Incredible map shows underwater cables that keep internet alive | World | News | Express.co.uk

An incredible map shows the underground cables that keep the world's internet alive “under attack”.

The earth’s ocean floors are covered in 1,400,000km of internet cables, which carry more than 95 percent of global internet traffic.

At least eight cables have been cut in “unattributed yet suspicious” incidents in the Atlantic Ocean since 2021, according to the Policy Exchange.

Russia has reportedly been investing in a secretive naval unit which has specialist equipment capable of interfering with and even cutting cables in some of the deepest parts of the ocean.

There have been more than 70 publicised sightings of Russian vessels loitering "abnormally near critical maritime infrastructure" such as cables and pipelines.

READ MORE UK Infrastructure Bank invests £87m in new subsea cable factory

A report from the Policy Exchange points to incidents of cable-cutting where Russian ships have been reported in the vicinity, such as near the Shetland Islands in 2022.

At the start of the year, four of the 15 cables in the Red Sea were targeted and cut, affecting 25 percent of data traffic between Asia and Europe.

Yemen’s government warned the Houthis - who control much of western Yemen's Red Sea coast - might target cables. The group denied involvement and blamed US and British military strikes for any damage to them.

In 2020, a Chinese firm was beaten by an American one for a major cable project that would’ve stretched all the way from Singapore to France.

America’s concern was that if Chinese companies were laying these cables, they would be better places to disrupt them or to spy on them in moments of crisis or conflict.

A report from the Policy Exchange said thousands of miles of undersea fibre-optic cables, which are the "unseen arteries of global communication", are a "critical asset and a valuable target" as geopolitical tensions rise.

"Undersea cables are now as important to the international economy as open trade routes," said Michael Fallon, a former UK defence secretary.

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"They underpin our financial systems, data exchanges and energy supplies. Britain’s economy and security are heavily dependent on its subsea connections with North America, Europe and the Middle and Far East.”

The Economist’s defence editor, Shashank Joshi, said in a TikTok on the subject: “For years, Western governments have been concerned about the threat of sabotage. Data cables can be tapped for secrets in peacetime and they can be severed, crippling communications in war.”

Joshi added that American military planners assume that, in a war over Taiwan, the Chinese military would try to cut the data cables connecting Taiwan to the rest of Asia as part of an ‘information blockade’.

He said cutting cables isn’t the only concern: “Western governments are scrambling to erect better defences against this undersea threat but the threat isn’t just sabotage, it’s also snooping. And Western governments know all about that, because they’ve been responsible for it.”

In 2013, it was revealed that one of Britain's intelligence agencies GCHQ had been tapping more than 200 cables, accessing phone calls, emails, Facebook posts and internet history.

“The lesson of that,” Joshi said, “was that the geography of cables, the physical layout of the internet is vitally important - who lays them, who owns them, the routes they take are all becoming vital geopolitical questions.”