Low-key warfare: When foreign powers snip your internet cables

Broken data cables in the Baltic Sea may feel distant, but they are a reminder of South-east Asia's own vulnerabilities.

- Bhavan Jaipragas

Over a 48-hour period from Nov 17 to 18, two undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea were severed, sparking alarms and fuelling competing theories.

European officials allege sabotage and claim that the captain of the Chinese-registered bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 was induced by Russian intelligence to drag its anchor along the seabed. American officials, however, lean towards it being an accident.

Sabotage or not, the incident underscores the fragility of the world's undersea cable network - a 1.4 million km web of 532 cables that could stretch from one end of the sun to the other. These cables, owned by telecom and internet consortia, are the invisible plumbing of our interconnected world, transmitting everything from e-mails and WhatsApp messages to Netflix streams and ChatGPT prompts - yet they remain alarmingly vulnerable.

Amid a new Cold War between the West and rivals like China and Russia, each disruption - like the recent severing of cables linking Finland to Germany and Lithuania to Sweden - highlights the fragility of this critical infrastructure.

These vulnerabilities ripple far beyond the big powers. Take Taiwan's 2023 accusations of Chinese vessels severing cables linking its Matsu Islands. Earlier this year, three cables connecting Europe and Asia were damaged during Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. And since the Ukraine-Russia war erupted in 2022, disruptions to Baltic cables serving Germany, Sweden and Finland have become a recurring concern.

The timing of the latest Baltic Sea disruption is striking. Just as the incident surfaced, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched its first major review of undersea cables since 2001, citing rising security concerns over those landing in the United States.