Yesterday, I attended the 20th Oslo Maritime Security Seminar – the Nordic’s major industry event on the topic.

With more than 300 attendees, highlights included discussions on grey zone strategies, the shadow fleet, and the challenges linked to growing incidents of GNSS spoofing and jamming. I was invited to discuss the state of maritime security governance and presented six observations. Here in brief:

• The agenda is evolving rapidly—from terrorism to piracy to smuggling to today’s grey zone threats (cyber, infrastructure attacks, state provocations).
• Maritime security is now multidimensional—we’re thinking beyond surface and include subsea infrastructure, space, and cyber. That’s creating new governance complexities.
• A new wave of privatization is underway, driven by robotics, new sensors, AI and data fusion. It’s democratizing maritime domain awareness but also creating new dependencies.
• There’s a “coastguard revolution”—navies are stepping back from constabulary work, coastguards are stepping up, and this has major implications for maritime investment.
• Regional cooperation is intensifying as neighbors work closer together. But so is the risk of fragmented regional governance.
• The UN is gaining real momentum on maritime security—three high-level meetings this year, 120+ states in agreement.

You can read the script of me intervention here.

A personal highlight: Taking the stage at a comedy club – the venue of the seminar – clearly opened new career ideas.