Submarine Cables: Key Vulnerability or Passing Concern?
Despite what you may initially imagine, the satellites orbiting our earth are not how most information travels around our planet. Rather the spine of our internet are the 600 some-odd submarine cables that crisscross our globe. While these are used as internet superhighways supporting entire economies, their ownership is surprisingly private; owned by internet provider companies around the world with Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon investing in most.
While submarine cables are critical infrastructure for the global economy and many systems are reliant upon them, they remain very vulnerable to digital and physical degradation. From a physical perspective, with roughly 150–200 unintentional breaks a year, repairs can take weeks. In fact, typically once a repair crew gets onsite it can take three to five days to complete the repairs, but only if weather conditions cooperate.
From a security perspective, many argue that the nature of information flow mitigates the concern we should have for cable breakage. There are hundreds of cables operating at all times and if one breaks, information is immediately routed through another cable to its final destination with little to no interruption. I would argue that this is valid up to this point in history but does not necessarily hold true for the future.
Currently the 150–200 breaks a year that we experience are non-malicious occurrences. While some happen because of earthquakes, most occur when a cargo or fishing ship’s anchor drags the sea floor and catches on a cable, causing it to snap. With this accounting for breakage of up to a third of all cables in a year, there is no predicting how much damage a concerted effort by a malicious actor could affect. Furthermore, although cables are very disparate, there are several chokepoints around the world and some of these chokepoints travel over land. In fact, similar to the Suez Canal for shipping, Egypt holds one of the key internet chokepoints that connects Asia and Europe.
Some call these concerns overblown. We have never had a problem before and the built-in rerouting protocols make the cables an unattractive target to malicious actors. A recent academic study, however, highlights the fact that although the system as a whole may be difficult to affect, it is much easier to target the internet availability of particular nation-states. Furthermore, the interdependency between national economies could have a much wider impact than can be imagined now, since we have never experienced an event like this.
I would take these concerns further. If a few cables were broken to one particular nation state, they may be repaired within a few weeks. What about a coordinated attack on key chokepoints around the world? With high tension between Russia and NATO countries, there has been an increasing concern about Russia’s ability to tamper with the cables. In fact, recently former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev threatened to destroy submarine cables that serve the West.
With such easily accessible targets, it is a matter of time before a hostile state actor chooses to attack these information superhighways. Although this may sound farfetched to some, there are many times throughout history that communication lines were severed. In World War I, England cut several of Germany’s cables and during the Cold War the US used wire taps on Russian cables. Now during the modern era, due to our ever greater dependence on internet connectivity, there are even more vulnerabilities wrapped into submarine cables.
With such vulnerability, the question remains what should we do about it? With less than 1% of information passing via satellite, many experts in the field argue that we can derisk our systems by building out a more robust satellite system that can carry more of the internet’s daily movement. The drawback to this plan is that this would involve significant capital investment and could take a long time to implement enough satellite structure to adequately mitigate the risk.
However this problem is addressed, it is clear that it is a global economic and security issue that effects us all and should be elevated to a national-level discussion. Although these cables are owned by private companies, their very nature makes them a national and global security asset. State actors have already noticed their potential to disrupt competitor or enemy-states’ economies and operations. It is only a matter of time before a government gets involved. The only question is will it be a negative actor to destroy the cables is or a stabilizing influence that will protect the very neural network of our global economy.
Sources:
https://www.csis.org/analysis/invisible-and-vital-undersea-cables-and-transatlantic-security
https://www.wired.com/story/submarine-internet-cables-egypt/
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