G7 want better protection for submarine cables

The Houthi militias are threatening attacks on undersea data cables in the Red Sea. The industrialized countries of the G7 now want to improve the protection of this important infrastructure.

Shortly before the new year, the Houthi militias published a map. It showed submarine cables running from Asia to Europe. The text below: “Did you know that the internet lines that connect the East to the West run through Bab-el-Mandeb?” Bab-el Mandeb is a strait between Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.

And as if the threat wasn’t clear enough, a Houthi support group made the tone even tougher, writing on their channels: “The global internet cables that run through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait are in our hands.”

“We cannot live safely without data exchange”

By then it was clear to the western allies of the G7 states that they needed their own protection strategy for the around 500 undersea cables, which are essential as communication highways between many countries. In some cases the cables run only 100 meters below the water surface. “Without data exchange, we cannot live safely and work economically successfully,” explains the German Federal Minister for Digital and Transport, Volker Wissing (FDP).

With a view to a G7 meeting in Verona at the end of the week, he added: “That’s why it’s necessary that we protect our digital infrastructures. We now have the attacks in the Red Sea. And that shows us that there is a vulnerability here and we have to act.” The topic of submarine cables is therefore on the agenda in Italy. In addition to Germany and Italy, the seven leading industrialized countries in the G7 include the USA, Great Britain, France, Japan and Canada.

In addition, there are attacks by the Houthi militias on merchant ships. This is shown by the case of the now sunken freighter “Rubymar”. The Houthis fired rockets at the ship loaded with 21,000 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on February 18. Ammonium nitrate is a highly explosive salt. According to US authorities, the anchor of the “Rubymar” tugging on the seabed may have severed the submarine cable. This disrupted telecommunications worldwide.

Double or triple lines necessary?

Matthias Wachter is responsible for digitalization and innovation at the Federal Association of German Industries BDI. He demands towards the ARD: “From our point of view, the turning point means that we have to think about security holistically.” This also includes the protection of critical infrastructure and submarine cables “much more strongly than before”. It is therefore good and right for the G7 to take up this issue prominently.

For Bernhard Rohleder, the general manager of the IT industry association Bitkom, it is not enough to protect the existing undersea connections. His appeal to politicians is to “contribute to ensuring that there is more redundancy in these infrastructures in the future.” That means: “They have to be expanded twice or even three times” so that cables that are actually disturbed or disconnected can be replaced immediately with a replacement cable, says Rohleder.

Incidents also in the Baltic Sea

Many experts also believe that the fact that global data exchange takes place almost exclusively via undersea data cables is no longer appropriate. That’s why global data exchange via satellites and “space-based systems”, as BDI’s Wachter calls them, could soon come into greater focus.

Damage to submarine cables has also been discovered in the Baltic Sea. That is why Europe and NATO are concerned about the security of critical infrastructure here too. Digital Minister Volker Wissing now warns in Verona that we must take seriously that the geopolitical situation is destabilizing in many places on earth: “And that is why we need an answer to the question of the security of our digital infrastructures.”