48 cables burned in five departments, 800,000 passengers affected, the TGV network largely disrupted. The arson attacks started on the SNCF network during the night from Thursday to Friday mark the beginning of hostilities against the Olympic Games. But other major threats will continue throughout the competition. L’Express has identified five of them.
Sabotage: a multifaceted risk
Sabotage is not the threat that comes to mind first when it comes to the Olympic Games. However, it represents the easiest way to disrupt the competition, since it requires neither huge logistical resources nor particularly experienced perpetrators. The burned cables of the SNCF network last night demonstrate this well: in five actions, it is possible to handicap the weekend of nearly 800,000 people.
The modus operandi suggests two types of perpetrators. Far-left groups are the number one suspects. The sabotage of SNCF lines was also at the heart of the “Tarnac affair” in 2008, pitting the group of revolutionary activists led by Julien Coupat against each other. However, no convictions had been handed down. For several years, sabotage of electrical cables attributed to the far-left has been claimed, particularly in the metropolis of Grenoble, where they target high-tech companies. Since the arrival of the Olympic flame in France on May 8, the intelligence services have been particularly concerned about small acts of sabotage such as nails on the roads, an act of vandalism spotted on the Paris ring road as early as July 17.
For several months, Russia has also been noted for acts of sabotage attributed to it in several European countries. According to the Financial TimesGerman intelligence warned its counterparts as early as May of increased risks of sabotage. In the United Kingdom, several people set fire to a warehouse containing equipment for Ukraine and admitted to acting for the Russian government. In Germany, two men were arrested on suspicion of planning acts of sabotage for Russia, including at a U.S. military base.
Cyberattacks: Billions of attempts expected
As expected, the cyber warning lights are red. A sophisticated network of zombie machines (“botnet”) has been dismantled, the Paris prosecutor’s office informed no later than Thursday, July 25. “For several days, movements of extremely powerful pirate groups, such as Lazarus, sponsored by North Korea, have been manifesting themselves,” Antonin Hily, director of operations at Sesame IT, a company mobilized for the security of so-called “critical” infrastructures during the Olympic and Paralympic Games (OPG), told L’Express. “We have been targeted by several distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaigns and attempts on the Games infrastructure and the French administration in recent months,” revealed the event’s cybersecurity boss, Franz Regul, to Infosecurity Magazine. Not forgetting the recent discovery of hundreds of sites selling counterfeit tickets, forcing the Organising Committee (Cojop) to step up its awareness-raising: “The public must download the official applications, it’s essential!” we are told.
However, none of these cybersecurity alerts have had a major impact on the public, athletes, sites or even the transport mobilized during the event. The fortress is holding up. Of course, the deluge is not over: billions of computer attacks are expected throughout the competitions, 8 to 12 times more than in Tokyo three years ago. “And there are major flaws, particularly in hospitals,” fears Antonin Hily. But the worst-case scenario may, in reality, have already passed. On Friday, July 19, the mega bug in Microsoft systems, although unintentional, impacted millions of systems around the world, generating huge delays in airports and broadcasting problems. A huge mess, which the cyber attackers, particularly Russian, motivated by the destabilization of France and its image, could hardly have dreamed of for the opening ceremony, exactly one week later. Everything has since returned to normal. Phew.
Terrorism: The “lone wolf” scenario
On July 27, 1996, a homemade bomb exploded in Centennial Park, near the Olympic Village, in Atlanta. The attack killed one person and injured 111. The perpetrator, Eric Rudolph, would be arrested only seven years later. Without even mentioning the hostage-taking at the Munich Olympics in 1972, which resulted in the murder of 11 Israeli athletes, it was this scenario of an attack carried out by an isolated individual, with few resources, that particularly caught the attention of the intelligence services. Approximately one million administrative investigations were conducted, 4,335 accreditation refusals were issued. A little less than 200 house arrests and surveillance measures were put in place. The police presence has never been so massive in Paris since the Second World War.
While the risk of an attack ordered from abroad, on the model of November 13, 2015, seems today rather ruled out, the security services fear a profile of a “lone wolf”, not registered and radicalized in his corner, who would carry out a knife attack. A type of so-called “proximity” terrorism always difficult to curb.
