Securing Arctic Dominance: Strengthening U.S. Technological Readiness and Influence in the High North

For decades, the United States has treated a potential Arctic conflict as a distant risk. Russia’s war in Ukraine has ended that illusion and accelerated the timeline for competition in the High North. As Moscow’s conventional strength erodes elsewhere, the Arctic will become its primary arena for projecting power and asserting territorial claims. The United States is unprepared for this reality. The U.S. lacks sufficient icebreakers, domain-awareness systems, Arctic-trained personnel, and cold-weather R&D infrastructure. Meanwhile, China is steadily positioning itself for long-term influence, creating a future security environment where the U.S. could find itself technologically and operationally outmatched. This creates an urgent, narrow window for the United States, Canada, and Finland to lock in a shared technological advantage. Drawing on the early success of the ICE Pact and the regulatory successes of AUKUS, we propose a targeted Arctic technology-transfer architecture (“FICUS”) that accelerates co-development, streamlines licensing, and integrates training across the three partners. Rather than building new institutions, FICUS expands the ICE Pact framework to accelerate the capabilities required to secure the High North against adversaries.