Undersea cables are like veins… People don’t pay them much mind until one gets nicked and there’s blood all over the floor. Then, suddenly, it’s the only thing you’re thinking about.
Nations are connected by a satellites and undersea cables, with the latter carrying the bulk of information that keeps our modern world alive. Break them, and our glorious civilisation is back to the age of carrier pigeon.
The more digitised we become. The more convenient. The firmer this statement holds.
I have always said, if you want to cripple the West, start with the data centres in Northern Virginia. Dragging anchors over undersea cables is the next best thing. This is the military equivalent of slitting an enemy’s throat. The entire body of a major power has to divert its resources into cable repair before the break brings the nation to its knees. These are catastrophic weaknesses that keep military leaders up at night.
Nations are not the only entities laying undersea cables. A sizeable amount of the infrastructure belongs to Silicon Valley giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. They are the largest stakeholders. To highlight the gravity of the ownership and leasing arrangement, European operators, in their own backyard, operate somewhere around 2 per cent. While governments slept, the private sector laid down critical infrastructure.
The story of undersea cable colonisation is, in itself, a fascinating lesson on the private sector’s superior ability to build the things governments used to specialise in. Forget tariffs, these entities have control over bandwidth.
Currently, there is a race to connect Africa with 2Africa, led by Meta, representing the longest undersea cable ever built. Accessing and owning the African digital market is a lucrative soft-power arrangement. How successful these upgrades are depends almost entirely on local terror networks ceasing their attacks and stopping local vandalism. Google is also building undersea cables to Africa. Meanwhile, China is apparently undercutting Western influence in Africa’s communication systems through its own cables and, critically, a 13,000-satellite constellation.
They call this the Digital Silk Road described, eerily, as a community of common destiny in cyberspace.
A prison with invisible wire.
That is the future, for the moment, when it comes to the Silicon Valley entities that hold sway over our undersea cables, we do not merely engage with the digital products of these companies, they own or lease majority stakes in the infrastructure that keeps our country running. This is practically similar to a fuel shortage vulnerability coming from the Middle East.
(It also makes the EU’s vicious legal campaign against these digital companies more perplexing. EU chiefs want to shut free speech up, but the reality is Silicon Valley could switch their whole continent off.)
Chilling out on the ocean floor during active plate tectonics is a risky business.
Undersea cables are damaged and broken by natural processes, usually in isolated events that cause temporary and partial disruption.
While accidents and random volcanic activity present an occasional risk, isolated incidents disrupt rather than cripple. It has long been predicted that the first act of war will be against information and involve the destruction of satellites, data centres, and yes, undersea cables.
There are already sections of their military and equipment dedicated to this endeavour, including the shadow fleets accused of surveilling and causing damage to undersea cables around the world.
China and Russia are repeat offenders on this front.
While China surveys cables belonging to other nations, as they brazenly did with us, Russia has been accused of open cable-cutting warfare. Some accusations and military intelligence go so far as to accuse Chinese vessels interacting with Russia during these activities.
Indeed, The UK Defence Secretary in April of this year said of Russia: ‘We see you. We see your activity over our cables and our pipelines, and you should know that any attempt to damage them will not be tolerated and will have serious consequences.’
And yet ‘tolerating’ is mostly what Europe is doing.
The UK can watch Russia and its GUGI underwater surveillance, sabotage, and reconnaissance operations day and night. Without a properly functioning Navy, there isn’t much they can do except document the next disaster.
Undersea cables in the Baltic and Red Sea have been cut or damaged, in some cases disrupting almost a quarter of digital information travelling between Europe and Asia.
Accidents happen, sure, but with over 200 recent incidents and suspicious shadow fleets tracked, it has become a pattern of destructive behaviour.
As the Atlas Institute for International Affairs points out:
‘The frequency of incidents, eleven disruptions within roughly 15 months, suggests a sustained pattern of infrastructure interference even when legal attribution remains contested.’
Incidents of note include a formal request Sweden sent to China seeking ‘clarity’ when two fibre-optic cables were damaged. It is suspected a Chinese ship dragged its anchor for more than 160 kms. In an earlier example, another Chinese ship dragged their anchor in a way that damaged pipelines and submarine cables between Sweden and Estonia. Europe is so frightened of upsetting China and Russia, much of this is kept to strongly-worded diplomatic letters and investigations that fade without further comment.
The European Commission, earlier this year, shelled out €347 million in conjunction with other costly projects designed to repair and protect its vital undersea cable network. Despite the outlay, it won’t solve the core vulnerability.
