scte long read
this number hasn’t risen since the 1980s, when modern fibre optic submarine cable deployment really began, and there are now 597 cable systems in operation, and 81 more planned for the near future. In addition, there is an elaborate, international community collaborating closely, competently producing contingency plans, meeting regularly, issuing reports, surveys, updates and proposals. This network is a rare example of sustained international cooperation across competitors. Google, Meta, Microsoft, telecom operators, cable manufacturers, repair ship operators, navies, regulators and UN agencies, all participate in overlapping forums, because a cable failure affects everyone, regardless of who owns it. The industry has gradually evolved a kind of cooperative security ecosystem built around shared vulnerability, information exchange, and common technical standards. The ICPC is the clearest example: it includes competing cable owners, manufacturers, service providers, and governments in the same organisation.
remarkable, shining an ugly light on the damaging media narratives that abound; great for clicks and likes, not so good for international relations. The reason the Internet doesn’t break is that there are decades of built-in resilience to offset such an eventuality. Dr Camino Kavanagh is a Board Member at the Valentia Transatlantic Cable Foundation and Research Fellow at the UNIDIR (UN Institute for Disarmament Research) and illustrated for me a complex web of re-routing pathways, maintenance agreements, insurance policies and specialist repair fleets should a cable be broken. “It’s a difficult area,” she told me. “A lot of elements need to be in place; maintenance zones, consortium models, private zones that operators become members of to ensure that they have access to repair ships if there’s damage to their cable. Many of the vessels are coming to the end of their lifespan; governments are becoming interested in investing in new cable ships [including the UK Government – Ed. ]sovereign repair capabilities, which doesn’t really make sense because what would you do with them when they’re not out repairing?” The technological revolution, while making connectivity easy, ubiquitous and dependable, has also produced social media, making division, misinformation and hysteria easy too. Doug Madory is the Director of Internet Analysis at Kentik, an online traffic monitoring and observability platform, with a special interest and knowledge of subsea cable activity. He notes that there are two competing narratives at work here: 1. The media and policy community increasingly framing subsea cables as a major geopolitical vulnerability, 2. People working inside the submarine cable industry who tend to be much less concerned. Some of the rhetoric from the policy community has contributed to a more alarmist public narrative. Mark Rutte, secretary general, NATO said last year, around the time that a new military surveillance and deterrence initiative called Baltic Sentry was launched: “There is now reason for grave concern.” Taken out of context, which it invariably has been, seems excessive and reactionary. Not long after that he also deferred to the US President Donald Trump however, calling him Daddy, which has not helped his credibility much.
So far, in 2026 there have been around 120 news stories in the English-speaking press alone, approximately four a week, all framed around the terrifying prospect of sabotage, attacks, hybrid warfare, or deliberate interference, and yet, to date there are no confirmed incidents of actual wilful sabotage in Europe. Like ransomware, which was covered in an earlier Long Read, technology moves far faster than legislation, and politicians grappling with communicating and then legislating on a topic that requires considerable expertise, usually caught in a holding pattern of short-lived ministerial posts (we are on our seventh Prime Minister in ten years after all) means a lot gets lost in translation, quotes are taken out of context and amplified, possibly even ridiculed, then reported in the press the next day. And so it goes on. Much less sensationally, and far more significantly, there is an impressive, complex network of experts worldwide taking the manufacture, implementation, maintenance and potential threat of sabotage extremely seriously. Quietly repairing the 200 or so broken cables that suffer from incidents around the world every year, this community is busy sending specialist repair vessels to the affected area, around four in any given week, not that you’ll hear about it of course. Considering the hysteria, it is extraordinary that the ICPC (International Cable Protection Committee) states that
Fortunately for the rest of us, they tend not to take much notice of the media.
Rare consensus
Everyone I spoke to in this area – cable manufacturers, operators, owners, analysts, lawyers, observability experts, academics - agreed that day to day, there is a highly competent and experienced maintenance business functioning well across international borders and a broken cable is merely business as usual. ‘It’s something that happens’. ‘Cables break all the time’. ‘They break, they get fixed.’ In almost every case the reason for breakages is human error: anchors dragging cables, fishing vessels snagging cables by accident. Occasionally bad weather, seismic activity, landslides and other natural reasons affect cable function. Rarely, missile strikes in war affect cables, but they are not generally intentional. Accusations of foul play are met with plausible deniability. The case of the Eagle S, which we’ll come to later is exceptional, but in the end proved nothing. Those few left over are unexplained, but the number is so small, it is not something this community are worrying about.
For such a broad range of experts, consensus in a complex area like this is
Volume 48 No.23 SEPTEMBER 2026
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