U.S. officials are privately delivering an unusual warning to telecommunications companies: Undersea cables that ferry internet traffic across the Pacific Ocean could be vulnerable to tampering by Chinese repair ships. Over 400 undersea cables carry all international internet traffic globally, according to data from TeleGeography, a Washington-based telecommunications research firm, as quoted by various reports. Undersea cables transmit 99% of all transcontinental internet traffic, including instant messenger chats, stock market transactions and military secrets. Subsea cables are vulnerable to sabotage and espionage, and Beijing and Washington have accused each other of tapping cables to spy on data or carry out cyberattacks. The U.S. Department of Justice has blocked Google, Meta and Amazon from building fiber-optic cables from the United States to Hong Kong due to concerns about Chinese spying.
The US State Department officials say that a state-controlled Chinese company that repairs international cables, S.B. Submarine Systems, appears to be hiding its vessels’ locations from radio and satellite tracking services. They are concerned about the security risk to our undersea fiber-optic cables which run at the bottom of the oceans around the world. Google and Meta Platforms, own many cables and are investing in more. They rely on particular companies, foreign ownership to maintain those cables. U.S. officials including our military experts fear this could endanger the security of commercial and military data.
There are approximately four major companies in the world that manufacture and lay subsea cables: America’s SubCom, Japan’s NEC Corporation, France’s Alcatel Submarine Networks and China’s HMN Tech.
Senior Biden administration officials have also received briefings in recent months about the risks posed by Chinese companies, including SBSS, working on repairs to undersea cables, according to the person.
Jeffrey Newman is a whistleblower lawyer, whose firm represents whistleblowers in healthcare fraud cases under the False Claims Act (FCA) and also under the Securities and Exchange, FINCEN and CFTC whistleblower programs. He can be reached at Jeff@JeffNewmanLaw.com or at 617-823-3217
