Deep Connections

Deep beneath the world's oceans lurks a threat with the potential to cause major disruption and conflict: a fragile network of cables through which almost all internet traffic runs. These invisible but vital assets spanning almost 1.4 million kilometres are increasingly under siege by non-state and state actors vying for control and seeking to sabotage their geopolitical adversaries. We are currently witnessing a dramatic uptick in mysterious cable cuts, from the Arctic to the South-China Sea. NATO ships patrol the seas to protect chokepoints, while undersea drones roam the ocean floor. Intelligence agencies are raising the alarm about backdoors and wiretapping. The United States, China and Europe are racing to reduce their dependencies on global cable supply chains, while competing for influence over the network. Yet this battle over cables is not new. Britain’s dominance over global communications helped it win World War I. American submarines engaged in daring operations to tap Soviet cables during the Cold War. In Deep Connections, Katja Bego traces the past, present and future of this complex sub-sea infrastructure to show how its weaponisation risks fragmenting the network, the open Internet - and with it, the global order.