7 ms·
Italy Railways Sabotaged
- tehjoker 9mo agoI don’t get it what’s the goal here? did anyone claim responsibility
- sph 9mo agoState actors do not claim responsibility.
- tehjoker 9mo agokind of a weak ass attack for a state actor with confusing goals sounds more like a distraction to keep security occupied for some more specific goal
- greycol 9mo agoThe TSA cost 12 billion a year to fund, let alone the massive inconvenience it causes and whatever monetary value you want to assign to that. Low cost low immediate reward attacks can disproportionately encumber an adversary and if they don't shoulder that encumbrance then you have a handy attack vector.
- thefounder 9mo agoWhy would someone do this?
- polotics 9mo agohybrid warfare: inflict costs with deniability
- enterprisetalk 9mo ago[flagged]
- varjag 9mo agoIf you do a somewhat bad thing with no pushback it becomes possible to do a somewhat worse thing with no pushback. Gradually you end up doing really bad things with total impunity.
- Nextgrid 9mo agoDevil’s advocate: you should still have a reason to do the bad thing in the first place. I’m not a good enough politician to understand how this benefits anyone’s interests (don’t get me wrong, I do suspect Russia to be behind this, but still don’t get the objective - but then again I don’t get the objective of their special bullshit operation either)
- toyg 9mo agoRussia is desperate for leverage. Apart from China, they are severely isolated from rich markets. Targeted violence is an attempt at generating leverage, in the same way some racketeers would hit shops that refuse to pay "protection" money.
- varjag 9mo agoIndeed many people who subscribe to Rational Actor theory of politics are stupefied by this. However the thing about personalistic dictatorships is their foreign policy and aggression are all subject to the whims of one person, even though the media still refers to them as if they are real countries with collective decision-making. And they indeed may be acting rationally just not in the axiomatic framework any sane person would even consider. Say some dictator lived through a trauma that he projects onto some group of people. Or that he considers himself a spiritual successor (perhaps even the reincarnation) of Ivan the Great, the Collector or Lands. Once you ease yourself into this mindset you see the logic.
- cjbenedikt 9mo ago"personalistic dictatorships is their foreign policy and aggression are all subject to the whims of one person, even though the media still refers to them as if they are real countries with collective decision-making. And they indeed may be acting rationally just not in the axiomatic framework any sane person would even consider." Hmmm...why does that sound so familiar with a major western country??? ;-p
- kakadu 9mo ago[flagged]
- cosmicgadget 9mo agoBecause they weren't invited.
- tim333 9mo agoThe New Yorker article had: >A source in the German security establishment told me, “It’s a show of force, a way of taking off the mask and saying, ‘So, Germany, what are you going to do about it?’ ” (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/09/to-build-a-fire https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/09/to-build-a-fir...)
- david-gpu 9mo agoRussia has been involved in covert sabotage operations in Europe for more than a decade [1][2]. You can learn more about this from investigative journalist Christo Grozev [3]. What are the chances that the high-speed rail crash that occurred in Spain a few weeks ago was also caused by them? [4] [1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-shadow-war-against-west https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-shadow-war-against-wes... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRU_Unit_29155 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRU_Unit_29155 [3] https://m.youtube.com/@thechristofiles/videos https://m.youtube.com/@thechristofiles/videos [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_train_derailments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_train_derailments
- zerochance 9mo ago[flagged]
- direwolf20 9mo agoNone, because they don't exist. However, Russia has been involved in covert sabotage operations in Europe for over a decade.
- zerochance 9mo ago[flagged]
- enterprisetalk 9mo ago[flagged]
- throw10920 9mo agoRussia is a candidate, but it's far from the only candidate, and it's not clear how this advances their interests. Why not China, for instance? Or a random terrorist group? Speculation is fun but it's important to actually make statements grounded in reality.
- cindyllm 9mo ago
- AJRF 9mo agoSo that is Poland, Spain, England and now Italy in the past few months? Have I missed any - very brazen!
- BadBadJellyBean 9mo agoProbably Germany
- mseepgood 9mo agoOur railways don't need sabotage - trains fail to run anyway.
