Why? They've been developing a system of "single-use agents" to overwhelm European governments and keep them on their back foot.

This is likely a test run.

A lovely article on this was recently published in The New Yorker that you may enjoy: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/09/to-build-a-fir....

A couple reasons:

1. China's not particularly known to conduct this sort of activity this far from their mainland.

2. What would be their motive? China is actively trying to fill that "superpower" void being left in Europe by President Trump's unpredictable behavior.

> Or a random terrorist group?

Plausible.

> Speculation is fun but it's important to actually make statements grounded in reality.

I look at it from the standpoint of motive and history. See "GRU Unit 29155"[1]. Russia has both. Russia is on the brink of war with Europe.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRU_Unit_29155#Activities

In this specific case, becuase China has historically had significant FDI within Italy's infrastructure sector.

China has significant issues with the EU and is aligned with Russia, but it isn't in China's incentive to conduct violent actions outside of the Chinese diaspora within Europe (which is a separate sticking point).

The reason mainland China hasn't taken Taiwan is because they don't have to.

I do not like the government of China, however, they are building infrastructure around the world especially in Africa, Asia, and South America. They are not destroying things like Russia does every single day. Their approach to diplomacy now is building.

For the same reason, China isn't commit terrorist attacks on other countries. However, Russia is committing terrorist attacks on other countries so it easy to believe that they are responsible for terrorist attacks.

What is true however, is that Russia does possess a huge arsenal of nuclear and other weapons:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_des...

Despite Putin's posturing, Russia's never going to risk deploying them in a conflict with Ukraine. But in an actual war between NATO/Europe and Russia, with the regime facing an existential threat, then there's a very good chance they would. But even before it got to that point, the nature of the conflict itself would make nuclear escalation very likely. Both sides would be firing huge numbers of missiles, attempting to gain air superiority by wiping out the other's own missile launchers, radar bases, etc. With that many missiles flying, and stressed people and automated systems making split-second decisions, it's very likely that an error or miscalculation would result in an accidental nuclear strike, at which point it would be impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.

If anything, the fact we’re not seeing random drones carrying explosives and diving into groups of people on a daily basis shows the vast, vast (99.999%) of people is actually well-meaning and has no desire to kill or hurt anyone.

With the fiber scheme they are using optical TDR.