’s concerns are more aimed at digital threats. Lunde pointed for instance at China’s enormous initiatives on 5G networks:

“This strengthens China’s intelligence gathering ambitions and capacity. The significance of this can hardly be exaggerated”, he said.

“The Digital Silk Road” lays the foundation for massive, global intelligence capacity. Controlling 5G networks, fiber cables and smart city systems gives the opportunity to collect vast amounts of data.

Norway is also a goal for the Silk Road strategy and Chinese interest in the Arctic will just keep increasing. Chinese direct investments illustrate the wide range of tools available for China, according to the intelligence services.

Fokus 2020 emphasizes that China has abandoned the idea of a demure international profile and has instead established itself as a traditional superpower.

“While Russia’s big power ambitions has consequences in our neighborhood, we see a China that is less restrictive in demonstrating force, and that increasingly wants to set the premises for international interaction. Nationalistic assertion takes over from emphasizing economic pragmatism as a guiding principle for Chinese foreign policy. In a speech presented by Xi just after the assumed position as the leader of China, it emerged that he bases his foreign policy thinking on the understanding of a “lasting battle between two regimes”. China has, just like Russia, an interest in challenging the USA-dominated world order.”

Russia turns to China

In last year’s threat assessment, the intelligence services warned that the conflict with the West would make Russia turn to China to a greater extent to find support for infrastructure developments.

Lunde believes that Russia will continue to work for closer relations to China in 2020, in particular in the form of economic and military cooperation.

The strong personal relationship between the two countries’ leaders is an important premise. In June 2019, state leaders Putin and Xi decided to upgrade the status of their bilateral relationship. During the year, several important cooperation projects were completed too, such as the new gas pipeline “The power of Siberia”, which will lead Russian gas to China for the next 30 years.