"the operational network that controls its pipelines and distributes fuel is separate from the corporate network and wasn’t infected"

The article thinks it matters whether the ransomware gets on the operational network, not your strawman.

In the early times of the pipeline shutdown this was exactly what was feared. Malware attacking, damaging, destroying or abusing industrial embedded devices to persist in to survive cleanups is nothing new. Stuxnet was just the tip of the iceberg.