Sabotage is Not Required To Lose Communications
“France’s rail network was the target of a major act of sabotage[1]”
You may have seen the Wall Street Journal article on July 26th. Saboteurs set fires on the rail lines and then they cut and burned signal cables. It apparently took longer to repair the signal lines than it did to get the trains running again. This was an attempt, apparently, to disrupt the Olympics.
In World War 2, Jedburgh teams like the one in the picture parachuted into France and wreaked havoc on the infrastructure by doing things like cutting rail lines and cutting communications lines. This is the popular image of sabotage caused by saboteurs. But sabotage is not required for communication outages to occur. More frequently and more likely, communications outages will be caused by accidents or by incompetence.
The recent CrowdStrike shows that even good organizations can accidentally or unwittingly initiate an outage.
There are two fundamental issues and neither will be effectively addressed any time soon. The systems are fundamentally fragile and they have many physical points of access where they can be disabled.
Fragility has at least two dimensions. Design fragility is the most common issue we see in the US but physical fragility is a problem as well. In the Crowdstrike outage, the issue was apparently a “null pointer.” Basically, a configuration file pointed the computer to a memory location that did not exist. A robust system would detected the error, isolate it, maybe call for help, and move on. That did not happen. Instead, the system went “OMG, I can’t do anything else because here is a reference to a location that does not exist.” Today’s computers have many such fragile design points. Design fragility is an ordinary root cause of outages in computers and in communications.
Physical fragility is also a problem. Physical communications infrastructure in the US is not hardened. Economics are the reason. Hardened infrastructure costs more and until now, it has been acceptable (if just barely so) to create communications infrastructure that has a minimal level of physical robustness.
Network cables are held in place by a fragile plastic clip rather than a robust fastening device. They can be and frequently are accidentally dislodged. Data communications cables are buried in shallow trenches (with or without the protection of conduit) or strung between utility poles. A backhoe accident or the falling of a tree can and does disrupt communications.
Cell towers are protected by a simple chain link fence. Cell tower antennas are out in the open for all to see and to damage. Cell towers have what amounts to a small datacenter at the base of the tower. That little building at the base of every cell tower is essential to the functioning of the cellular system. You do not have to get inside it to disrupt it. Just push it over and the tower stops working.
The power substations that provide the electricity to the cell towers (and to your house) are mostly completely unprotected. They are vulnerable to disruption by destruction.
Our physical infrastructure is fragile and it is not well guarded. That works fine in a high-trust and peaceful environment. We have that for now but there are signs of change.
You need a backup communications plan. Radios for Prepared Civilians is all about a backup communications plan. This article series along with the class at the Sawmill Tactical Training Center is all about having a backup communications plan.
You can register for the class at: Radios for Prepared Civilians
Link to the WSJ Article on Sabotage: [1]https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/sabotage-hits-frances-rail-lines-as-olympics-begin-916e7cba?st=nz9ypeehpr3a2aq
This article is on X ( @keith_rutledge ) and on my Substack (keithrutledge.substack.com).
I also write about shooting, guns, and tactical competitions. Read my book “Understanding the AR-15 and AR-10” – available on Amazon at Understanding the AR-15 and AR-10