Introducing Uber for hiding

Germany’s government believes apps and decentralised coordination can replace dedicated bunker infrastructure. But can platform logic survive a real war?

Dear Reader,

Where would you go if there was a war tomorrow and the sirens started to wail?

Does this question sound overly dramatic — hysterical even?

This week, the residents of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, received an air raid alert on their phones instructing them to “Go immediately to a shelter or a safe place, take care of your family members and wait for further instructions.”

This was no test. The alert was sent out after a drone crossing from Belarus into Lithuanian airspace was spotted over the capital. Government ministers took cover in a bunker. Schoolchildren were taken to designated shelters.

This week, an increasingly embattled and paranoid Kremlin also claimed that the Baltic states were cooperating with Ukraine in sending attack drones into Russian territory, warning that NATO membership “won’t protect you from retaliation”.

A Russian attack on Lithuania would, however, trigger a wider European war.

Germany’s intelligence services have repeatedly warned that Russia is …