Of their letter to the massive tech firms, the members of Congress referred to as undersea cables “one of the vital strategically important, and more and more weak, elements of the world’s digital infrastructure…powering not solely world commerce and innovation but in addition the core operational programs of nationwide safety, intelligence, and protection,” and so they warned that the cables may “turn out to be a backdoor for espionage, disruption, or exploitation of U.S. information and communications belongings.”
Extra broadly, the undersea cable questions are the newest in a collection of considerations about actions taken by Beijing to infiltrate American vital infrastructure, following cyberattacks and breaches of U.S. water programs, energy grids and different networks.
“The Chinese language have been grabbing large information from all types of communication that traverse the earth, together with a considerable quantity of U.S. and allied information,” Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mike Studeman, a former Commander of the Workplace of Naval Intelligence, instructed The Cipher Transient. “This isn’t some form of theoretical menace. That is making an attempt to cease one thing that is underway.”
The potential infiltration of the undersea cable community is “a major menace,” Nick Thompson, a former CIA paramilitary officer and Naval Particular Warfare Improvement Group operator, instructed The Cipher Transient. “China has invested closely in cable restore infrastructure, and mixed with its fixed nefarious maritime exercise all through the world, it’s logical to raise the dangers to the very best ranges of [the U.S.] authorities.”
Sabotage and espionage on the ocean ground
As The Cipher Transient has reported, undersea cables have turn out to be an unlimited and largely unseen piece of vital world infrastructure. Roughly 650 cables cowl greater than 800,000 miles of ocean ground, carrying a staggering 98 % of the world’s information – every thing from e-mail site visitors to army communications to an estimated $22 trillion in monetary transactions processed each day.
“When you concentrate on the capability of these cables, it is terabytes of data versus gigabytes of data by satellites,” Rear Adm. Studeman mentioned. “While you undergo satellites, it is like consuming a glass of water when it comes to the quantity of knowledge throughput. However undersea cables, it is like making an attempt to drink a big swimming pool value of knowledge. And so the menace is critical…folks making an attempt to get into your communications, manipulate them, or outright disrupt them by severing and chopping.”
The U.N. estimates that between 150-200 incidents of undersea cable harm happen every year, and whereas most are accidents involving dredging operations, dragged anchors, or pure disasters, cables have additionally been focused by saboteurs, working in what one report referred to as the “grey zone of deniable assaults in need of struggle.”
Russia and China have been accused of deliberately severing cables, significantly within the Baltic Sea and the waters close to Taiwan. In one of the vital widely-reported instances, Taiwan mentioned that two submarine cables resulting in its island of Matsu had been lower in 2023, inflicting widespread web outages. Taiwan blamed two Chinese language vessels for the harm, and officers in Taipei mentioned they’d documented 27 incidents since 2018 of Chinese language vessels damaging undersea cables that served the island.
China and Russia have denied tampering with any undersea cables.
Join the Cyber Initiatives Group Sunday publication, delivering expert-level insights on the cyber and tech tales of the day – on to your inbox. Join the CIG publication right now.
The newest considerations are much less about chopping cables, and extra concerning the entities that manufacture and keep the undersea community. Greater than 90 % of the world’s subsea cables are manufactured and put in by 4 personal corporations: the American SubCom, France’s Alcatel Submarine Networks, Japan’s Nippon Electrical Firm and China’s HMN Applied sciences. In accordance with a report by the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research (CSIS), HMN, previously often called Huawei Marine Networks Co., Ltd., has been the world’s fastest-growing subsea cable builder over the previous decade, and accounts for 18 % of the cables presently on the ocean ground.
HMN and the State-controlled Chinese language agency S.B. Submarine Techniques (SBSS) are additionally main gamers within the cable restore area – and so they routinely underbid different firms for the restore work. In accordance with CSIS, HMN Applied sciences’ bids for undersea cable tasks are priced 20 to 30 % decrease than its rivals.
“If we depend on China for repairs, then one thing may be inserted in that course of to faucet that specific cable,” Beth Sanner, a former Deputy Director for Nationwide Intelligence on the ODNI, instructed The Cipher Transient. “Anytime a Chinese language ship restore operation is going on…all of those firms report again to Beijing. So I contemplate that a completely excessive threat.”
Thompson famous that China affords an unparalleled suite of upkeep and restore providers for the subsea cable networks – they’ve “obtainable belongings, they’ve the technical ability, and their providers are less expensive than Western firms,” he mentioned. And the CSIS report warned of frequent repairs completed by “high-risk distributors, a few of whom are Chinese language.” It discovered that “the overreliance on Chinese language restore ships as a result of restricted options within the market is one other vulnerability…There are considerations that Chinese language cable restore firms reminiscent of SBSS may faucet undersea information streams.”