- tpm 9mo agoYeah but what about that electricity sabotage in Berlin, drones over airports etc.
- SSLy 9mo agoDrones also harassed Danish airports IIRC.
- BadBadJellyBean 9mo agoTrue but I was talking about cut glass fibers at train tracks.
- paganel 9mo ago[flagged]
- haunter 9mo agoArticle about Russia on HN > green letter brand new throwaway accounts appear instantly in comments
- zerochance 9mo ago[flagged]
- syeare 9mo agoAt least on this Materialistic app available on F-Droid, all those comments are flagged and unable to be seen Its absolutely senseless to take on a position on something when not knowing what's coming from both sides I'd presume this place to be frequented by those who would also find it similarly foolhardy to be taking a stance on an issue when not all parties are privy to the same objectivity/impartiality (in terms of information and the different sides of the story)
- loeg 9mo agoThis article doesn't mention Russia at all.
- kome 9mo agoarticle about russia???
- paganel 9mo ago[flagged]
- Rodeoclash 9mo ago> Of course they were, and of course that the Russians are to blame Glad you agree!
- janlucien 9mo ago[dead]
- runjake 9mo agoI know nothing about railways, but is there any sort of Time Domain Reflectometry (TDM) technology that railways use to detect issues with the rails? I suppose with the distances we're talking about and the resistance of steel this isn't visible without a whole bunch of signal generators? Edit: Be sure to read jiggawatts' reply below.
- jiggawatts 9mo agoThey use “test” cars that have bright lights or xenon flashes pointing down. They take thousands of pictures of the track every night and store the images in a database that can match them up precisely so you can see cracks growing over time like a movie. I also remember reading about an application of fibre optics where a long strand is placed directly under each rail. Pulses of light through the fibre are reflected at the points where axles press down on the rail and compress the fibre. Similar techniques can be used to detect accidents and (completely) broken tracks.
- runjake 9mo agoExcellent! Thank you. Both these processes make more sense than the TDR scheme I was referring to. With the fiber scheme they are using optical TDR.
- formerly_proven 9mo agoYou can even use fiber-optic cables running in cable throughs next to the tracks to detect and track trains: https://www.dbsystel.de/dbsystel-en/Digital-Stories-en/A-digital-ear-on-the-track-6180238 https://www.dbsystel.de/dbsystel-en/Digital-Stories-en/A-dig...
- runjake 9mo agoYep. And the DOM (Digital Optical Monitoring) in consumer fiber optic modules (eg. SFPs) is sensitive to detect stuff like this! I can tell when and where we have significant wind storms, because it oscillates the fiber lines on the poles in a particular way which in turn generates a graph with specific signal oscillations.
- flumpcakes 9mo agoThis fits the pattern of sabotage all across Europe. The obvious candidate is Russia who are using hybrid warfare against Europe/UK for a long time. Why does this post have so many... strange comments, mostly from new accounts? More hybrid warfare?
- direwolf20 9mo agoIt could also be any of the millions of people whose families we killed. No way to know, really.
- flumpcakes 9mo agoIt's news to me that the UK/Europe has killed millions of people. I think you mean Russia has killed hundreds of thousands and wounded millions. I can only assume you are talking about Ukrainians in some conspiratorial way; I think it's strange that you remove all agency from a sovereign country and a people who want to protect their way of life. Very strange.
- direwolf20 9mo agoEurope participates in wars other than Ukraine.
- antonymoose 9mo agoNow I wouldn’t call myself a student of European terrorism per-se, but haven’t virtually all of the countries listed had some form of domestic terror groups in the post WW2 era? Why am I not to believe this is domestic?
- tim333 9mo agoPossible but Russia seems the most active at the moment. There was some discussion of their activities the other day https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866089 I wonder if this stuff actually help them much?
- 9mo ago
- MagicMoonlight 9mo agoRussia is openly attacking Europe. This is the second time railways have been bombed right at the start of the olympics! Fuck me, what will it take before we do something?
- enterprisetalk 9mo ago[flagged]