Underwater cables are the backbone of globalization, as they connect continents and countries around the world. According to the 2021 report from the electronic platform Total CommunicationsNearly 500 cables have crossed the oceans a few years ago with a total length of 1.3 million km, and the number is constantly growing.
“Everything is transmitted almost exclusively via these cables: the Internet, payment transfers, information of all kinds, and any form of verbal communication,” says Johannes Peters, director of the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security at Kiel University. “Therefore, we depend on it on a global scale,” he told DW.
But these communications networks are at risk, not only due to natural erosion, but also due to deliberate destruction. In the Baltic Sea, according to a study conducted by the University of Washington in Seattle, ten submarine cables have been cut in the Baltic Sea since 2022.
Anchor marks or unusual ship movements raise suspicions that Russia may be responsible, but this has not been proven. In addition, Sweden has asked China to cooperate in the case of a cable section in the Baltic Sea in 2024.
Concern on the Pacific Coast
Concern about the Pacific coast is also growing in Asia. The cables connect Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the United States. There they fear that in the event of a conflict with China, submarine cables, considered vital infrastructure, would be destroyed.
According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, China has developed a ship capable of cutting cables at depths of up to 4,000 metres.
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) confirmed in its latest annual report to the US Congress that “there is growing evidence that Beijing is developing new cable-cutting technologies that could be used in times of war.”
Destruction with dire consequences
“If the main cable is damaged, the entire Internet connection is lost” and “the damaged area becomes an information vacuum, as there is also no access to the internal network,” Kenny Huang, chairman of the Asia-Pacific Information Center (APIC), the Internet registry for the Asia-Pacific region, explained to DW.
Huang, who is also head of the Taiwan Network Information Center, says cutting the cable “would completely isolate Taiwan from the outside world. Access to information would be impossible. This would have consequences not only for communications, but also for many sectors, such as education, business, the military, agriculture, and many others.”
Moreover, according to a report in the digital magazine Global Defense Vision“Competing states can exploit these vulnerabilities to gather intelligence or gain strategic advantages in maritime security conflicts.”
A “kind of laboratory” for hybrid warfare
Destroying underwater cables is not a difficult technical challenge, says Johannes Peters of Kiel University: “All you have to do is drag a kind of anchor along the sea floor, which pulls on the cables and ends up breaking them. You don’t even need a particularly strong ship to do that.”
Peters believes that “China will closely monitor the West’s reaction to attacks on submarine cables. It will try to identify corresponding problems faced by Western countries, not only technical problems, but also legal problems arising from international maritime law. In this sense, the Baltic Sea currently constitutes a kind of testing laboratory for hybrid naval warfare, something that can of course be observed in other parts of the world.”
Therefore, Huang believes it is necessary to improve the legal protection of cables, “by enacting laws that allow for more severe penalties for intentional cutting of submarine cables. Technical measures also require further development. But in the event of a military attack on an underwater cable, there is no facility that can defend itself against such an attack.”
For this reason, countries in the region, such as Japan, are increasingly turning to preventive measures, such as excluding Chinese companies from submarine cable projects, in which American companies participate, according to a report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
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