US military and intelligence officials have raised concerns over Russian warships and submarines operating near undersea cables which carry global internet communications.
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The Pentagon is monitoring Russian Naval missions in the locations of the cables by spy satellites, ships and planes.
As the Times points out, this wouldn’t be a new phenomenon: the USA has been tapping underseas cables since the crux of the Cold War, and there’s no overt proof that the Russians have been doing the same.
The paper cites more than a dozen officials from the Pentagon and Washington spy agencies who express their concern about Russian submarines and spy ships carrying out aggressive operations near the vital cable sites.
However, cutting off the USA from the Internet is likely impossible, said Keir Giles, an associate fellow of the Russian Federation and Eurasia Program at think tank Chatham House.
Undersea cables are responsible for more than $10 trillion in business that occurs on the Internet each day by way of constant financial transactions and transmission of 95 percent of the world’s daily communications, The Times said.
The report added that there was no concrete evidence supporting the concerns and was based on increased mistrust of any Russian activity.
However, the Internet actually relies on a small number of undersea cables to link continents. “You just need a few guys with bolt cutters to open the door and a few guys with expertise to cut the cables”.
The fiber optic cables are crucial for American communication with allies as well as the flow of global commerce.
The extent of Russia’s ability to cause untold damage to USA military and commercial interests by simply cutting undersea data cables, a fear stoked by a report this weekend in The New York Times, is unknown.
What concerns the defence types is that deep-ocean cuts are much harder to deal with than the more common inshore cuts that happen when fishing nets or anchors do the damage.
Moscow could also be searching for secret cables installed by the USA for military purposes, the New York Times sources have cautioned.
But Russian Federation says the Yantar is not a spy ship created to cut United States online communications, but rather an oceanographic ship being used for scientific research. “There are no similar complexes anywhere”.
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Adm. Mark Ferguson, commander of American naval forces in Europe, speaking in Washington this month, said the proficiency and operational tempo of the Russian submarine force was increasing. “This involves the use of space, cyber, information warfare and hybrid warfare created to cripple the decision-making cycle of the alliance”.
