| Gianluca Preziosa, the CEO of the only company in Italy that makes ventilators, has been pressed into service to arm the war against coronavirus. Before one fateful phone call, Gianluca Preziosa was the mostly anonymous head of a small company outside Bologna, started by his father. But Siare Engineering suddenly became critically important: It’s the only company in Italy that manufactures “lung fans,” or ventilators, a medical device now desperately needed around the globe to treat patients with COVID-19. So at noon on March 6, Preziosa picked up the phone to hear Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on the line. Italy needed 2,000 ventilators in four months — quadruple what Siare would normally produce. “They gave us just four hours to think about it and respond,” says Preziosa. The 46-year-old CEO responded with a request of his own: Ground troops. The company’s war against the coronavirus is now being fought with the help of 25 Italian army soldiers, redeployed from manufacturing armaments. The reasoning? These soldiers were used to working on complex machines and wouldn’t require much time to train. “In 48 hours, we were ready to act,” Preziosa says. | 
