Countering Maritime Security Threats in an Era of Underwater Mayhem

Only four months into 2026, the world has witnessed what could be considered a year's worth of turmoil, including in the maritime domain. In Europe, threats of suspected Russian sabotage against subsea energy and critical infrastructure continue to confound NATO Allies from the Barents Sea to the Baltic Sea. Meanwhile, the scourge of the Kremlin's "Shadow Fleet" continues to evade Western sanctions, aimed at holding Moscow to account for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In the Middle East, Tehran has responded to Israeli and U.S. strikes with a dangerous blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and kinetic attacks on critical maritime-based energy export infrastructure across Gulf nations. Moreover, maritime norms continue to be eroded worldwide, with examples ranging from China's illicit fishing fleet to Russia's search for oil and gas in the Southern Ocean, in violation of the Antarctic Treaty System.
How will the United States and its network of partners and allies respond to this growing list of authoritarian threats on the high seas and littoral waters? Will the world ocean descend further into a domain of global competition and strife? Is it possible to restore earlier eras of maritime security that have driven historical global economic growth?

Learn more: Researchers at Penn are leading subsea security research, and a joint project between Perry World House and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy has recently published a first volume in an ongoing report series entitled "UNDERWATER MAYHEM (VOL 01): Countering Threats to Energy and Critical Infrastructure Across the NATO Alliance and Beyond" Read the report here.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has earned a reputation in the Senate as a fierce advocate for progressive values and a thoughtful legislator capable of reaching across the aisle to achieve bipartisan solutions.

Senator Whitehouse has been at the center of bipartisan efforts to pass laws overhauling federal education policy, rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, reforming the criminal and juvenile justice systems, protecting Americans from toxic chemicals in everyday products, and addressing ocean plastic waste.

Recognizing the devastating toll of addiction in Rhode Island and across the nation, Whitehouse authored the first significant bipartisan law to address the opioid crisis, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act.

Representing the Ocean State, Whitehouse plays a key role in crafting policies addressing climate change, environmental protection, and a price on carbon. He passed into law a dedicated fund to support ocean and coastal research and restoration and bipartisan legislation to confront the crisis of marine plastic and other waste polluting our oceans. He has worked to enact bipartisan measures to reduce carbon pollution and boost America’s clean energy economy.

Whitehouse has stood as a staunch defender of Social Security and Medicare, and has made improving care and reducing costs in our health care system a hallmark of his career. To counteract the corrosive effects of special interests in our democracy, Whitehouse has championed efforts to root out dark money from our elections and make Congress and the courts accountable to the American people.

“While fighting in Washington against corporate interests and their influence on the political process,” wrote the Providence Journal, “Senator Whitehouse has not forgotten the people back home.”

A graduate of Yale University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Sheldon served as Rhode Island’s U.S. Attorney and state attorney general before being elected to the Senate. He is the Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee and Co- Chair of the Caucus on International Narcotics Control, and also serves as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, the Budget Committee, and the Finance Committee. Whitehouse serves as Ranking Member of the Helsinki Commission, formally known as the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

He and his wife Sandra, a marine biologist and environmental advocate, live in Newport. They have two grown children.

Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt is a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds a joint academic appointment with the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. He also serves as the director of the Perry World House Graduate Program at Penn.

At Penn, Schmitt focuses on the project development and field deployment of the Simons Observatory, a new set of experimental cosmology telescopes and energy support infrastructure under construction at a high-altitude site in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. In his joint role at Penn, he also pursues research and teaching with the Kleinman Center related to European energy security, critical infrastructure protection, export controls policies, and modern sanctions regimes. At Perry World House, Schmitt focuses on national security analysis focused on the transatlantic community and the Indo-Pacific, as well as emerging space security challenges.

Schmitt is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an associate member of Chatham House, a member of the Royal Over-Seas League, an associate of the Harvard-Ukrainian Research Institute, and serves on the Board of Directors of Decoda Music, a Carnegie Hall-affiliated Classical Chamber Music Ensemble. He is also co-founder of the Duke Space Diplomacy Lab, where he is also a fellow of Duke’s Rethinking Diplomacy Program. Schmitt is also a senior fellow for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Previously, Schmitt served as European Energy Security Advisor at the U.S. Department of State, and received his Ph.D. in Experimental Physics from the University of Pennsylvania.

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