NATO allies are struggling to work out how to better safeguard undersea critical infrastructure after the Nord Stream pipelines blasts laid bare the difficulty of monitoring facilities and identifying any attackers.
The sheer scale and underwater depth of assets such as pipelines — or data cables that allow the internet to function — heighten the challenge for governments. With most systems owned by private companies, proving which government may have sponsored an attack is even more complex.
“We’ve had a theoretical concern that it could be vulnerable but until these Nord Stream explosions, we have not seen an incident like this on that infrastructure,” said Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C. “Now this sets off lots of worries about what other kind of infrastructure can be targeted.”
