Security at the Winter Olympics will have robots, drones, a 24-hour center and… ICE

MILAN — For authorities responsible for security at the Winter Olympics, which begin this week in northern Italy, the “golden moment” should happen before the competitions even begin in earnest.

The opening ceremony, on Friday, is expected to attract billions of spectators and bring together a line of authorities at the San Siro stadium in Milan for the Games’ grand debut. It is also a prime target.

“If someone wants to mess with the Games, sabotage the Games, the opening ceremony is the most obvious way,” said Franz Regul, who headed the cybersecurity area at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, in an interview.

The ceremony (scheduled for 2pm on Friday, Brasília time) involves more than 1,000 artists, who spent hundreds of hours rehearsing, and serves as Italy’s calling card to the world. Protecting the Games — which will also see competitions taking place at the same time in facilities in the mountains of Cortina and Livigno — requires one of the largest and most complex security operations in Italian history, with 6,000 agents in the field and a fleet of surveillance drones and robots for inspections.

“We train, we prepare for the Games and, in our case, during the opening ceremony, we have our own Olympic final,” said Regul.

The threats even before the opening party became clearer on Wednesday, when Italian authorities said they had thwarted an attempted cyber attack against some government and Olympics-linked websites, including hotel pages in Cortina. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told journalists that the attacks were “of Russian origin”.

In 2018, a major cyber attack attributed to Russia caused an unprecedented disruption to the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The offensive took down internet access and broadcasts, prevented the use of drones that would be part of a choreographed number and took the Games website offline. It also made it impossible for fans to print tickets and reach the stadium, leaving an unusual number of seats empty.

According to the British government, Russia tried to mask that attack as if it had been carried out by North Korea.

Russian actions have been a cause for concern at the Games for more than a decade, since the discovery of a widespread state doping scheme resulted in international bans on Russian athletes competing for the country in major sporting events — restrictions maintained after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In Milan-Cortina, Russians can only compete as neutral athletes, without a flag.

Moscow’s attempts to disrupt recent editions have also included system intrusions and even a disinformation campaign before the Paris Games, with a fake documentary that used a voice imitating that of actor Tom Cruise.

Daniel Byman, director of the War, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says organizers are primarily concerned about threats from nation states “because they tend to be more capable and have more resources.”

Even before the Italian government revealed the frustrated Russian attack, however, those who had been causing irritation in the country were agents from another nation: the United States.

The revelation last week that members of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would accompany American officials at the Olympics generated a strong reaction in Italy. Politicians and protesters criticized the agency’s record on immigration repression during the Trump administration, in operations in Minnesota.

American officials have insisted that all responsibility for security lies with Italy. They say that the ICE group will not do migration control work and will come from the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division, accustomed to working with international partners on security and public order issues.

“HSI’s role in the Olympics will be strictly consultative and intelligence-based, without any participation in patrolling or enforcement actions,” US Ambassador to Italy Tilman J. Fertitta said in a statement last week.

Still, ICE’s presence has become the main focus of diplomatic tension ahead of the Games. The mayor of Milan even said that the Italian government should block the body, which he classified as a militia involved in “criminal acts”.

The controversy was so great that the American Olympic Committee announced this week that the “Ice House”, a hospitality space for US athletes in a Milan hotel, will be renamed “Winter House”. The location “was designed as a private space, free from distractions,” the organizers said in a statement.

Byman, a former US government intelligence analyst, said he did not remember ICE being present at any previous Olympics.

To ensure the safety of the Paris Games, considered one of the most successful in recent years, organizers closed large areas of the city to traffic and placed thousands of soldiers on the streets. Even so, before dawn on the opening day, an act of sabotage affected France’s high-speed train network, left thousands of travelers without transport and derailed a moment of strong symbolic appeal for the country. No one claimed authorship.

In the case of Milan-Cortina, the security plan also foresees the use of robots capable of inspecting dangerous or difficult-to-access areas and — as in Paris — a cyber command center that will operate 24 hours a day, monitoring the Games’ networks and key transport infrastructures.