Below the Threshold: The New Frontline with Elisabeth Braw

The Hanwell Group is delighted to host an intimate breakfast roundtable with Elisabeth Braw, award-winning author and leading expert on geopolitics and national security, to mark the publication of her new book, The Undersea War, which all attending guests will receive a copy of. Beneath the world’s oceans lies a vast network of cables and pipelines carrying the data, energy and communications on which modern life depends. Largely unseen and increasingly vulnerable, this infrastructure is becoming a new frontier of geopolitical competition. In The Undersea War, Elisabeth investigates this hidden contest, from damaged cables and suspicious vessels in the Baltic to disruption around Taiwan’s Matsu Islands. Drawing on extensive reporting and conversations with policymakers, naval officers, engineers and industry leaders, she explores what happens when infrastructure built to connect the world becomes a target. Over breakfast, Elisabeth will discuss the changing nature of geopolitical conflict, the vulnerability of the systems we take for granted, and what governments and businesses need to understand about a contest increasingly taking place out of sight.