What would happen if you woke up one morning and the internet was gone—not from a software glitch, but because someone had simply cut the wire?
Threats to critical undersea infrastructure are rapidly escalating. In 2023, the Balticonnector pipeline and several Baltic data cables were damaged. A year later, four Red Sea cables were cut, disrupting a quarter of data traffic between Asia and Europe, with further incidents across the Baltic. In total, between January 2024 and July 2025, roughly 44 incidents of cable damage were recorded. Not all were deliberate, but Russia's activity has grown brazen. In 2025, Moscow sent fighter aircraft to deter Estonian authorities from approaching a shadow fleet vessel near a Poland–Sweden cable. Recently, the Yantar, a deep-sea intelligence ship, and three Russian submarines conducted operations over Western cables. …
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