Strikes: notices multiply
The organization of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games thought it had finished with the threats of social movements. That was without counting on the strike notice filed on Monday July 22 by Force Ouvrière (FO) in Parisian airports, for the day of the opening ceremony. However, an agreement had been reached a few days earlier between management and a majority of unions, after an initial notice. The key: the payment of a bonus of 300 euros for all Groupe ADP employees. But only the CFDT, CFE-CGC and CGT had signed it at the time.
The FO union believes that this boost is not enough and is demanding that it be multiplied by more than three to reach 1,000 euros. “In addition, the text contained a measure limiting the right to strike throughout the Olympic period. The other unions are now constrained by their signature and cannot call for a strike,” said Fabrice Criquet, general secretary of FO ADP. A final meeting is to take place this Friday with management. In the last professional elections, the union received 11.57% of the votes.
More anecdotal, but no less political, is the strike notice filed at the end of last week by the SUD union of firefighters of the Rhône for the entire duration of the competition, effective since Wednesday, July 24. Eleven matches of the women’s and men’s Olympic football tournaments are taking place in this city. Last November, the 1,062 professionals of the department learned that their annual leave would be reduced by a week during this period. Those who will be mobilized during the matches will receive a bonus of 160 euros, far from the 1,600 euros promised to their Parisian or Marseille counterparts. This boost must, according to a decree, be paid 50% by the State and 50% by the communities. However, the department and the Lyon metropolis refuse to dig into their pockets because of the national nature of the event. The State does not intend to complete the rest of the amount today.
The other firefighters, who will remain in the barracks and whose workload should logically increase on match days, will not receive anything. At the Ministry of the Interior, they are turning a deaf ear for the moment. “We issued a strike notice that we handed over to the prefect. Our authorities have stuck to their position,” says Rémy Chabbouh, deputy national secretary of the SUD union. Informed of the situation, six NFP deputies and an environmentalist senator from the Rhône wrote two letters sent to Beauvau to demand that the bonus be extended to all personnel and that it be increased. At the last count, 75% of firefighters were on strike. “Our presence is essential. We expect to reach 100% in the coming days,” maintains Rémy Chabbouh.
As for the strike notices filed in recent months, in the civil service, by the garbage collectors of the City of Paris or by the SNCF railway workers, all have won their case. The SNCF has notably decided to pay more than 50 million euros in bonuses. Finally, the strike notice of the artists of the opening ceremony, undoubtedly the most feared by the Organizing Committee of the Games, was finally lifted on Wednesday July 24, after an agreement was reached, including in particular a revaluation of neighboring rights.
Covid: the phantom menace
What would happen in the event of a wave of Covid-19? Asked several times about the risks involved, the Minister of Health Frédéric Valletoux, still in office to ensure day-to-day affairs during the events, wanted to be reassuring, this Thursday morning, on the eve of the opening ceremony, on Franceinfo: “Today there is nothing like a very strong warning signal.” In fact, neither the minister nor Public Health France can actually know precisely whether the virus is circulating. The government has disconnected, and has done so for a long time, the main monitoring tools. But the remaining indicators, tests in wastewater and the analysis of emergency care, do not actually indicate any explosion in progress.
The current vaccination rate should be enough to limit serious cases. Moreover, no health protocol has been decided for this edition, the first to be held in due form, after the impressive generalized closed-door Tokyo Games in 2021. Some athletes, including those from the French rowing team, have nevertheless decided to put their masks back on, as a precaution. However, sporadic contaminations would not fail to increase the pressure on the hospital, which is already very high. In addition to the heat damage, emergency services are also expecting a surplus of alcoholic comas, food poisoning and fights, the unfortunate lot of all popular and sporting festivals.
The Olympics will therefore be a moment of tension in terms of health, but experts agree that a health crisis is unlikely to occur. “In memory, none of these major sporting gatherings, whether the Football World Cup or the Olympic Games, has generated a large-scale epidemic,” emphasizes epidemiologist Antoine Flahault.
However, the Olympic Games will not be without long-term consequences. The mixing could encourage the emergence of diseases that were rare until now and that could take advantage of changing climatic conditions to establish themselves. At the top of the threats: dengue fever. Last year, this mosquito-borne disease already caused 50 “native” cases. A figure that, while not likely to really spoil the party, is nevertheless expected to increase significantly this year.
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