Wired for Duty
In Finland, security isn’t something we leave to specialists behind closed doors. It’s carried by the schoolteacher checking emergency protocols, the IT technician updating municipal servers, the retiree volunteering at a safety drill, and the researcher writing code late into the night. It is lived as much in daily routines as it is in national policy. It’s built into the fabric of society, in schools, logistics chains, media rooms, code repositories, and power substations. It’s a mindset more than a slogan, quietly held but widely shared.
Societal Resilience
Finland has learned the hard way during the last 500 years or so what it is for a small nation to live close to or between great powers. Finland’s idea is to survive and persevere, as our former President Mauno Koivisto wrote in his celebrated book “The Russian Idea.” In our geographical and geopolitical location, continuing national existence calls for a determined mindset.
For those of us working in research and technology, the link to national security isn’t abstract. We are people with lives that stretch well beyond our labs and lecture halls. Everyday experience shapes how we approach our work, often with a quiet understanding that the systems we build are part of something larger and more human than a technical specification. This sense is baked into what we do.
At the University of Oulu’s Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, much of our work directly supports societal resilience. We design and study systems that must remain functional under stress: communication networks, sensing systems, hardware, and algorithms with dual-use relevance. The connection to national preparedness is there, even if the idea of professors being involved in defence still surprises some.
Beyond Traditional Defence
Defence is still often imagined in traditional terms: uniforms, orders, and equipment, not signal processing or academic papers. But Finland’s model of security is deliberately broader. It involves the entire society. It is often illustrated by a seven-edge diamond covering several societal aspects. Importantly, at the top of the diamond, we have psychological resilience, which is strengthened by systematic training and preparedness.
The strength of Finland lies in its people. Diverse backgrounds unite for a more secure and resilient society. Image based on content from The Security Committee.
I recently completed the 251st class of the national defence course run by the Finnish National Defence University. It’s a four-week, full-time programme designed to build a shared understanding of Finland’s comprehensive security model. The courses have over 60 years of history, with class #1 taking place in 1961. This framework sees government, businesses, academia, and civil society as equal partners in national resilience. The training focuses on all the corners of the diamond from a plurality of views on each societal aspect.
It’s not military training. You won’t find saluting or formation drills. What you will find is a tightly structured programme of lectures, simulations, field visits, and long conversations over coffee. Participants are drawn from all walks of life: the paramedic who keeps calm under pressure, the media analyst working to separate fact from noise, and the professor quietly shaping the systems we’ll rely on when communication matters most. Each of us brought our respective expertise, essential when systems are strained.
The idea is simple: if something serious happens, be it a cyberattack, a widespread information operation, or a natural disaster, these people will need to act quickly, understand one another, and coordinate with minimal friction. The course exists so they do not meet each other for the first time in a moment of crisis.
Over nearly four intense weeks, we took part in over sixty lectures, made a dozen off-site visits, and spent days in shared analysis of how Finland’s institutions would respond to various types of pressure. We even stayed three days in military barracks to get a glimpse of life for the young conscripts who still form the backbone of Finland’s defence model.
Because yes, we have that, too. Finland maintains universal male conscription, with voluntary service increasingly common among women. Every year, thousands of young adults spend 6-12 months in military training, after which they join the reserve. Therefore, our days in the barracks were also a chance for some nostalgia.
Mandatory military service is a part of Finland’s long-term resilience strategy. It recognises that a small nation must rely on layered readiness. While technology, high-tech arms, etc., are important, everything is based on shared determination to defend the country.
Societal cohesion and perseverance of trust
Comprehensive security goes beyond conscription. What I found valuable in the course wasn’t only the content, though the quality of instruction was consistently high. It was the shift in perspective. You get a better view of how your own work fits into a larger picture. You also start to grasp just how much our system depends on trust. Trust that institutions will hold. That expertise will be respected. That people will act out of a shared understanding of what needs to be done rather than panic.
What is important for societal cohesion and perseverance of trust is that the rule of law remains even under hard times. This is not self-evident at all, but Finland has strong history on that as well. It is one of the countries engaged in World War II such that its parliament kept working democratically all the time. We learned during the course very concretely how the parliament is well prepared to do the same again if needed.
The national defence course is one small part of the training to create a common understanding of the threats, preparedness, and action in case of crisis. It’s where silos break down, and people with very different kinds of responsibilities, backgrounds, trainings etc. learn to speak a common language.
I left the course with a deeper awareness. The challenges we face don’t come with neat categories. They flow across systems, roles, and institutions. If we want to meet them with more than just slogans, we need people who are prepared to think across boundaries.
There were no medals at the end. Just 47 people from different sectors and different backgrounds got together and then returned to their daily work with a slightly fuller sense of what that work was connected to. We’re now more than 47 acquaintances. We consider each other as friends in a very special way. It’s similar to what many Finns experience at the age of 15 when they attend the church’s confirmation schools. Actually, we semi-jokingly called our training an “adult confirmation camp”. We, of course, are confident that our class was the best one in the training institution’s history.
The National Defence Courses have a slogan that ‘the course never ends’. True to this, we’ve already had our first reunions in May and August, and several to come have been scheduled. In the meantime, we connect and discuss the latest news in our WhatsApp group, where we typically share at least a dozen messages a week.
National defence isn’t built on a single course or by a single profession. Stepping into a shared room, however briefly, showed me how well Finland has prepared the space for its citizens to stand together when it matters.
About the author
Professor, IEEE Fellow, Wireless Connectivity Lead