To keep the world’s data flowing, countries need to quickly fix broken undersea cables

Aaron Bateman

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In the midst of US-Soviet tensions over Berlin in early 1959, five transatlantic submarine cables suddenly stopped working. Alarm bells rang in Washington since these undersea information networks carried NATO’s most sensitive intelligence and defence messages across the Atlantic. The United States and its allies initially suspected that the Kremlin might have purposefully cut the cables because a Soviet trawler was in the vicinity, but evidence was lacking. Nevertheless, because of this incident, NATO made cable resiliency a high priority.

Over the last couple of years, damage to submarine cables in the Baltic Sea, the Pacific Ocean, and the Red Sea has raised anxieties worldwide about the vulnerabilities of subsea information networks. These concerns are warranted; submarine cables are the physical infrastructure of global connectivity. More than 550 submarine cables, stretching in excess of 1 million kilometres along the seabed, serve as the information highways for both civilian and defence organisations. 

The same cables that connect billions of users to the internet also transmit sensitive defence-related messages. The fact that cables are lengthy, immobile, and land at fixed points complicates efforts to secure them against both intentional acts of interference and accidents. The spate of cable breaks in the Baltic Sea in late 2024 immediately raised suspicions among European officials that sabotage was to blame. Since then, consensus has emerged that these incidents were likely accidental. 

Also in 2024, multiple cables in the Red Sea broke, disrupting internet traffic between Asia and Europe. These cases underscore the fragile nature of the submarine cable networks that carry more than 95 percent of global telecommunications. During the Cold War—just like today—the United States and its allies had to contend both with accidental cable breaks on a regular basis and the threat of sabotage. Consequently, the United States invested in alternate means of communications, cooperated with allies to secure access to cable-repair vessels, and diversified cable routing.