![]() It offers eight concrete recommendations for the US government, working with the US private sector and allies and partners worldwide, to better protect the security and resilience of the world’s undersea cables: Congress should give more authorities and funding to the committee screening foreign cable owners for security risks, and should consider more funding for the Cable Ship Security Program the executive branch should promote baseline security standards for remote cable management systems the Federal Communications Commission should invest more resources in interagency cooperation on resilience threats to cables the State Department should pursue confidence-building measures for cables and conduct a study on building cables into more capacity-building work US-based cable owners should create an information sharing analysis center to share threat information and Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft should create and publish strategies on better protecting cables’ security and resilience.Īs the Internet comes under unprecedented authoritarian assault, and societal dependence on the web grows in the absence of robust and ecosystem-wide cybersecurity, the US government has an opportunity and responsibility to reinforce the global Internet’s positive potential by better protecting the submarine cables that underpin it. This report makes this argument drawing on policy and technological research, interviews with key stakeholders, and empirical data collected and subsequently analyzed on the 475 undersea cables deployed around the world (at the time of writing). Failing to do so will only leave these systems more vulnerable to espionage and to potential disruption that cuts off data flows and harms economic and national security. As the White House increasingly focuses on cybersecurity threats to the nation and the global community, including from the Chinese and Russian governments, it must prioritize investing in the security and resilience of the physical infrastructure that underpins Internet communication worldwide. The US government, therefore, has a new opportunity and responsibility-in coordination with the US private sector and with allies and partners abroad-to significantly increase its involvement in protecting the security and resilience of undersea cables. Third, the explosive growth of cloud computing has increased the volume and sensitivity of data crossing these cables. ![]() Second, more companies that manage undersea cables are using network management systems to centralize control over components (such as reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) and robotic patch bays in remote network operations centers), which introduces new levels of operational security risk. Three trends are increasing the risks to undersea cables’ security and resilience: First, authoritarian governments, especially in Beijing, are reshaping the Internet’s physical layout through companies that control Internet infrastructure, to route data more favorably, gain better control of internet chokepoints, and potentially gain espionage advantage. The construction of new submarine cables is a key part of the constantly changing physical topology of the Internet worldwide. ![]() ![]() The security and resilience of undersea cables and the data and services that move across them are an often understudied and underappreciated element of modern Internet geopolitics. These hundreds of cables, owned by combinations of private and state-owned entities, support everything from consumer shopping to government document sharing to scientific research on the Internet. ![]() The vast majority of intercontinental global Internet traffic-upwards of 95 percent-travels over undersea cables that run across the ocean floor. ![]()
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