Sea Control - Sea Control 251 - Undersea, Out of Mind with Dr. Christian Bueger and Dr. Tobias Liebetrau

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

Links:1. Protecting hidden infrastructure: The security politics of the global submarine data cable network, by Dr. Christian Bueger and Dr. Tobias Liebetrau, Contemporary Security Policy, 29 March, 2021.2. www.safeseas.net

Hey folks, Jared here. I've talked about our feed. I'm going to keep talking about it. There are two existing Sea Control feeds out there. The current feed is labeled simply Sea Control and includes the phrase Simsex Flagship Podcast in its description. That's Sea Control, Simsex Flagship Podcast. That's where you want to be. So please subscribe, rate, and review the new feed. Joining me on this episode are a pair of Danish scholars, Dr. Christian Bugger and Dr. Tobias Liebetrau, and we're discussing submarine cable networks.

Just as a heads up, started to run into a few connectivity issues right at the end of our recording session, so you'll get a few little skips in about the last two minutes of the episode, but I think we've managed to clean it up as best we can. This episode was edited and produced by Marie Williams. Please check out everything going on over at the main website, simsec.org. We've partnered with Transcom for a call for articles related to strategic sea lift. If you want to get your idea in front of some flag officers, this is your chance. For more information, check out our website, simsec.org.

And finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha shipmates and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today we have an old friend rejoining the podcast, Dr. Christian Brugger and his co-author Dr. Tobias Liebetrau. We're going to be discussing their paper, Protecting Hidden Infrastructure, the Security Politics of the Global Submarine Data Cable Network. As a reminder, all opinions are our own and not

representative of any institution with which we might otherwise be associated. So Christian Tobias, thanks for joining us. Christian, would you mind introducing yourselves to our listeners again? Yeah, thank you, first of all, for having me again. My name is Christian Bueger, and I'm a professor at the University of Copenhagen, and I'm also one of the directors of the Safe Seas Network, which is a non-profit association for maritime security, and I work broadly on ocean governance, but more particularly on maritime security and blue crime and the different aspects of it. Thank you. And Tobias, could you tell us a little bit about your background, please? Tobias Liebetrau, and I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Military Studies at the Department of Political Science in Copenhagen, where I work with Christian.

I work primarily on cybersecurity governance and various aspects related to cybersecurity, and that's sort of how Christian and I met, coming from the ocean side and the cyberspace cybersecurity side, and thought, hey, cables are actually connecting us. Yeah, if you don't mind, you and I discussed this off camera, if you will, just prior to this recording, but can you tell us a little bit about how this particular article came about? Yes, we were actually office mates in Copenhagen and started talking about our research interest and our shared knowledge in infrastructure. And then from there, we started talking data cables as something that connects our fields of research, the maritime space and cyberspace. And from there, it simply kicked off a couple of years ago. And we are now, of course, we've written the article and done this sort of review of the existing literature and pointed out how to move forward with doing research on data cables and the security governance of the undersea cable system.

But we are also now looking into exploring the field of data cables further. Christian, can you describe the pervasiveness and criticality of the undersea cable networks? Absolutely. So what goes on in the background is that submarine data cables are the core critical infrastructure of the digital age, and they connect the cyberspace and the maritime space to each other. And many people often believe that the Internet comes to us from the space via satellites and so on. But it's actually not the case. Optic fiber cables are core for the Internet. And whatever it is that we do online, it will usually involve a submarine data cable. And that's Zoom meetings, emails, financial transactions, Netflix, Spotify.

But also public services depend on the submarine data cable. And to a large degree, our dependency on these cables will also increase. It is now the Internet of Things that we're talking about. A lot of our stuff moves to the cloud and is stored in data centers, many of which are far, far abroad. So that implies that our dependency on the cables is likely to. So we're here talking about a global infrastructure, so to say, but usually we don't talk a lot about it. It's not that there's an infrastructure that occupies the public mind or you don't hear a lot of it in security discourses either. So often we talk about pipelines or ports when we are thinking about infrastructure.