Meanwhile, articles such as Sabotage of undersea cables: Russia’s and China’s hybrid warfare strategy cite rather alarming developments, such as:
‘Beijing recently developed a new deep-sea cable-cutting submersible designed solely to disrupt undersea infrastructure.’
The Atlas Institute for International Affairs recommended a sovereign cable repair fleet and maritime jurisdiction frameworks to allow for prosecution when it comes to this sort of sabotage. Both are useful in times of peace. Neither will keep Europe connected if war approaches.
The bulk of Australia’s undersea cables come in from the East and land in Sydney. However, there is still a significant infrastructure presence on the west coast.
As with the rest of the world, severing Australia’s undersea cables is the fastest way to cut us off and cripple our defence capabilities, financial institutions, and every aspect of our communication systems.
A report from the ANU National Security College reminded the government of this, calling the infrastructure a high-priority target.
The reason the news is paying attention is due to a pair of cables off the coast of Perth being damaged and, to quote, ‘some very suspicious activity from a vessel near the location’.
Shockingly, this report highlights that Australia has no inhouse ability to repair these cables, as Europe does, and no spare equipment.
This is … astonishing.
It makes you wonder what we pay the Defence Department in government for if they are not actively protecting a critical asset. Why bother signing Aukus if Australia can be severed out of the game and left stranded?
Apparently, we rely on the good faith of Indonesia, Taiwan, Fiji, and Singapore.
Here’s an idea, instead of enriching those countries with aid and climate-related nonsense, why weren’t investments made in undersea cable repair vessels and equipment? If these nations can manage it, what’s Australia’s excuse? And if there is a reason, that reason needs to be resolved because it is utterly irresponsible for Australia to be left in this position.
Australia’s most likely military threat will originate from China in the Pacific, and that’s the region we source our undersea cable repair from?
The current incident with the two damaged cables is under investigation, but the outcome makes no difference to the material point about sovereign risk and the government’s utter negligence on this front.
Defence Minister Richard Marles has no real excuse for not bringing this front-and-centre of defence itinerary. He has given speeches calling the escalation in damage ‘at a scale and frequency that is historically unprecedented’ adding that ‘we have been slow, collectively slow, to recognise them as the strategic targets they have become’.
And yet Labor has done little to bring its Parliamentary alibi, the Greens, under control with their aggressive anti-American, anti-Aukus, anti-defence rhetoric that seeks to incapacitate Australia’s critical defence outposts, such as Pine Gap. There should have been very harsh words directed at the Greens’ folly undermining national defence. Activism for the sake of it is giving Australians a false impression of our geopolitical position. While the Greens focus on decolonisation, pro-Palestine, and socialism, Australia is struggling to find public support for building much-needed national defence measurers.
Labor needs to stop talking about what they are going to do. Stop wasting money on green garbage. And start equipping Australia.
Having had a crack at Aukus earlier, it is worth noting that its follow-up, Aukus Pillar Two, involves developing new technology that would protect these cables. The problem is that most of this technology doesn’t yet exist. Everything is in the wrong order. It is more money for future development that may or may not work in a decade. As our peers keep telling us, we need to buy existing technology that works.
In referencing the government’s three most recent defence documents, Marles said, ‘Each of these documents has concluded that Australia faces its most complex and threatening strategic landscape since the end of the second world war.’
And yet, just as with the first world war, governments spent most of their time talking about the problem, and not enough time upscaling their fleets for actual combat. What meaningful programs have you seen Labor bring online in this area? Projects that are finished in the real-world or led to things like, an expansion of personnel? I can recall Bowen blithering on about batteries, Chalmers drooling over the collapse of house prices, and Albanese going on about melons, but what I cannot recall is progress on the military front.
‘The seabed has become a major field of contest,’ laments Marles, as China quite literally circumnavigates are our island, measuring up our undersea cables without consequence.
Too much of what Marles referenced regarding Australia’s approach involved far-off, potentially never-to-be-delivered projects. Vast sums of money. Or wishy-washes hand waving in the direction of the magical AI fix.
You have to admire Labor talking about how much work they’ve done with China and how great our trade relationship with China is, and yet the Prime Minister is too scared to reclaim the Port of Darwin, one of the region’s most important strategic positions, and could do nothing to stop Chinese scout ships or live-fire tests.
This is not progress. It is nervous laughter in front of the Australian people while sweating bullets.
Meanwhile, we have a very serious strategic weakness that the news cycle will forget about in a week and let Labor off the hook.
Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.
The post The shadow war on undersea cables appeared first on The Spectator Australia.