Erin Murphy, a Deputy Director at CSIS and skilled on the undersea cable difficulty, likened the cable-repair difficulty to the questions any client would possibly face when in search of a fast and efficient repair.
“When you have got a cable that must be repaired, you mainly get in a queue to get a cable restore ship,” she instructed The Cipher Transient. “And generally it is Chinese language. This does not imply that each one Chinese language ships are prepared for espionage and prepared for harm, however when there’s a must restore cables, you’ve obtained to go along with the first-come, first-serve.”
Rear Adm. Studeman made the excellence between “outside-in” sabotage – the cable-cutting incidents – and “inside-out operations” that may be carried out in upkeep or restore work.
“The within-out menace is simply as important and we must be conscious of it,” Studeman mentioned. Entry to the cables, he mentioned, permits U.S. adversaries to both seize information or sabotage the cables themselves.
“A part of it’s about espionage and the power to shunt data into a spot the place Chinese language and Russian intelligence can undergo it,” he mentioned. “Even when it is encrypted, they’re hoping that afterward with decryption capabilities they’re engaged on that they may find yourself having all this information that they’ll decrypt, and be taught all kinds of secrets and techniques.”
Everybody wants an excellent nightcap. Ours occurs to come back within the type of a M-F publication that retains you up to the mark on nationwide safety. Join right now.
What to do about the issue?
The current congressional requests of the 4 tech juggernauts are basically a probe of their publicity to undersea espionage. The letters went to these 4 firms for an excellent purpose: Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft personal or lease roughly half of all undersea bandwidth.
The committees requested the businesses to submit detailed data on the subsea cable programs they use – the businesses that manufacture and keep them, and whether or not any China-linked “system components” are used within the cables. The tech corporations have been additionally requested to supply lists of entities that had been contracted to work on the cables since Jan 1, 2018, details about how they monitor the site visitors of foreign-flagged vessels close to the cables, and “the bodily and cyber safeguards put in place by every firm to guard the cables throughout this upkeep or restore.”
The letters referenced Russia as properly, however the focus was on China. The committees requested solutions by August 4, and a briefing from every firm by August 8, 2025.
After the deadlines handed, a supply near the committees would say solely that the tech corporations had responded and that “now we have conferences arrange” on the problem. The Cipher Transient reached out to Meta, Microsoft, Google and Amazon for remark however now we have not heard again from them.
Regardless of the firms report, specialists are satisfied of the dangers, and plenty of have supplied potential options. One apparent treatment would contain turning to American firms to do the upkeep and restore work. Consultants have referred to as for development within the Cable Safety Fleet program, by which Congress has funded two privately-owned U.S. ships to restore tons of of cables that attain the U.S.
Amongst different concepts: Construct extra cables. As CSIS’s Murphy mentioned, “It comes all the way down to a redundancy difficulty. The extra cables that you simply lay…the extra redundancy you construct in.” Others have recommended establishing “a cable hall,” wherein vital cables are concentrated, which means industrial vessels know to keep away from the world, and monitoring is comparatively simple. The downside is {that a} malign actor would presumably be taught concerning the location of “hall” as properly.
Rear Adm. Studeman and others have recommended using expertise to improve the cable community, guaranteeing that extra undersea cables are “sensible,” and geared up with sonar to detect breaks simply. He recommended that sensors be positioned in cables that will detect anomalies and “point out that any person’s as much as no good.” Such anomalies would possibly embody sign distortions, latency delays, and any hints that restore work had been completed in a questionable method.
“All these issues should have extra sensors and due to this fact extra evaluation and extra consciousness,” Studeman mentioned, “as a result of then you’ll know the best way to act appropriately to nip one thing within the bud, or to cease it quickly after you detect it.”
In the end, the considerations about infiltrating undersea cables quantity to 1 extra fear for nationwide safety officers who’re already involved that China has breached a variety of vital programs within the U.S.
“We all know that China’s inside our vital infrastructure in the US,” Sanner mentioned. “And they’re there to pre-position themselves in case of struggle, or perhaps at the same time as a preemptive factor to forestall us from interfering in, for instance, a Taiwan invasion. So I’d assume that undersea cables are not any completely different on the subject of the US.”
Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Transient’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There is no such thing as a higher place to get clear views from deeply skilled nationwide safety specialists.
Learn extra expert-driven nationwide safety insights, perspective and evaluation in The Cipher Transient as a result of Nationwide Safety is Everybody’s Enterprise.
