A wood-panelled world order in a silicon age

A WALK through the headquarters of the International Maritime Organization in London, or even the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association in Oslo, is a glorious trip back in time.

The dark, wood-panelled rooms seem to speak their secrets to you, and the portraits and scale-models of vessels of all types and ages make the figurative weight of history almost tangible.

Shipping is full of gorgeous old buildings like these (as well as plenty of shiny new offices too), and it should never get rid of them.

The only problem is the rules and orders constructed within them are being stretched to breaking point by the 21st century, and bad actors that are utilising their tools.

Take the system of flag registries. Lloyd’s List uncovered a vast network of fraudulent registries, some dormant and ready to be activated, providing fake registration documents and certificates made to order.

In some cases, vessels have moved between said fraudulent registries just days apart. By the time their bogus registration is identified, they are already registered somewhere else.

Lloyd’s List’s investigation uncovered more than 50 fraudulent flag operations in this one network alone.

The way ships present themselves digitally is now being manipulated like never before.

Lloyd’s List uncovered a vessel posing as three different ships in January 2025 using multiple Automatic Identification System devices, and this week detailed the ways in which sanctioned tankers can broadcast different digital profiles.

The truth is the ability to create fake flag websites in mere minutes was never considered when the current flag registry system was being devised and amended. Nor could it have been.

MMSI numbers provide a clear and unique identifier that can be used in emergency communications. The system was an obvious improvement to the industry, except now it is relatively easy to duplicate and manipulate.

The infrastructure that keeps vessels sailing and goods moving is being stretched to breaking point.

We are quick to deride shipping for being old-fashioned and stuck in its ways. But in some ways this particular accusation holds weight: authorities are slow to adapt to the ever-changing methods of bad actors.

But to be fair to shipping, it has found itself on the fault lines of geopolitical conflicts it could never have foreseen.

The defrosting cold war has left shipping regulators and marine insurers as the arbiters of an increasingly complex sanctions campaign. They didn’t design the shadow fleet*.

The same is true of the escalating conflict in the Baltic Sea, where Nato members are turning the screw on Russia’s ability to get its oil to market.

They say creaking shadow fleet tankers are an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. Russia says the checking of insurance details and general harassment by coastguards and the watchful eye of naval vessels is a breach of freedom of navigation principles.

Shipping’s regulatory infrastructure is creaking, designed in wood-panelled rooms but now expected to govern in the silicon age, all while in the middle of the great geopolitical game.

That might seem unfair. But it’s not new. Some reading this might have worked in the industry during the tanker war. Go back further and there were the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th century, when merchant fleets of either side were attacked, and the English privateers of the 16th century that attacked Spanish treasure ships.

Nevertheless, the industry now finds itself in a gunfight holding a toothbrush. It is dealing with actors who use methods its regulators barely understand, let alone know how to counter.

Whether it should be in this fight or not is irrelevant. It is. And it must start modernising its infrastructure quickly.

But keep the gorgeous old headquarters, please.