The Geostrategy Nest of the College of Europe in Natolin was pleased to organise a Simulation Game titled: "Sabotage of an Undersea Cable in the Baltic Sea", led by Mr Dominik P. JANKOWSKI, Director of the Economics and Security Committee at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
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In September 2022, the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream pipelines were blown up. Since then, Baltic Sea sabotage has proliferated, hitting telecom, gas and power links connecting Sweden, Finland, Germany, Latvia and Estonia. Earlier this year, a communications cable linking Berlin and Helsinki was again damaged off the Swedish coast. In total, the Baltic Sea has registered at least six suspected sabotage incidents since 2022, with 11 known undersea cables taken out since 2023.
The damage hasn’t disrupted society. The lights stayed on; the Wi-Fi still worked. But they still sent a chill through Europe: What if the next vigilantes were more coordinated, more severe? What if Russia was launching an assault on Europe? What if it meant war?
In this simulation game the students had to deal with a quickly escalating scenario in the Baltic Sea: a sudden outage is reported on undersea critical infrastructure. The failure comes without warning. Monitoring systems detect abnormal mechanical strain on a short segment of the cable. Surveillance data identifies an adversarial tanker was observed nearby and having drifted over the cable routes hours earlier but have not confirmed deliberate interference. With this undersea infrastructure down, some EU Member States and NATO Allies are forced to initiate controlled rolling blackouts across immensely populated regions.
The simulation game proved to be timely and necessary for students to reflect on the happenings taken place before and connected to current world order.
About the speaker:
Mr Dominik P. JANKOWSKI currently serves as Director of the Economics and Security Committee (ESC) at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Prior to joining the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in 2025, he served in national and international functions at NATO HQ. From 2018 to 2022, he worked as Political Advisor and Head of the Political Section at the Permanent Delegation of Poland to NATO. Later he served as Policy Adviser in the Office of the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (2023-2024) as well as Deputy Permanent Representative of Poland to NATO (2024-2025). He was elected by Allies as Vice-Chair of the NATO Energy Planning Group which is responsible for the oversight of resilient energy supplies. He was also a member of the European Economic Security Taskforce led by RUSI (2024-2025).
Prior, Mr JANKOWSKI has held numerous international security related roles within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Security Bureau, General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, including those related to the EU, NATO, OSCE, and arms control policy. He completed his doctoral studies at the Warsaw School of Economics. He graduated from the War Studies University in Warsaw (2010) and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (2009).