And that was really, really the rationale behind the article to say, wait a moment, there's something absolutely vital here for our everyday lives, for our security, and so on. And we need to ensure that submarine data cables become part of the discussion. Tobias, who actually owns the cables? Well, that's a good and important question because back in the day, the cables, they were in the hand of international telecommunication conglomerates and multi-ownership was the norm. So they were owned by states and by private companies or so-called company states. But this has gradually been changing over the past couple of decades. So the cables today are increasingly owned by private companies and also what we know as big tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google. They are now the companies laying the cables and sort of projecting the future laying of data cables, which, of course, also then taps into the whole geopolitical issue of cables, because, of course, it's not only American tech companies laying the cables.

We also see Chinese companies such as Huawei having been involved in laying cables, though Huawei did sold its submarine cable subsidiary in 2019, a decision that was allegedly attributed to President Trump's decision to blacklist Huawei. But we'll come back to that later, I hope. The main thing here is that the companies are increasingly laid by individual big tech companies or a smaller group of companies headed by a big tech company. And this, of course, raises concerns over digital sovereignty and the dependency of countries on the big tech interests and the general infrastructure politics of certain countries where we see a tight connection between the government and private companies. Thank you. So, Christian, in multiple spots in the paper, you talked about the triple invisibility of submarine cables. What is the triple invisibility and why does it exist? There's something puzzling about submarine data cables. If they are so important, why do we not recognize them? And we call that the triple invisibility. So there are three forms or three reasons of why they are so invisible. And the first one is their infrastructures. So it's a common feature, actually, of infrastructures that we're not really aware of them.

We rely on them, but they reside somewhere in the background. And usually we only know them if they fail. If the Internet connection is bad, we attribute that to a wireless router or something, something like that. If the street is blocked, we complain and so on. So the first invisibility then has to do with infrastructures. But we talk about ports, we talk about pipelines and so on quite regularly in security discourses, so there must be something more to it. And that's the two other forms of invisibility. And that, first of all, has to do with the fact that cables lay underground, so it's actually really, really hard to see them or to find them. I mean, go look for yourself and try to find a cable. So that's a second invisibility.

The third one is linked to the fact that they are also out at sea. And that brings us to the general problem that many people know as sea blindness. We are just not aware of what goes on in the sea. And that provides three reasons why there's not much more attention to the cable and their security. And that's quite obviously something that we want to overcome in the paper. And we do hope that the article is also an important step into that direction. Absolutely. Christian, if you'll permit me a follow up. So we're recording this April 13th and we're just days in the wake of Ever Given and the Suez Canal. I would hate to think, like, what would be the cable version of what just happened in the Suez Canal that suddenly the world became aware that 12% of the economy flows through this one waterway? That's a wonderful, wonderful question, because exactly with the evergreen, we could see how dependent we are on, in this case, on canals and distinct shipping routes.

There have been incidents like that in the past. So there was a major cable cut off the coast of Egypt, and there was a major cable cut close to India. And in these cases, the Internet went dark, so the connectivity dropped. These incidents are in the past, so we're talking about 2009 and so on, and it's not a huge problem in Europe now anymore because there's quite a substantial amount of redundancy that's now being built. But it remains a huge issue in more remote economies, in particular small island states, but also post-conflict states, because these countries often are only connected with a single cable. And quite obviously, if that fails, if it is cut, then this is a major disaster for the economy. And Tonga suffered from this a couple of years.

