Sweden is fast-tracking the implementation of a strengthened national security Anti-Cyber Threat (ACT) defence.
Central to the initiative is the roll-out of the next phase of the National Operational Readiness Strategy (Nors), which is structured to deal with the heightened risk of shifts in the global landscape compounded by increasing geopolitical tensions, where cyber threats against critical infrastructure are becoming more frequent.
The scope of the government’s ambition is to use the ACT defence plan and the joined Nors initiative to position Sweden among the world’s top 10 countries in the field of AI.
Moreover, the wider expectation is that Nors will drive AI innovation regionally to help the Nordics become a global leader in the field of AI by establishing optimum conditions to develop and test AI services. To this end, Nors will look to build a Swedish-Nordic community of world-leading AI innovators and competitive companies with a stronger resilience to market volatilities.
A central component of Nors’ national security mission will be to build the expertise required to enable Sweden to develop highly advanced automated AI tools and a robust readiness to defend against both internal and external attacks from cyber space. A priority goal is to elevate levels of protection provided to particularly sensitive operations, such as public administration, defence, healthcare and other critical infrastructure where the consequences of intrusion, manipulation or service disruptions pose serious threats to both national security and the general economy.
The mission headed by Nors will require a deepening in collaboration between Sweden’s key national security agencies, including the Swedish Armed Forces’ technology division, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the Agency for Digital Government, the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority and Näringsvärnet, an alliance that includes partner affiliates of the state-run AI Sweden.
Under the upgraded five-year plan, the next phase of Nors will focus on developing a national capability to rapidly identify and manage threats against operations involving critical infrastructure or highly vulnerable computer systems in both the state and private sectors.
Simultaneously, the Nors project will stress test the resilience of Sweden’s national threat mobilisation capacity to withstand and repel prolonged, sophisticated and malicious attacks from the cyber sphere.
The primary purpose of Nors will be to build the capacity to quickly identify, test, prioritise and strengthen the systems and operations that are most vulnerable or most critical to Swedish society, said Mats Nordlund, director of AI Labs at AI Sweden.
“The ability to so quickly assemble leading experts from within AI Sweden and our partners to collaborate with authorities like the NCSC and the Armed Forces helps to demonstrate the strength of the Swedish ecosystem,” said Nordlund. “By joining forces across the public sector, the business community and expert environments, we can both build actual capability and test our capacity to mobilise rapidly when faced with new threats.”
The Nors project was among the more impactful national security initiatives to emerge from the Swedish government’s February 2026 launch of the country’s first comprehensive national AI strategy. This set out to build a cross-government approach to AI governance, competitiveness and societal readiness.
With an initial budget of between €44m to €71m (SEK500m to SEK800m), the ACT initiative incorporates five priority areas comprising digital competence, business and welfare digitisation, public administration and connectivity, in addition to AI, data and national security as horizontal themes.
Part of the budget for Nors is being allocated to so-called workforce literacy and re-skilling programmes directed at public sector employees. These programmes are being organised through national AI workshops for both public administration employees and the general public under the government’s AI-For-All reform plan that was launched in February 2026 to provide a broad-based state-managed access to advanced AI tools.
One core element in the development phase of the Nors project is tasked with investigating the development of advanced AI models capable of independently identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in software, allowing new weaknesses to be identified more quickly.
The Nors project is running parallel to another pivotal government-backed initiative, the establishment of AI hubs across Sweden. The hubs, the largest of which is located in Gothenburg, will function as research and development (R&D) centres to promote services-led AI innovation in community technology clusters that build expertise in the AI space.
The formation of AI Gothenburg during the first half of 2026 was directly influenced by a surge in state investment to expand the reach of AI technology and linked R&D activity. A fundamental objective of the regional AI hubs will be to engage more closely with small and medium-sized enterprises in relation to the accelerated uptake of AI services that have the potential to revolutionise their businesses.
Operating as a public-private hub, AI Gothenburg has partnered with Business Region Göteborg and Nvidia to position Gothenburg, Sweden’s most industrialised Southern city, as the Nordic epicentre for starting and scaling AI-driven companies.
AI Gothenburg offers a dedicated hub environment where early stage founders can rapidly develop, validate and deploy applied AI services together with industry partners, said Patrik Andersson, the head of Business Region Göteborg.
“Startups in Gothenburg already drive some of Sweden’s most exciting AI and technology innovations,” said Andersson. “Our mission is to create a focused environment where early stage founders can build real companies faster, in close collaboration with industry and experienced partners.”
The roll out of AI Gothenburg’s competence building initiatives aligns closely with Sweden’s national AI priorities, and plays a critical role in translating national strategy into practical progress.
The presence of the AI hub in Gothenburg influenced a decision by Nordic Compass, the newly formed pan-Nordic industry alliance of leading regional corporations, to locate the organisation’s debut two-day summit meeting in the industrial port city on 4 November. Nordic Compass is funded by major Nordic global industrials, including Ericsson, Nokia, Saab, Kone, Danfoss, Asker and banks Svenska Enskilda Banken and Nordea.
With a mission to bolster resilience and competitiveness among leading local industry groups, Nordic Compass is hoping to convert Nordic industrial strengths into concrete initiatives that will enable the region to move and grow faster than other European economies in the future.
Nordic Compass will propose initiatives in four critical areas, including AI development collaboration and cyber security, at the so-called Gothenburg Nordic Round Table for Industry summit, said Jyrki Katainen, the chair of the Nordic Compass Board and group head of public and regulatory affairs at Nordea.
“As Gothenburg is doing, we want to demonstrate how alignment between business and the public sector can translate ambition into implementation,” said Katainen. “This is exactly the kind of coordinated action Nordic Compass wants to scale across the Nordics. Individually, the Nordic countries are small but among the best in capacity for AI and technology innovation in a global sense. Unified, the Nordic Region ranks among the world’s largest economies, yet industrial cooperation across the region remains under-utilised.”