Invisible and Vital: Undersea Cables and Transatlantic Security

June 11, 2021 In October 2020, allied defense ministers received a confidential report on a press challenge that often receives less attention than it is due : the vulnerability of transatlantic submarine cables. sometimes described as the “ world ’ s information super-highways, ” submarine cables carry over 95 percentage of external data. In comparison with satellites, subsea cables provide high gear capacitance, cost-efficient, and dependable connections that are critical for our daily lives. There are approximately more than 400 active cables worldwide covering 1.3 million kilometers ( half a million miles ) .
After the October meet of allied defense ministers, and in the months since, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ) underscored the motivation for the alliance to monitor and protect this critical infrastructure. however, despite the proliferation of public statements underlining the importance of protecting them, collective action to enhance their security has therefore far been lacking. A total of measures could be taken by allies to effectively protect subsea cables harnessing the full electric potential of their bilateral cooperations, NATO, and the European Union, in close coordination with the private sector .

Critical Communications Infrastructure

The Euro-Atlantic area is the oldest submarine cable television route and carries dealings between the two biggest economic hub with dozens of cables, the majority of which are between the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Europe relies heavy on these cables as a majority of its data is stored in data centers located in the United States. other major routes are those connecting Europe to Asia ( through the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal ) a well as Asia with the United States ( through the Pacific Ocean ). From a more advanced position, Europe to Asia Arctic routes are increasingly explored as they offer dramatically shorter routes. however, these polar cables placid face significant technical challenges and are not credible alternative routes so far.

The planning, production, deployment, and maintenance of subsea cables are about wholly in the hands of the individual sector. Currently, the four largest suppliers are Alcatel Submarine Networks ( France ), SubCom ( United States ), NEC ( Japan ), and newcomer Huawei Marine Networks ( China ), whose market parcel has increasingly risen to 10 percentage. If network operators have traditionally been the main investors in submarine cables, contented providers ( Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook ) are besides expanding their investments in this sector to ensure the interconnection of their data centers .
This ball-shaped network of submarine cables provides the high-bandwidth connections needed for a wide-eyed compass of activities vital for our modern society, from fiscal transactions to ball-shaped communications or external scientific cooperation. In the fiscal sector entirely, submarine cables carry some $ 10 trillion of fiscal transfers casual. reliance on submarine cables will continue to increase as necessitate for data is expected to grow : driven by a shift toward cloud services and the go around of 5G networks, bandwidth demand will about double every two years in the approximate future .
submarine cables are besides critical for transatlantic security as governments rely heavily on this infrastructure for their own communications. diplomatic cables and military orders largely pass through these privately owned cables as military operated, and classified cables remain fringy. Undersea cable breaks between Egypt and Italy in 2008 led U.S. drone flights in Iraq to decrease aggressively from hundreds to tens a day. This reliance on subsea cables to project and sustain power will increase in the future as the military applications of 5G are many in terms of news, command and control, or unman and autonomous vehicles .

The Nature of the Threat

submarine cables have two types of vulnerabilities : physical and digital. however, it should be noted that the most common threat today—responsible for roughly 150 to 200 subsea cable faults every year—is accidental physical damage from commercial fish and embark, or flush from submerged earthquakes. diligence actors have the prime duty for account for and mitigating these incidents. Of greater concern are more malicious threats. Regarding forcible challenges, the two primary coil concerns are that the cables might be destroyed or tapped—by either a non-state actor, as per some late isolated incidents of piracy, or, more likely, by a country adversary like Russia .
indeed, in recent years, russian attention to transatlantic submarine cables, particularly in the North Atlantic Ocean, has increased commensurately with NATO ’ sulfur perception of submarine cables ’ importance and vulnerability. Moscow has two primary means by which it could directly threaten the cables : submarines and surface vessels that can deploy autonomous or man submersibles. An example of the former was the Losharik descry submarine, which—before a tragic fire in 2019 decommissioned it—likely had the deep-sea capability necessary to map or destroy submarine cables. While the Losharik is being repaired, the Russian Navy has early such submarines and is developing unman submarine drones, such as the nuclear-powered Poseidon. As for coat ships, the most celebrated is the Yantar, which is apparently a research vessel but is understand to act as a spy ship that could deploy subaqueous submersibles to attack and destroy sections of cables .
There are several conceivable objectives severing a cable television might achieve : cutting off military or government communications in the early stages of a conflict, eliminating internet entree for a target population, sabotaging an economic rival, or causing economic break for geopolitical purposes. Actors could besides pursue several or all of these objectives simultaneously .
More unmanageable and subtle than destroying the cables is tapping them to record, transcript, and steal data, which would be late collected and analyzed for espionage. It is believed this could be done in one of three ways : insert backdoors during the cable manufacture process, targeting onshore land stations and facilities linking cables to networks on land, or tapping the cables at sea. Each is more difficult than the one before, and the last—tapping the cables at sea— is believed to be sol technically challenging that it is not publicly known whether any nation is even capable of it.