And it was a major economic disaster because no flight bookings, no hotel reservations, no financial transactions for several weeks. So this tells us what can go wrong. And so thank you for the question and comparing it with the Suez Canal, because I think it is a comparable case. Tobias, what's driven the resurgence in interest in infrastructure in general and then in this piece of infrastructure in particular? Well, I think there are multiple factors that have driven the general interest in infrastructure in the social sciences. And I think academically, the first is a fatigue with a heavy focus on language and discourse that followed from mainly French philosophy in the 1960s and 70s and then spread across Europe in particular. and was the leading way in social science to be critical and look at how things were constructed and meaning were attributed

to whatever happens in our social life. Then next to that is an increasing interest in technology and materiality in general, including sort of the standards and the protocols and the way of classifying technology and materiality and the politics and power inherent to that process, that's also part of what has sparked this interest in infrastructure that we see across the social sciences and the humanities. Then I also think it's tied to globalization and transnationalization

and the process we saw following the Cold War in the 1990s, where people started realizing the many flows of money, people, goods that circulated around the world, and then started to ask, how is this possible? What makes this globalization work in a way? And that led them to look at the various infrastructures, be it the digital ones or the maritime ones, climate ones, all sorts of infrastructure. And then that raised questions about not just the global, but also how infrastructures connect the local and the national and the regional and the global,

how infrastructures are part of creating centers and peripheries and the inclusion and exclusion mechanisms that are tied to infrastructure, which also goes for the cables, of course, that we have particular spots where we see many landing sites and that are very well connected. And then we see other parts of the world that are less connected and perhaps not completely excluded from the internet and the cable system, but at least at the very periphery of it. And I think that that also then speaks to the more particular interest in data cables.

As Christian mentioned earlier, of course, their importance for the digital world that we live in today and the fact that they carry 99% of digital data, that in itself makes it worth studying. But also, again, the way that the cables are part of drawing a world that does not look like the one we know, looking at a generic map and the way that the cables, they work, sort of that we are actually capable to transport that amount of data without having blackouts that often, That we can actually sustain a system where data is transported to the extent that it is today. I think that's also part of at least what drives our interest in infrastructure and the cable system in particular. Christian, I'm going to come back to you now. You identified three discourses around cables. So I'd ask you, what are those three discourses and then who is driving each of those? Yeah, part of the point is that the question of submarine data caves is coming back, but in the majority, the current discussions are relatively narrow and technical, but we can see the same time a resurgence in interest in the theme. And to some degree, it's a puzzling return because the security of submarine communication infrastructures overall was a core concern during the two world wars and also in the post-Cold War period, concerns over US hegemony and Soviet activities and so on. But this interest basically disappeared entirely in the post-Cold War period, and now it's coming back, and that brings me to the first of these discourses, and that's the security discourse narrowly conceived.

And that largely actually has to do with reports of Russian submarine activities, roughly around 2015. So Russian submarines were spotted close to the cable locations. And that kicked off a smaller debate on how secure actually these cables are, in particular in the UK. and how easy it actually would be to temper with them to attack the cables themselves or the landing stations where the cable connects to the land, but also terrorist attacks. Now, there has been quite some public statements arguing that this is a major threat, but so far there haven't been any incidents or similar. And considering the substantial contingency, this is to some degree also a bit of overhyped threat scenarios.

So it's something to be conscious about. A second discussion then is very technical in nature and refers to the many of the actual vulnerabilities that cable face. And cable failure is largely the outcome of shipping activity, anchoring, fishing, fishing nets, bottom gear nets, or natural hazards, actually, in particular earthquakes. So this is how the majority of cables fail. And if you look at it from that perspective, of course, it becomes a smaller governance problem of how you regulate maritime space. and and here you then need to deal with the multi-use of of the oceans and in australia for instance you have the proposal for um for cable protection zones so that is one one measure there but it also raises the question of who is in charge for the protection of submarine

data cables it is a multi-agency agency problem is it a question of the navy the coast guard marine rangers, telecommunication regulators, and so on. So those are the concerns in the second discussion. The third one then concerns the legal debate. And on the one side, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provides clear provisions that each country has the responsibility to ensure the protection of cables in their territorial waters. Many countries actually do not comply with that provision, so that's the first problem.

But there's, however, a second problem, and that concerns the high seas, and here the law is completely ambiguous. And there's not even a proper definition under international law of what is a submarine cable. So it starts from there. And this is basically the core concern in the legal debate on how to improve the legal obligations and responsibilities up to the degree who actually owns a cable under international public law. So part of what we're trying to do in the paper is then to say, these are very, very important starting points for thinking about the security and protection of submarine data cables. But actually we have to go beyond them because so far the discussion is framed in very narrow and very technical terms, but there's much more at stake.

