Today's Deep Diveis 1,165 words and a 7-minute read.
When we think about securing critical infrastructure, top of mind is protecting our transportation networks, utilities, fresh drinking water, agriculture, hospitals, communications systems and banking and finance assets that provide functions necessary for our way of life. Governments employ myriad security measures to protect critical infrastructure, putting it behind secure gates and fences, controlling access, deploying surveillance and sensors for monitoring, and creating fire walls and intrusion detection systems, just to name a few. But what if the critical infrastructure is located miles under the ocean surface, on seabeds that sit in international waters? What if protecting that critical infrastructure is uniquely, increasingly critical and vulnerable, making its protection suddenly more important than ever before? This – protecting suddenly critical undersea infrastructure - is the challenge facing governments and businesses in the age of technological transformation, domain accessibility and great power tensions.
Communications and Energy Backbones Underseas
More than 97% of the world's data is transmitted through a global network of subsea cables. An estimated $10 trillion in financial transactions traverses these cable networks each day. The value and dependence on undersea infrastructure will increase as the number of data centers, and the traffic between them, multiplies to meet growing demand for cloud services. Now add in the development and adoption of artificial intelligence, which consumes vast volumes of data to create actionable information. Training data is set to become a strategic commodity, and protecting its flow and confidentiality, a competitive and strategic imperative. Currently, there are more than 600 cables that are active or in the works, extending over a distance of almost a million miles.
Likewise, undersea energy pipelines and cables comprise vast networks to move energy supplies around the world. Many countries' energy security depends upon the reliable subsea flow of oil, gas and electricity. The Ukraine war and decision by European countries to reduce their energy dependencies on Russia have increased the importance of pipelines in the North, Baltic and Mediterranean Seas for Europe's energy security. The UK has extensive electricity interconnectors to France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Norway. With investments in offshore wind farms as a new source of low-carbon energy, the undersea cable infrastructure will continue to expand.
The vast majority of undersea cables and pipelines are owned and/or operated by private companies. Technology companies have become major investors in subsea cables as their business model depends on access to growing bandwidth, while oil services companies dominate the operations of pipelines. This can make the responsibility for securing assets complicated. Their safe operation has clear national and economic security implications, going far beyond commercial interests.
Diversifying Risks to Undersea Critical Infrastructure
Oceans have never been the most hospitable domain. Harsh conditions can cause cables and pipelines to become damaged over time. The industries have built in redundancies and developed specialized commercial maintenance services to repair and manage disruptions. Inaccessibility has historically protected these assets from purposeful interference. But times are changing.
There have been a number of recent incidents of cables being damaged by ships dragging their anchors or pipelines suddenly developing a major leak. While some have the hallmarks of accidents, others do not and are suspected acts of sabotage. Probably the most well-known incident of damaged pipelines, where sabotage is suspected, is the Nord Stream gas pipeline incident in the Baltic Sea in September 2022. But there are others. In 2023, a telecommunications cable between Sweden and Estonia and another between Finland and Estonia were damaged, with sabotage suspected. Additionally, the Baltic Connector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was damaged in October 2023, again by potential sabotage. Establishing intent is proving difficult after the fact, with surveillance and monitoring systems focused on sea surfaces.
Furthermore, advances in technology with the development of underwater robotics have increased the vulnerability of critical infrastructure, once accessible to only the most advanced naval forces. Hostile actors can deploy underwater unmanned vehicles to map the location and interconnections of the infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities for coordinated disruption operations focused on critical nodes and hubs, to bring down entire systems.
Great Power Tensions and Protective Subsea Operations
The recent suspected incidents of subsea cable sabotage are taking place against the backdrop of increased great power competition, Russia's war on Ukraine and growing strategic cooperation between Russia and China. NATO has responded by establishing the Maritime Centre for Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure (CUI) last May, a networking and knowledge center focused on security of undersea energy pipelines and cables that advises the Commander of NATO's Allied Maritime Command. In October, NATO members Norway and Germany advanced the initiative by agreeing to establish regional CUI hubs for different maritime areas in NATO's area of responsibility. Norway has offered to implement the CUI Hub for the High North (Arctic region) and Germany wants responsibility for the Baltic Sea. CUI hubs for the other regions (the North Sea, Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea) could be led by one NATO member country or a group of countries.
The role of the CIU hubs is monitoring underwater infrastructure and convening regional expertise to improve situational awareness in the underwater domain. Personnel and capabilities of the national authority of the NATO member country would be used to detect suspicious activities and deter potential adversaries. Jurisdictional issues are complex, as sovereign rights pertain to territorial waters, but specific responsibilities for security are vaguer under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and particularly for sections of undersea infrastructure intersecting international waters and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of multiple countries. NATO's view is that within its EEZ, a country has the right to maintain undersea infrastructure, but it is not legally entitled to restrict the military activity of other states. In international waters, laws regulating both the protection of undersea infrastructure and military activity are ambiguous. NATO's posture supports close cooperation with member states and allies to counter "gray zone" operations by adversaries targeting areas they identify as gaps in security cooperation; heightened cooperation can close those gaps, strengthening undersea infrastructure security.
NATO also sees the CIU hubs as an important framework to advance public-private cooperation between governments and industry by combining information sharing with technological, political and business expertise to improve situational awareness and reduce undersea vulnerabilities. The CIU hubs will support NATO's Digital Ocean Initiatives which prioritizes development of state-of-the art technology to enhance maritime domain awareness through persistent maritime surveillance, interoperability and anti-submarine warfare capabilities. NATO also seeks to build broader networks through partnerships with Australia, Ireland, Japan, Jordan and New Zealand, among others.
For businesses, there are emerging opportunities for companies with technical expertise in undersea operations, optics, acoustic signal analysis, other surveillance and sensing technologies, and robotics, just to name a few. Since the 1870 publication of Jules Verne's novel 20000 League Under the Sea, undersea exploration and exploitation has engaged the imagination of many; the new private-public partnership opportunities in underwater critical infrastructure resiliency create a framework for innovation, investment and development in the race to secure the seas.
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