🔴 Fear of NATO pipelines but indifference to fiber optic backbones

The suspected attempt to tamper with the NATO POL pipeline, discovered between August 24 and 25 in Vezzano Ligure, has proven unfounded. Investigations into fuel sabotage have led to the identification of a man searching for meteorites. The pipeline is part of the NATO Pipeline System, whose Italian branch supplies air bases in Northern Italy and, during peacetime, several civilian airports.

National fiber optic backbones are another linear infrastructure, traversed by essential, sensitive, and military traffic, but having been created and grown through layering, across different operators, and for civilian and commercial purposes, they were never conceived according to purely military or strategic criteria.