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My intital thought: "What the fuck."

Then I started thinking about it, and my next thought was: "What the fuck." But in a good way. Isn't it obvious that the electromagneticism was shielding the island from the rest of the world's view? So what was it? One of George W.'s secret prisons? Here's Television Without Pity's analysis:

Desmond's back, on the sailboat. Not intentionally, mind you; turns out "Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, take one down and pass it around" is great as a song to pass the time, but not so much as strategy for winning a ‘round-the-world sailing race. In Lost's continuing game of One Degree of Separation, he got the boat from a pre-crazy Libby, because she meets him in a coffee shop, and decides that what her late husband would have wanted would be for her to give the boat he named after her to a stranger while his body isn't even cold in the grave yet. You know, I hoped that when I typed that out, it would make more sense? It doesn't. He's competing in that race to prove to his girlfriend's evil-tycoon-type daddy that he's worthy, or whatever.
Anyway, the boat helps Sayid and Jack make a plan re: Michael being compromised. Sayid sails ahead, with the help of Jin and Sun, to scout out the Others' camp. And then he's going to alert Jack via signal fire when the coast is clear. Sayid finds the camp abandoned (and that the hatch door is just a façade). So, as per this retarded "plan," Sayid signals Jack. But of course the camp is empty, you nimrods. That's because the Others are all out AMBUSHING YOU.

Because, you see, after Kate and Sawyer notice a couple of Others tailing them, they open fire, killing one, and Jack confronts Michael about his lies, and Michael admits everything. And says he's sorry. And then Jack makes everyone continue on with the expedition because they don't want to tip off to the Others that they know Michael's compromised. So great, they go and get captured. Now that's commitment to a plan. As promised, the Others -- led by, not the biggest surprise ever, Henry Gale -- give him the boat, with Walt aboard, and compass directions Henry claims will lead them to rescue. Michael and Walt go putt-putting away from the pier, leaving behind the bound and gagged Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley. Except Hurley's let go, because the main reason the Others wanted him was so that he could then go back to camp and tell the rest of the idiot Lostaways not to come after them. How rough is that: they didn't even actually want Hurley.

Meanwhile, the season-long button-pushing debate continues, with Locke enlisting Desmond's help in lowering the blast doors in Swan station, shutting Eko out of the computer room, so the timer can finally run out. Eko uses the rest of the dynamite to blow up the doors, forgetting that they're called blast doors, and not, say, balsa doors for a reason, and he almost blows Charlie up too! But Desmond's leery of Locke's plan to let the timer run down, because he watches his own flashbacks and remembers a time he almost let the timer run down too; the electromagnetic anomaly whatchamajigger -- explained to Desmond by the legendary Kelvin, revealed to be formerly-in-Iraq Clancy Motherfucking Brown -- went crazy and in all likelihood pulled Oceanic Flight 815 out of the sky. And it's actually the Pearl station douchebags who were the experiment. The button-pushing? That's to periodically release the...magnetism? To...well, prevent planes from being pulled out of the sky, I suppose. Locke's still not convinced, and he lets the timer run down, and the electrodoodad goes crazy, and Desmond ducks underneath the computer room to jam his APPARENTLY NOT METAL key into the fail-safe.Which fills the sky with a bright light and a loud noise, and sends the Swan station hatch door into an airborne portal of death that almost takes out Bernard and Claire on the beach, but is fortunately deflected by Aaron's giant head. You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell! Charlie survives, and is actually really chipper, but there's no sign of Eko or Locke. Or Desmond, for that matter.

Which might be bad news for someone. Because in the land of ice and snow, Russian chess-players see their electromagnetic detector go crazy, and put in a call to Penny, Desmond's girlfriend. In Soviet Russia, chess plays you. What? They're Portugese? Oh. Well, in democratic Portugal...um...you play chess, I suppose.