And this is the kind of stuff that we need to pay attention to, but then also start working on it. Thank you. Tobias, then let's talk about sort of the solutions portion of your paper. How do you propose to start addressing the triple invisibility? Well, we suggest three ways of addressing the triple invisibility and increasing the visibility of cables, both in terms of security governance research and also aimed at practitioners. And the first is that we need to look into how cables are regulated and sort of the existing governance schemes across the national, the regional and global levels. And then also we need to look into particularly vulnerable countries with weak capacities and how they can be aided and assisted. And then lastly, how cables become a core scene for great power rivalry and geopolitics. So those are the three ways we suggest that one address the invisibility.

And let me start with the governance one, because as Christian mentioned, and as I also just said, that, of course, there are some existing governance regimes in place, but we need better knowledge of how these are connected. And that is a connection that needs to be explored in terms of scales. So again, the local, the national, the regional, the global, but also connecting areas such as legal regulation and policies and military strategies, combining these different ways of looking at the cable system and how it's being governed or not across different practices and different parts of government and private companies. And then next to that, more research and more dialogue needs to be put in place between the public and the private, because the relation between the state and the cable industry is at the core of the governance of cables. And so far, it seems that the undersea cable system has mainly been governed by private companies themselves and that they have been capable of doing that

without sort of, again, major blackouts or damages to the cable system and to our functioning internet. But in order for that to continue, I think we need close cooperation and increased dialogue across states and private companies. then looking at vulnerable states and the global south I also think it's important that we

initiate a dialogue on how states particular remote island states can become more redundant and how we can make sure that they won't lose their internet connection because of damage to the

cable system so how can we make these states more resilient And that, of course, does not only apply to island states, but also fragile states and states recovering or taking part of the civil war. So what role does the cable infrastructure play for their economic recovery, for building democracy, also online, for the participation of civil society? and questions such as these also need to be discussed, which also means that the cable calls for a perspective that goes beyond the global north and beyond the industrialized countries and that we need to pay attention to sort of the broader geography

of the internet and connects this also to data centers and the entire sort of internet infrastructure, so to speak. Then last but not least is the geopolitics of the cable, because quite a few questions arise in the light of the growing geopolitical tensions that we have seen over the past years, particularly the tech war between the US and China is very topical when it comes to the geopolitics of the cables. On the one hand, it shows the great importance of the cables,

and they're very much at the center of this big tech Cold War, and they're part of the clean network program that the former U.S. government announced in 2020. But on the other hand, the cables is also perhaps a side of digital infrastructure that has not been weaponized to the same extent as we have seen other parts, such as 5G network and microchips and stuff like that. When we look at the cables, perhaps this is a place

where we see more dialogue, perhaps because it's mainly driven by private companies. That could be part of the reason. But at least exploring further the geopolitical stakes of the undersea cable systems will also be very important moving forward, both for researchers, but definitely also for the private companies and the state authorities and then the people working with cables on a daily basis. Thank you, Tobias. I'd like to ask you one follow-up based on a comment that you had made earlier. I was concerned we weren't going to get to this if I don't ask the follow-up. You mentioned the sale of Huawei's cables and that that was potentially due to decisions made during the Trump administration. Can you expand a little bit on that? Because I don't have the background for that particular comment. Well, I can try at least. Huawei scaled up their laying of cables in the 90s and the zeros, but they did it in collaboration with other private companies.

