Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some U.S. military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.
The issue goes beyond old worries during the Cold War that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task U.S. intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago.
The alarm today is deeper: The ultimate Russian hack on the U.S. could involve severing the fibre-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.
While there is no evidence yet of any cable cutting, the concern is part of a growing wariness among senior U.S. and allied military and intelligence officials over the accelerated activity by Russian armed forces around the globe. At the same time, the internal debate in Washington illustrates how the U.S. is increasingly viewing every Russian move through a lens of deep distrust.
Inside the Pentagon and the nation’s spy agencies, the assessments of Russia’s growing naval activities are highly classified. U.S. officials are secretive about what they are doing both to monitor the activity and to find ways to recover quickly if cables are cut.
“I’m worried every day about what the Russians may be doing,” said Rear Adm. Frederick J. Roegge, commander of the Navy’s submarine fleet in the Pacific, who would not answer questions about possible Russian plans for cutting the undersea cables.
Cmdr. William Marks, a Navy spokesman in Washington, said: “It would be a concern to hear any country was tampering with communication cables; however, due to the classified nature of submarine operations, we do not discuss specifics.”
In private, however, commanders and intelligence officials are far more direct. They report that from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and even in waters closer to U.S. shores, they are monitoring significantly increased Russian activity along the known routes of the cables.
Just last month, the Russian spy ship Yantar, equipped with two self-propelled deep-sea submersible craft, cruised slowly off the East Coast of the U.S. on its way to Cuba — where one major cable lands near the U.S. naval station at Guantánamo Bay. It was monitored constantly by U.S. spy satellites, ships and planes.
The role of the cables is more important than ever before. They carry more than $10 trillion a day in global business. The cables also carry more than 95 percent of daily communications. — New York Times News Service
