How would you solve an interview scenario involving middleware pipeline?

For a practical scenario involving middleware pipeline, I would first clarify the business goal, scale, constraints, and the failure or quality attribute being tested. Middleware components form the ASP.NET Core HTTP request pipeline. Each component can inspect or modify the request and response, call the next component, or short-circuit the pipeline. The scenario centers on if authenticated requests always appear anonymous, verify that UseAuthentication runs before UseAuthorization and before protected endpoints execute. I would then compare the main alternatives and tradeoffs, identify likely failure modes, and explain how I would validate the solution through testing, observability, security controls, and recovery or rollback planning.