The final type of terror is cyber or network attacks. By hacking into the network management systems that private companies use to manage data traffic passing through the cables, malicious actors could disrupt data flows. A “ nightmare scenario ” would involve a hacker gaining control condition, or administrative rights, of a network management system. At that point, they could discover physical vulnerabilities, disrupt or divert data dealings, or even execute a “ kill click ” deleting the wavelengths used to transmit data. The potential for sabotage or espionage is quite clear—and according to Lawfare, the security of many of the network management systems is not up to date. The recent SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline cyberattacks besides exposed the cyber vulnerabilities of the U.S. individual sector with dramatic implications for national security .
At the fourth dimension of this writing, there is no publicly available information indicating that any actor, be it Russia, China, or a non-state group, is entertaining such a cyberattack. But one could imagine feasible motives for all of them : for Russia, the same reasons that it might consider a physical attack would apply ; for China, its emergence as a leading global rival in providing submarine cables could make the prospects of discrete espionage or even industrial sabotage alluring ; and for a terrorist group, the prognosis of holding transatlantic fiscal department of commerce hostage or destroying it could be enticing. At the here and now, however, assigning these motives is a notional exercise .

Strengthening Undersea Cables Resilience

Given the critical importance of subsea cables for transatlantic security, ensuring their full moon resilience should be a collective precedence for the United States and its european allies and partners—and while some have already adopted measures at the national level, multilateral action remains limited. Given the multi-faceted nature of the habit, private ownership, and vulnerabilities of subsea cables, international carry through would necessarily need to leverage unlike formats to be effective. The follow steps could be taken :
Increase intelligence sharing among allies : The U.S. presidency should conduct bilateral confidential dialogues with its main european partners, in particular, the United Kingdom and France, to exchange information on their threat perspective and analysis, their respective cable projects, and the national measures implemented to protect them. At NATO, allies should work on a collective assessment of both the electric potential vulnerabilities to undersea cables in the Euro-Atlantic area and the implications of disruptions for allied operations. The approaching NATO summit on June 14 may provide an opportunity to begin that conversation .
Promote national risk assessments of cable projects : even though cables are privately managed, maintained, and secured, governments have a duty to make certain that any project is closely audit advance to avoid security breaches. National authorities besides have a duty to ensure that cable routes are pleonastic and divers enough to guarantee their overall resilience. individual allies have already put in place such procedures, starting with the United States where an interagency group known as “ Team Telecom ” reviews the home security implications of all likely subsea cables landing on U.S. shores. In Europe, the European Union should use its regulative office to likewise promote senior high school security standards for all member states, building on its 2008 critical infrastructures directive and its growing efforts in the field of cybersecurity. security at landing stations, which is frequently limited, should be a precedence in this respect .
Ensure private sector commitment to security : In addition to reviewing projects in advance, national governments should besides ensure that operate companies implement the highest standards. As a inaugural footprint, allies should encourage operators to adhere to volunteer guidelines, most notably those provided by the International Cable Protection Committee ( ICPC ), an industry forum for cable owners and some governments that develops standard procedures. allied governments, which are not members, should besides consider joining, as this would enhance the legitimacy of the organization. If voluntary standards fail to incentivize companies to invest adequately in cybersecurity, allies should consider defining mandate requirements, as recently decided in the United States for oil and gas pipelines following the ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline .
Develop national monitoring and repair capabilities : allied governments should besides step up their efforts to protect this critical infrastructure from malicious bodily process. Once allies agree on a shared judgment of vulnerabilities, NATO defense planners could consider setting capability targets to encourage allies to develop appropriate assets, such as surveillance ships or autonomous submarine drones. The United Kingdom has already announced the skill of a vessel specifically designed to protect submerged infrastructure. It will be equipped with advance sensors and submerged drones and is expected to come into service by 2024. In summation to monitoring capabilities, allies could besides consider policies to bolster the global fleet of cable repair vessels, which as of now is both pull and informally organized. The fiscal year 2020 U.S. National Defense Authorization Act ( NDAA ), for example, allocated a small stipend for a broadcast to incorporate two privately owned vessels into a “ evanesce ” the politics can activate in a crisis .
Adopt contingency planning in case of major breaks : The United States and its european allies and partners should besides develop, in near coordination with the private sector, contingency planning to prepare for the consequences of intended or unintended significant cuts. A focus should be on scenarios where many cables are severed in a short time period, overwhelming the redundancy features that the private sector builds into explanation for more common, isolate failures. This planning action could help governments and cable owners to identify national points of touch, conduct unconstipated exercises, and determine ways to improve the resilience of the networks. This feat could be undertaken at the national level or jointly as appropriate. This could be an area of cooperation between the European Union and NATO, harnessing the strengths of both organizations ( the European Union ’ s fiscal and regulative competence and NATO ’ s experience in military plan ) .
Complete international legal framework : last, the United States and its european partners should explore ways of better protecting submarine cables from a legal detail of watch. As of nowadays, the legal regimen is a patchwork of international conventions and accustomed law, in particular, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ( UNCLOS ), which does not in full protect cables. Significant opening stay : this government does not explicitly forbid, for exemplify, states from treating submarine cables as legitimate military targets during wartime. The U.S. administration, together with Europeans, should therefore promote a more comprehensive examination and holistic legal regimen that would apply to all states .
While there is surely much more that can be done, these recommendations are intended to serve as a utilitarian starting target as the United States and its european allies and partners begin to consider how to jointly ensure that the security of this critical infrastructure is commensurate with their huge importance for transatlantic security, societies, and economies.

Pierre Morcos is a visiting chap with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies ( CSIS ) in Washington, D.C. Colin Wall is a inquiry associate with the CSIS Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program .
Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
© 2021 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.