On the eve of the Winter Olympics, thousands of spectators were already on the move when flames lit up a railway junction near Pesaro. Overnight, fires, severed cables, and even a rudimentary explosive device brought parts of northern Italy’s rail network to a standstill, halting travel between Bologna and Venice. Police called it coordinated “serious sabotage,” echoing similar attacks during the Paris Games two years earlier. As investigators scrambled to restore order and determine who was responsible, the message is clear: sabotage is neither hypothetical nor historical but a rapidly evolving threat.
Following a spate of attacks on European infrastructure, sabotage is becoming a central feature of state competition. Policymakers need a sharper understanding of how it works — and how they can respond.
At its core, sabotage is the weaponisation of friction. Every system, whether a power grid, logistics chain, intelligence bureaucracy, or rail network, relies on predictable routines and trust. Sabotage injects disorder from within, turning everyday vulnerabilities, maintenance problems, and bureaucratic headaches into strategic liabilities. When done well, it degrades performance, undermines morale, and forces leaders to divert scarce resources from their priorities.
Sabotage includes physical, digital, and psychological operations. It is more than simply blowing up infrastructure or setting fires, although it can involve that, and it is more than just a subcategory of cyber operations or covert action.
Unlike subversion or propaganda, which aim to change minds or behaviours, sabotage aims to break things: machines, processes, chains of command, internal trust, or confidence in systems. This clarity matters. Confusing sabotage with adjacent activities risks poor attribution and muddled responses.
The power of sabotage lies in its inside-out approach. Rather than applying pressure externally, through diplomacy, sanctions, or military force, sabotage infiltrates a system and corrodes its functioning. Clever saboteurs tailor their operations based on their objectives, the nature of the target, and their willingness to take risks. In some cases, they convince insiders to compromise equipment or procedures. Alternately, saboteurs manipulate supply chains by tampering with imported parts, software, and machinery. Digital sabotage exploits interconnected data systems, corrupting data integrity and communications through network intrusions. Professional saboteurs increasingly work with amateurs, recruited on a gig-economy model. A low-level multi-vector approach risks more chaos, more confusion, and more difficulties for law enforcement.
This inside-out approach renders sabotage not only relatively cheap, but also hard to detect. Like parasites feeding on their host, saboteurs stealthily chip away at systems from within while hiding their presence. Well-executed sabotage looks like accidents or incompetence. If left festering long enough, impacts can become crippling.
The cumulative impact of these operations is both physical and psychological. Sabotage triggers paranoia, confusion, and mistrust. The impact often becomes visible only after the damage is done: a malfunctioning communications network, a derailed logistics chain, a fire in an industrial facility, or a military unit suddenly unable to coordinate. Saboteurs may seek deep secrecy, intentional ambiguity, or even partial exposure—each can induce further friction inside the target, forcing reactive decisions, security purges, or costly overcorrections.
Sabotage operates on a simple but powerful logic: a small intrusion can trigger cascading dysfunction. Modern societies rely on complex, interdependent systems, from power grids and transport networks to supply chains and communications hubs. As a result, policy responses need to increase the resilience of individual organisations, as well as the links between them.
The recent surge in suspicious fires, infrastructure failures, underwater cable damage, supply chain anomalies, and digital intrusions shows that sabotage is becoming a preferred instrument of state competition. Policymakers should treat sabotage as a strategic tool that combines stealth, disruption, and psychological impact. They should calibrate responses accordingly, and heed lessons learnt from recent battles against disinformation: downplaying the risk helps the adversary; but so too does hyping it.
Indeed, while sabotage seems like a particularly insidious threat, there are limits to what it can accomplish. The demands of secrecy limit the size and impact of sabotage operations. Historically, sabotage has worked best as an enabler, rather than as a standalone tool. Saboteurs prepare the ground for military operations, economic statecraft, and coercive diplomacy.
Understanding sabotage as the weaponisation of friction is the first step toward countering it. The challenge now is building institutions resilient enough not just to withstand attacks, but to prevent friction from becoming a foreign asset.
Rory Cormac is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham. His research specializes in covert operations and secret statecraft, and he is the author of six books, including Disrupt and Deny, Secret Royals, and How to Stage a Coup. He has testified before UK and Australian parliamentary inquiries on subversion, disinformation, and electoral interference, and has shared his research findings with practitioners and policymakers across NATO and G7 states. His next book is FAKERS: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Lines (Oxford University Press, 2026).
Lennart Maschmeyer is an Assistant Professor in Cybersecurity Policy at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Subversion: From Covert Operations to Cyber Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2024). His work has been published in International Security, the Journal of Peace Research, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and the Journal of Information Technology and Politics.
Joshua Rovner is an Associate Professor of International Relations at American University, where he researches intelligence, strategy, and international politics. His latest book is Strategy and Grand Strategy (Routledge, 2025).