[dredmorbius]

Pipelines offer uninterrupted right-of-way continuity from point to point. Shopping malls are distinctly noncontinuous, and better resemble ports (which is what they are).

That's the tricky bit in physically-routed infrastructure: pipelines, canals, rail, expressways, media (vs. transmission-based) comms links. None of them abide well with airgapping.

The comms-transport link goes back at least to the rail era when telegraph lines sprang up along them. You might have heard of one such venture: the Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications, better known as SPRINT.

https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162963607/sprint-born-from-ra...

A delivery-based fulfillment service, say, Amazon, might have interest in some (though hardly all) of these as local distribution hubs.