Another possibility: US (or other) authorities are requiring some sort of monitoring software or hardware that where disruption of service is unavoidable during install
Most people won't be directly involved in assessing or fixing the fault. "Sorry the network link went down, here is the after analysis report," seems like a reasonable cover. There are many espionage activities which are covered up, only to come out decades later.
But really, I don't have any evidence that this possibility is any more or less likely than any other.
