Submarine Internet Cable Map
produced by Tele Geography
Russia has been stepping up its
submarine patrols near remote locations of fiber optic cables laid on the ocean
floor and carrying digital data across continents.
Pentagon officials and European
diplomats speaking on the condition of anonymity compared Russian activities to
Cold War levels, when both East and West repeatedly tried to tap undersea
cables to extrapolate intelligence, something that is still standard practice
among the world’s leading intelligence agencies, although it is rarely talked
about in public.
The United States is in particular
concerned about Russia’s burgeoning capabilities to interrupt global internet
traffic communications by cutting undersea cables in the event of a conflict
with the West. Russian submarine patrols have risen by over 50 percent in the
last year, according to statements made by senior officials of the Russian
Navy.
However, the precise nature of
Russian activities remains highly classified. “It would be a concern to hear
any country was tampering with communication cables; however, due to the
classified nature of submarine operations, we do not discuss specifics.
It is also an open secret that the
United States, given its technological superiority over peer competitors and
the size of its navy, has been the most active in tapping undersea cables
across the world oceans and collecting intelligence.
As I noted in 2010,
most people are not aware that our global digital connectivity rests upon a
number of fiber optic cables lying at the bottom of the Atlantic, Pacific, and
Indian Oceans. They wrongly believe that their international communications are
carried via satellite links. The truth is that 99 percent of transcontinental
Internet traffic travels through these connecting cables; these are the lifelines
of our economies.
As I stated in my 2010
analysis:
Most of the cable cuts occur because
of ship anchors, natural disasters such as earthquakes or fishing nets. While
the technical reliability of these cables is very high, international politics
have created three particular problem zones in the world – three cable
chokepoints where undersea cables converge and where if cut, outages could have
severe consequences. The first is in the Luzon Strait, the second in the Suez
Canal-Red Sea-Mandab Strait passage, and the third is in the Strait of Malacca.
One can assume that any of these
three chokepoints are closely being monitored by U.S. naval and spy assets and
are also of great interest to the Chinese and Russian navies. Russia, however,
given that the impact of cable cuts is felt across the world (see here), would
potentially hurt its own economy by cutting cables in the event of a conflict.
Consequently, rather than Russia’s
alleged new aggressiveness in targeting undersea cables, the real issue when it
comes to a cable cuts at one of the chokepoints (and they occur quite
frequently) is the repair time.
Depending on how quickly the cable
system owner, the operator of the repair vessel, and the national government
involved in coordinating their efforts can react, the loss of connectivity
might last from a few days to a few weeks. A few countries – such as China
and India–are notorious for delaying repair permits if the cuts appear in their
territorial waters – this is the real danger to the world economy.
In 2012, I co-authored a study (See:
“India’s Critical Role in the
Resilience of the Global Undersea Communications Cable Infrastructure”)
on how India, through the adaptation of best practices could vastly improve the
cable repair times and as a consequence improve its international connectivity.
I repeatedly have argued in the
past, that rather than seeing it as an additional hindrance to improving
relations between the world’s great powers, the growing vulnerability of, and
at the same time increased dependency on, undersea cables should be used as an
opportunity for “undersea cable diplomacy” to bring potential adversaries
together.
It is in the interest of the United
States and Russia that cable repair times across the world are sped up, and
while tapping undersea cables for intelligence purposes will remain standard
practice among most countries with the capability of doing so, the real threat
to global connectivity is not so much another nation’s navy but more often the
bureaucratic red tape in one’s own country. By Franz-Stefan Gady
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