Of their letter to the large tech firms, the members of Congress referred to as undersea cables “one of the strategically vital, and more and more weak, parts 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 “develop into a backdoor for espionage, disruption, or exploitation of U.S. information and communications property.”
Extra broadly, the undersea cable questions are the newest in a sequence of considerations about actions taken by Beijing to infiltrate American important infrastructure, following cyberattacks and breaches of U.S. water programs, energy grids and different networks.
“The Chinese language have been grabbing huge 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 attempting to cease one thing that is underway.”
The potential infiltration of the undersea cable community is “a big menace,” Nick Thompson, a former CIA paramilitary officer and Naval Particular Warfare Growth 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 develop into an enormous and largely unseen piece of important world infrastructure. Roughly 650 cables cowl greater than 800,000 miles of ocean ground, carrying a staggering 98 p.c of the world’s information – the whole lot from e-mail visitors to navy communications to an estimated $22 trillion in monetary transactions processed day by day.
“When you consider the capability of these cables, it is terabytes of knowledge versus gigabytes of knowledge by satellites,” Rear Adm. Studeman stated. “Once 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 attempting to drink a big swimming pool price of knowledge. And so the menace is important…folks attempting to get into your communications, manipulate them, or outright disrupt them by severing and reducing.”
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 wanting conflict.”
Russia and China have been accused of deliberately severing cables, notably within the Baltic Sea and the waters close to Taiwan. In one of the widely-reported instances, Taiwan stated that two submarine cables resulting in its island of Matsu had been minimize in 2023, inflicting widespread web outages. Taiwan blamed two Chinese language vessels for the harm, and officers in Taipei stated that they had 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 at the moment.
The newest considerations are much less about reducing cables, and extra concerning the entities that manufacture and preserve the undersea community. Greater than 90 p.c of the world’s subsea cables are manufactured and put in by 4 personal companies: the American SubCom, France’s Alcatel Submarine Networks, Japan’s Nippon Electrical Firm and China’s HMN Applied sciences. In response to 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 at the moment 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 house – and so they routinely underbid different firms for the restore work. In response to CSIS, HMN Applied sciences’ bids for undersea cable initiatives are priced 20 to 30 p.c decrease than its rivals.
“If we depend on China for repairs, then one thing may be inserted in that course of to faucet that exact 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 occurring…all of those firms report again to Beijing. So I contemplate that a completely excessive danger.”
Thompson famous that China affords an unparalleled suite of upkeep and restore providers for the subsea cable networks – they’ve “accessible property, they’ve the technical ability, and their providers are less expensive than Western firms,” he stated. And the CSIS report warned of frequent repairs achieved by “high-risk distributors, a few of whom are Chinese language.” It discovered that “the overreliance on Chinese language restore ships as a consequence 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 professional on the undersea cable concern, likened the cable-repair concern to the questions any client may face when searching for a fast and efficient repair.
“When you could have a cable that must be repaired, you principally 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 have to restore cables, you’ve bought 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 is perhaps carried out in upkeep or restore work.
“The within-out menace is simply as vital and we should be conscious of it,” Studeman stated. Entry to the cables, he stated, permits U.S. adversaries to both seize information or sabotage the cables themselves.
“A part of it’s about espionage and the flexibility to shunt data into a spot the place Chinese language and Russian intelligence can undergo it,” he stated. “Even when it is encrypted, they’re hoping that afterward with decryption capabilities they’re engaged on that they might find yourself having all this information that they will decrypt, and be taught all kinds of secrets and techniques.”
Everybody wants a superb nightcap. Ours occurs to come back within the type of a M-F publication that retains you up to the mark on nationwide safety. Enroll at the moment.
What to do about the issue?
The current congressional requests of the 4 tech juggernauts are primarily a probe of their publicity to undersea espionage. The letters went to these 4 firms for a superb 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 preserve them, and whether or not any China-linked “system parts” are used within the cables. The tech companies had been additionally requested to offer lists of entities that had been contracted to work on the cables since Jan 1, 2018, details about how they monitor the 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 companies had responded and that “we’ve conferences arrange” on the problem. The Cipher Transient reached out to Meta, Microsoft, Google and Amazon for remark however we’ve not heard again from them.
Regardless of the firms report, consultants are satisfied of the dangers, and lots 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 a whole bunch of cables that attain the U.S.
Amongst different concepts: Construct extra cables. As CSIS’s Murphy stated, “It comes all the way down to a redundancy concern. The extra cables that you just lay…the extra redundancy you construct in.” Others have urged establishing “a cable hall,” during which important cables are concentrated, that means business vessels know to keep away from the world, and monitoring is comparatively simple. The disadvantage is {that a} malign actor would presumably be taught concerning the location of “hall” as properly.
Rear Adm. Studeman and others have urged the usage of know-how to improve the cable community, guaranteeing that extra undersea cables are “sensible,” and outfitted with sonar to detect breaks simply. He urged that sensors be positioned in cables that may detect anomalies and “point out that anyone’s as much as no good.” Such anomalies may embrace sign distortions, latency delays, and any hints that restore work had been achieved in a questionable method.
“All these issues need to have extra sensors and due to this fact extra evaluation and extra consciousness,” Studeman stated, “as a result of then you’ll know how you can act appropriately to nip one thing within the bud, or to cease it quickly after you detect it.”
Finally, the considerations about infiltrating undersea cables quantity to at least one extra fear for nationwide safety officers who’re already involved that China has breached a spread of important programs within the U.S.
“We all know that China’s inside our important infrastructure in america,” Sanner stated. “And they’re there to pre-position themselves in case of conflict, or possibly whilst a preemptive factor to forestall us from interfering in, for instance, a Taiwan invasion. So I might assume that undersea cables are not any completely different relating to america.”
Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Transient’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There isn’t any higher place to get clear views from deeply skilled nationwide safety consultants.
Learn extra expert-driven nationwide safety insights, perspective and evaluation in The Cipher Transient as a result of Nationwide Safety is Everybody’s Enterprise.