As the West considers the threat exhibit by China’s military service ambitions, there's a natural tendency to position overarching attention on the South China ocean. this is often understandable: Consolidating it'd offer national capital with an enormous windfall of oil and fossil fuel, and a possible chokehold over up to forty p.c of the world’s shipping.

But this is often solely the foremost obvious manifestation of Chinese maritime strategy. Another key component, one that’s way tougher to distinguish, is Beijing’s increasing influence in constructing and repairing the subsurface cables that move nearly all the knowledge on the net. to know the totality of China’s “Great Game” perplexed, you have got to appear right down to ocean bottom.

While folks tend consider satellites and cell towers because the heart of the net, the foremost very important part is that the 380 submerged cables that carry over ninety five p.c of all information and voice traffic between the continents. They were engineered for the most part by the U.S. and its allies, guaranteeing that (from a Western perspective, at least) they were “cleanly” put in while not inherent spying capability out there to our opponents. U.S. web giants as well as Google, Facebook and Amazon are leasing or shopping for immense stretches of cables from the largely non-public consortia of telecommunication operators that created them.

But currently the Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies, the leading firm operating to deliver 5G telecom networks globally, has gone to ocean. below its Huawei Marine Networks part, it's constructing or rising nearly a hundred submarine cables round the world. Last year it completed a cable stretching nearly four,000 miles from Brazil to Cameroon. (The cable is part owned  by China imaginary creature, a collectivist telecommunication operator.) Rivals claim that Chinese companies are able to guess the bidding as a result of they receive subsidies from national capital.

Just as the specialists are with reason involved concerning the inclusion of spying “back doors” in Huawei’s 5G technology, Western intelligence professionals oppose the company’s engagement within the subsurface version, that provides a way larger bang for the buck as a result of most information rides on thus few cables.

Naturally, Huawei denies any manipulation of the cable sets it's constructing, although the U.S. and different nations say it's indebted by Chinese law handy over network information to the govt. The U.S. last year restricted federal agencies victimisation from using its 5G equipment; Huawei responded with a suit in court. Washington is pressuring its allies to follow its lead — the yank ambassador to Germany warned that permitting Chinese corporations into its 5G project would mean reduced security cooperation from the U.S. — however this is often associate degree uphill battle. Most nations and corporations feel that higher cellular phone service is definitely worth the security risks.

A similar dynamic is enjoying out underwater. however will the U.S. address the protection of subsurface cables? there's no thanks to stop Huawei from building them, or to stay non-public house owners from acquiring with Chinese companies on modernizing them, primarily based strictly on suspicions. Rather, the U.S. should use its cyber- and intelligence-gathering capability to assemble laborious proof of back doors and different security risks. this can be difficult — the Chinese companies are technologically subtle and entwined with a virtual monocracy.

And back doors aren’t the sole problem: Press reports indicate that U.S. and Chinese (and Russian) submarines might have the power to “tap” the cables outwardly. (The U.S. government keeps such data tightly covert.) and also the thousand just about ground-based landing stations are spying targets similarly.

Once Washington has real proof of risks that it will share with allies, it will place the protection of the Huawei underwater cable operations on the international agenda with the identical vigor it's applied in addressing the 5G considerations. This proof would be the backbone of a powerful strategic communications effort to steer friendly governments and Western corporations that operating with Chinese won’t pay off within the future. To some extent this is often already happening — last year Australia prohibited Huawei from involvement in a very cable it's subsidizing which will connect it to the male monarch Islands.

The U.S. might conjointly flex its technological muscles. Opportunities vary from developing less expensive alternatives in cooperation with the non-public sector that may create price battle to the Chinese; innovating on suggests that to check and shield the knowledge on the cables Huawei Marine will eventually lay; and dealing to boost end-to-end secret writing altogether internet-based communications, which might build the task of compromising the protection of the knowledge on the cables way more tough. 

As U.S. Admiral Jamie Foggo, a career sailor boy, told me: “Underwater cables are a part of our vital infrastructure and essential to the worldwide economy. The U.S. should shield the integrity and security of them as sure enough as we offer international freedom of the high seas.” thus whereas we have a tendency to actually have to take into account the challenges China poses on the surface of the South China ocean, we have a tendency to conjointly have to look right down to the murky depths of the underside of the ocean.