![]() ![]() Of greater concern are more malicious threats. Industry actors have the prime responsibility for accounting for and mitigating these incidents. ![]() However, it should be noted that the most common threat today-responsible for roughly 150 to 200 subsea cable faults every year-is accidental physical damage from commercial fishing and shipping, or even from underwater earthquakes. Undersea cables have two types of vulnerabilities: physical and digital. This reliance on subsea cables to project and sustain power will increase in the future as the military applications of 5G are many in terms of intelligence, command and control, or unmanned and autonomous vehicles. drone flights in Iraq to decrease sharply from hundreds to tens a day. Undersea cable breaks between Egypt and Italy in 2008 led U.S. Diplomatic cables and military orders largely pass through these privately owned cables as military operated, and classified cables remain marginal. Submarine cables are also critical for transatlantic security as governments rely heavily on this infrastructure for their own communications. Reliance on submarine cables will continue to increase as demand for data is expected to grow: driven by a shift toward cloud services and the spread of 5G networks, bandwidth demand will almost double every two years in the near future. In the financial sector alone, undersea cables carry some $10 trillion of financial transfers daily. This global network of undersea cables provides the high-bandwidth connections needed for a wide range of activities vital for our modern society, from financial transactions to global communications or international scientific cooperation. If network operators have traditionally been the main investors in undersea cables, content providers (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook) are also expanding their investments in this sector to ensure the interconnection of their data centers. Currently, the four largest suppliers are Alcatel Submarine Networks (France), SubCom (United States), NEC (Japan), and newcomer Huawei Marine Networks (China), whose market share has progressively risen to 10 percent. The planning, production, deployment, and maintenance of subsea cables are almost entirely in the hands of the private sector. Nonetheless, these polar cables still face significant technical challenges and are not credible alternative routes yet. From a more forward-looking perspective, Europe to Asia Arctic routes are increasingly explored as they offer dramatically shorter routes. Other major routes are those connecting Europe to Asia (through the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal) as well as Asia with the United States (through the Pacific Ocean). Europe relies heavily on these cables as a majority of its data is stored in data centers located in the United States. ![]() The Euro-Atlantic area is the oldest undersea cable route and carries traffic between the two biggest economic hubs with dozens of cables, the majority of which are between the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. A number of measures could be taken by allies to effectively protect subsea cables harnessing the full potential of their bilateral cooperations, NATO, and the European Union, in close coordination with the private sector. However, despite the proliferation of public statements underlining the importance of protecting them, collective action to enhance their security has so far been lacking. There are approximately more than 400 active cables worldwide covering 1.3 million kilometers (half a million miles).Īfter the October meeting of allied defense ministers, and in the months since, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) underscored the need for the alliance to monitor and protect this critical infrastructure. In comparison with satellites, subsea cables provide high capacity, cost-effective, and reliable connections that are critical for our daily lives. Sometimes described as the “world’s information super-highways,” undersea cables carry over 95 percent of international data. In October 2020, allied defense ministers received a confidential report on a pressing challenge that often receives less attention than it is due: the vulnerability of transatlantic undersea cables. ![]()
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