The Baltic undersea cable cutting highlights the internet’s underlying vulnerabilities

The severing of a key subsea telecoms cable running under Europe’s Baltic Sea has caused a diplomatic incident this week, as both country’s politicians called the act “sabotage”—all while Russia, whom many say is the likely instigator, denies responsibility.

Meanwhile, the Danish navy has reportedly intercepted the Yi Peng 3, a bulk carrier that was spotted above the C-Lion1 cable at the time it was damaged, to question its crew about their motives. The vessel last stopped in Russia before the incident.

Whether it was cock-up or conspiracy, the incident that affected the 728-mile C-Lion1 cable is not unusual. There are more than 530 subsea cables crisscrossing the ocean floors around the world, carrying internet data from one continent and country to another. (The C-Lion1 connected Finland to Germany.) These lines often get damaged through accidents, sabotage, and natural occurrences.

This latest incident—the motives and reality of which are not yet known—highlight how precarious our internet connections can be, says Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik. “Submarine cables have been getting cut ever since submarine cables have been invented, just kind of innocently,” he says. That issue has only been exacerbated by a rise in sea traffic related to commerce and shipping. But Madory says there’s a “growing concern” that sabotage is being used against subsea internet cables in an attempt to exert geopolitical power.

The geopolitical reaction to the C-Lion1 severing has in many ways been more severe than any impact the action would have, reckons Madory. He’s been monitoring internet traffic in the area, which is largely unaffected—in large part thanks to the thicket of cables that crisscross one another in that part of Europe. “There’s a lot of infrastructure there, and so taking one piece out isn’t noticeable,” he says. But it does highlight the ease with which key infrastructure can be affected, either accidentally or intentionally.

The scale of the issue is evident when you look at the data. “Ninety-five percent of all internet connections use subsea cabling,” says Brendan Press, chief commercial officer of GBI, a global subsea cable connectivity provider. “That just reinforces the importance of subsea.” Press points out that elsewhere in the world, where infrastructure isn’t as built up or well-funded, the impact of any one outage could be more harmful.

In addition to raising geopolitical complaints against those countries believed to be responsible (as representatives of Germany and Finland have done this week), governments could do more for cable security, says Press. “They could deregulate markets and encourage more players in the market,” he says. “Not only does it provide diversity and redundancy, but it also provides an economic boost in terms of what it can do in terms of bringing new services.”

Building more projects would also hedge against the inevitability of something going wrong again, says Madory. “It’s impractical to try to guard every inch of submarine cable around the world,” he says. “The oceans are vast, so out in the open ocean, these are on their own out there.”

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