When Gavin Newsom served as the city’s Mayor, he prioritized disaster preparedness, emphasizing key items to keep at home for crises: water, blankets, flashlights, canned food, and a hand-cranked radio. These essentials apply whether the crisis involves an earthquake, a cyberattack, or a military assault.
Similar advice is shared by other earthquake-prone cities and regions and a growing number of countries facing threats from hostile states. For instance, Poland released a new safety guide shortly before Russian drones entered its airspace.
However, while preparedness advice mainly targets citizens and households, businesses must independently devise plans against threats from Russia or other hostile entities, as well as extreme weather events. The scale of hostile activity is significant: undersea cables have suspiciously been damaged, arson attacks have occurred at a Polish shopping mall and a Lithuanian Ikea store, drones have monitored weapons-manufacturing sites, and there has been an assassination plot against a defense-manufacturing CEO, among other incidents.
Geopolitical threats are understandably causing concerns in the private sector.
According to Willis Towers Watson’s 2025 Political Risk Survey, which examines multinational companies, political risk losses in 2023 reached their highest levels since the survey’s inception. Companies are notably worried about economic retaliation, cyberattacks linked to states, and attacks on infrastructure as part of gray-zone aggression.
While European businesses do receive warnings and updates from governments, and large enterprises have crisis managers and conduct crisis management exercises, there was previously no national preparedness guide specifically for businesses — until now.
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