- New proposals look to secure subsea cables against foreign adversaries
- This includes a default denial of contracts to Chinese firms
- Subsea cables carry 99% of internet traffic
A recent proposal by the FCC outlines plans to ‘unleash submarine cable investment’ in order to ‘accelerate the buildout of AI infrastructure’ across the US, whilst also making efforts to, ‘secure cables against foreign adversaries, like China’.
If adopted, this could mean a range of measures would be implemented to protect submarine cables, applying a ‘presumption of denial’ for adversarial state applicants for controlled licenses, and establishing physical and cybersecurity requirements, as well as restricting leasing agreements to these organizations.
Alongside this, the report proposes a ban on the use of ‘covered equipment’ in undersea cable infrastructure – although the report doesn’t give a definition of the term.
Unsung heroes
Sabotage to submarine cables would be undoubtedly catastrophic, not just to the US, but to pretty much every part of the world.
The cables carry 99% of all internet traffic, handling roughly $10 trillion of daily financial transactions.
Satellite technology, though active, is not yet capable of handling the same volume of traffic. As FCC Chairman Brendan Carr described, undersea cables are the ‘unsung heroes of global communications’.
There is precedent for this type of order, with Huawei and ZTE facing ‘rip and replace’ campaigns back in 2020 in a bid to remove Chinese tech from the infrastructure of rural operators, as part of a larger effort to exclude Chinese vendors from the US market.
“As the U.S. builds out the data centers and other infrastructure necessary to lead the world in AI and next-gen technologies, these cables are more important than ever. At the same time, as President Trump has long recognized: ‘economic security is national security,’ says Chairman Carr.
“We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China. We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.”