And, of course, attention was paid to that in the U.S. and in other countries, but it has only been in the past five years or so that next to the tech war and the sort of increased rivalry between the U.S. and China that we have seen at least more outspoken, that this also became a focus more broadly, the data cables and the fact that Huawei, they are increasingly connecting countries both in the sort of the Southeast, but also African countries, south america and and sort of it's part of the chinese digital silk road and how china is um

slowly embedding itself um in the infrastructure across the globe and and trying to become a major player in in various fields so i to me at least uh it it taps into that uh these allegations against huawei and and that was um i think part of the reason why they sort of withdrew from uh from the cable, um, cable company back in 2019. But again, this has not been confirmed. Uh, and, uh, and it's, it's sort of, uh, I wouldn't say it happened overnight, but, um, it's not something they, they went out and went big and public with. Christian, final question to you. Uh,

what organization is best situated to address the governance piece and what's a logical starting point here? Well, let's perhaps start there in, in maritime security. we are used to deal with very complex problems part of the challenge there is already that different legal regimes a multitude of actors are involved and so on and what is the problem with submarine data cables is that this complexity is even more accelerated right because now we're not only talking about the sea but also how the sea connects to the to the land and we are talking about the intersection of maritime space and communications and cybersecurity and so on.

So this makes it an even more problematic multi-agency issue than the stuff we are usually talking about. And that, of course, from a researcher perspective, that makes it fascinating to look at it, but how can we steer that into a different direction? On the one side, we have all the classical proposals to some degree the need of a national focal point, for instance the need for cable ambassadors, so to say, how are

countries talking to each other that are connected by the cables And let's not forget the world of the submarine data cable looks a little bit different than conventional relations. So Denmark, for instance, is at the heart of the transatlantic communication network. It's the core hub that connects Europe to the U.S. France is crucial to connect Europe to Asia. Portugal and Spain are crucial to connect Europe and Africa and so on. So here we are talking then about a different kind of international relations, basically, that requires particular kind of diplomacies. If it comes to the global level, I think we are looking at a huge mess here.

And perhaps there the solution could be to actually call for a world conference or something like that, and then puzzle out whether the existing regimes could be better coordinated, whether a new treaty would be even required, or whether it's time to set up a, however this beast would be called, a cable union or something like that. Because let's not forget, for the moment, the issue is really dispersed and very, very minor. And the main body that aims at regulating it is a private authority. And if there's one thing that is clear, this is not going to do the trick in the future. It worked so far, but considering concerns over data sovereignty, all the stuff that Tobias was talking about, the geopolitics of the cable, the move towards single ownership of cables, and so on. This will really require different solutions in the future. unfortunately i cannot offer the silver bullet but i think it's a discussion that that urgently needs to start and quite obviously we as researchers we are happy to to feed into that

process but then in the end it's not not in our our hands but i really hope that very soon we are going to see more political attention to to the question and then also the leadership by some countries on addressing that on bilateral, regional, but also the global. Thank you, Christian. Unfortunately, we are out of time for today, but I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Tobias Liebetrau, Dr. Christian Brugger. Tobias, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Well, you can find me online on Twitter. That's where I'm most active, but also linked in terms of future projects. I'm working on a project that speaks to the cables in this article in a way

because it centers on the relationship between and how those three concepts speak to each other and how the increased digitization is reconfiguring our idea of security and sovereignty. So the cables, they are very topical. Thank you, Christian. Same questions to you then. Where can we find you and what's your next project? Well, I'd like to invite you to visit our SafeSeas website.

And that's SafeSeas, a lot of material on blue crime, on maritime security governance, and so on. For me, the question of submarine data cables is very much part of our project on infrastructures at sea. So we spoke about the second Suez crisis before. So that's a related issue indeed. And I think more generally, we need to think about the oceans as being governed within infrastructures and stops to pay attention to their security much more seriously. And that concerns for marine protected areas, marine accidents, how they matter, and indeed also the cable. And that will keep me busy or us busy for the coming years, I'm pretty sure. But thank you very much for hosting us.

Yeah, I have no doubt that that is going to keep you busy probably for the next decade. And I look forward to speaking with you again on this subject. Christian, could I ask you one more time to say the SafeSeas website? I had a minor internet disturbance right as you gave the website address, but we will include that for listeners in the show notes as well.

So Christian, what's that address one more time, please? Yes, that's www.safeseas.net. Thank you very much. And thank you both again for joining us. To listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 © transcript Emily Beynon