Granted, the epoxy resin it lives in is not, but I know that carbon fiber Lanciar aircraft are not suspect for serious damage in lightning like their S glass brothers (Glasair, and early Lanciar models like mine)
Glasair went to the trouble to build an airplane with a wire mesh imbedded in the glass to avoid lightning damage. I don't think they sold it. It was a test version paid for by a government grant, and they zapped it in a large arc machine to test the results (it was OK).
I think the concern in this article are a bit overblown. Lightning for the most part should be conducted around fuel tanks, but as the 707 and 747 incidents demonstrate, sh!t happens.
Since the TWA flight 800 that exploded over New York, was blamed on a wiring short circuit in the center fuel tank, the center fuel tank has been redesigned. I think they were even looking at using a type of inerting system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inerting_system
I was hit twice over the fuel tank in the wing of my Saratoga and even being gasoline, it didn't blow up.
> carbon fiber is conductive.
In the direction of the fiber, but not *between* fibers. And I don't think it's really all *that* conductive. I find electrical resistance for carbon fiber (raw) to be on the order of 0.00155 ohm-cm , while for 5000-series aluminum it's 5.5e-006 ohm-cm. That's several orders of magnitude.
I would imagine that the "must haves" for EMI/EMC would also tend to preclude any major issues due to lightning strikes.