T he lead-clad telegraphic cable seemed to weigh tons, according to Lt Cameron Winslow of the US navy, and the weather wasn’t helping their attempts

Wire cutters: how the world’s vital undersea data cables are being targeted

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2024-11-23 00:30:01

T he lead-clad telegraphic cable seemed to weigh tons, according to Lt Cameron Winslow of the US navy, and the weather wasn’t helping their attempts to lift it up from the seabed and sever it. “The rough water knocked the heavy boats together, breaking and almost crushing in their planking,” he wrote.

Eventually, Winslow’s men managed to cut the cable with hacksaws and disrupt the enemy’s communications by slicing off a 46-metre (150ft) section.

This was in 1898 off the cost of Cuba during the Spanish-American war. More than a century later, subsea communications cables remain a target during times of geopolitical tension.

On 17 and 18 November this year, two undersea fibreoptic cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged in an act that the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said was probably sabotage. Swedish police have said a Chinese cargo carrier, Yi Peng 3, which was in the area of the cables when they were severed, is “of interest”.

The geopolitical backdrop to the current threat against undersea cables is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China’s behaviour towards Taiwan, and the Israel-Gaza war, but they have long been an obvious target.

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