The Worldwide Submerged Cable Network
In an era when nearly every aspect of daily life has shifted to digital communication, undersea cables seem to be forgotten, bordering on obscurity, for their crucial role in maintaining global telecommunications. But as a new report makes clear, undersea cables are decidedly not “strategic assets,” in the sense that they could be cut or otherwise disabled to inflict significant harm on an enemy. That said, though, they are “vulnerable infrastructure,” and a burgeoning power struggle between the U.S. and China could easily result in either side trying to protect or to harm these vital links.
What happens in the undersea cable industry matters a great deal. Telegeography states that over 85% of the world’s undersea cables, which form the backbone of the internet, were installed by companies from Europe, the U.S., and Japan. But since 2008, when China first entered the market, the situation has become a lot more complicated—not least because the Chinese government has pumped a huge amount of money into this sector. And we aren’t just talking about serious cash; the undersea cable industry is an indispensable part of any modern economy’s critical infrastructure. If U.S. policymakers truly believe that cyberespionage is a problem, then they need to pay a lot more attention to what’s happening in this sector and to the potential use of undersea cables for eavesdropping.
China’s Appearance in the Submarine Cable Infrastructure
The undersea cable network is a modern engineering wonder, made up of thousands of miles of fiber optic cables that hug the ocean floor. These cables are the backbone of the global economy, enabling everything from social media to international banking to instantaneously transform into light and “run” along the cables. But demand is surging, and satellite and wireless networks are becoming increasingly inadequate. Undersea cables are now the principal means of data transmission.
When China first entered the industry in 2008, it set up a front company called Huawei Marine Networks that has rapidly become a leading cable-layer. The projects Huawei Marine undertakes are emblematic of a broader strategic vision: to use the “undersea” part of “undersea cables” to enhance its economic and diplomatic ties.
US Worries About Espionage and Surveillance
The situation has alarmed the U.S. government more and more, leading to a number of responses. Espionage and surveillance concerns pushed the U.S. to place many Chinese corporate entities, especially Huawei, under a microscope, and then, not too surprisingly, in the last few years, quite a few of them have gotten sanctioned. This is a pretty big deal for an economy that’s supposed to be all about free trade. But when national security is at risk, monopolizing the “spy vs. not a spy” issue is imperative, because the stakes for the U.S. and its allies are huge: control of digital global commerce and the very superstructures that empower and underpin this embryonic new world.
Espionage is a serious issue, and U.S. officials worry that Chinese companies might use undersea cables for spying purposes. These cables could fall prey to state-sponsored eavesdropping, or they might simply be there for the taking if the taking is part of a power play. The worry is that allies might be ensnared in such plays if they head too far overseas. After all, the trend has been for state-controlled companies to grab anything that looks useful when the controls are set to, say, the past 130 years. And the undersea cable industry is looking useful for keeping undersea communications safe.
Tomorrow’s Undersea Cable Competition
So, as China works on its Belt and Road Initiative, which is said to resemble a modern-day Marshall Plan, Japan is also moving out with an undersea cable project, as are a number of Western allies. The competition intensifies. Who will ensure that the cables are safe and that no one is eavesdropping on the safe and sound communications traveling over them?
The rising tide of data demand requires a new wave of global connectivity to sustain it—a wave that will need to be built and maintained with an ocean of secure undersea cable networks through which this data can flow. The undersea cable—which, in its most basic form, consists of a bundle of fiber optics and a protective layer of polymers and metals—has been around for almost two centuries, carrying not only telecommunication traffic but also, in the case of eavesdropping, governments’ secrets across the ocean floor.
Critics who fear the political consequences of Chinese involvement in the undersea cable industry may argue that these fears are overblown. After all, many countries, including U.S. allies, engage in large-scale collaborations with Chinese technology firms and have done so without incident.
The average reader might not see why the undersea cable wars really matter. But these wires—which are really tubes of light—profoundly affect the kind of world we can digitalize. They’re the foundation of an American-style, open-access internet. Undersea cables encoding our way of life, our belief systems, and our political ordering are being routed under our noses (literally, in many cases) to serve designs we oppose. And those designs, as much as any assault on domestic justice, are an affront to privacy, putting our personal information in jeopardy. Plus, if we don’t fight back, they’re creating a pathway to an internet we won’t want to live in and a society we won’t want to inhabit.
The undersea cable industry is a crucial arena in the power struggle between the U.S. and China. There is far more at stake here than just technology and profits; it’s also a matter of economic and national security and geopolitical muscle-flexing. The outcomes of competition for dominance in the sector are bound to affect international relations and, in large part, the favorshape of 21st-century society. What’s more, those outcomes are likely to have effects that ripple outward far beyond the immediate competitors, affecting a number of nations interconnected by the cables and, by extension, their societies, too.