What if Russia Cut the Transatlantic Cables?

Recent activity by Russia’s military raises concern that the world’s transatlantic fiber-optic cables could be threatened. Cables are essential to the daily running of the internet, and any major disruption would be catastrophic to people, governments, and daily life.

Russia observers have long been aware of the threat, says Keir Giles, associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the think tank Chatham House.

However, Giles tempered the long-held fears by reflecting that the US has many cable networks and that it would be impossible for Russia, or any country, to disable all of them.

“I very much doubt that anyone would think of cutting off the US,” he comments, “It is only going to work in locations where the internet geography is going to create a vulnerability in communications.”

Mr. Giles continues, suggesting that a sovereign country would have to be much more sophisticated to pull-off a large scale attack, “They can interfere with internet infrastructure in order to gain [complete] control of [the information available in] specific regions,” says Mr. Giles, who adds that while much information about current naval activity in this vein is highly classified, the tactic does seem plausible.

“It does make sense given the intense program of submarine building, including some very specialized vessels,” he says. “It wouldn’t be surprising that they would want to do this.”

Near the shore, cables are buried at least one meter below the surface: “The protection they have is they’re generally buried to about a meter an that’s intended to protect them against anchors and fishing which would of course make it not straightforward to damage by a submarine but not impossible either,” he says.

“At the moment my perception has always been that military or terrorist action is a lower level threat – it’s more likely cables would be damaged by anchoring,” he comments. “So, that’s how the protections are designed.”

Whichever safeguards are developed, it’s important that the internet is protected.

“Internet infrastructure needs the same kind of protection at times of crises as other strategically important infrastructure,” Mr. Giles added.