Sabotage seems to be back with a bang – and if not with a bang, certainly with a lot of smoke. Incidents have come thick and fast since 2022 when someone – and it still is not clear who – sabotaged pipelines in the Baltic Sea to disable the flow of natural gas from Germany to Russia. Since then, we have seen suspicious fires (or attempted fires) everywhere from an Ikea warehouse in Lithuania to a paint factory in Poland; we have seen explosions at defence plants and arms manufacturers spanning the US, Wales, and Germany. Meanwhile, arson brought French railways to a standstill on the eve of the 2024 Olympic Games.
And that is to say nothing of the separate – but spectacular – Israeli sabotage of Hezbollah communications devices in September.
Sabotage is attritional. A temporary paralysis
Intelligence chiefs are alarmed. Earlier this month Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, publicly warned
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