A new front has opened in the battle between the U.S. and China over the control of global networks that deliver the internet. This one is beneath the ocean.
While the U.S. wages a high-profile campaign to exclude China’s Huawei Technologies Co. from next-generation mobile networks over fears of espionage, the company is embedding itself into undersea cable networks that ferry nearly all of the world’s internet data.
About 380 active submarine cables—bundles of fiber-optic lines that travel oceans on the seabed—carry about 95% of intercontinental voice and data traffic, making them critical for the economies and national security of most countries.
Current and former security officials in the U.S. and allied governments now worry that these cables are increasingly vulnerable to espionage or attack and say the involvement of Huawei potentially enhances China’s capabilities.
Huawei denies any threat. The U.S. hasn’t publicly provided evidence of its claims that Huawei technology poses a cybersecurity risk. Its efforts to persuade other countries to sideline the company’s communication technology have been met with skepticism by some.
Huawei Marine Networks Co., majority owned by the Chinese telecom giant, completed a 3,750-mile cable between Brazil and Cameroon in September. It recently started work on a 7,500-mile cable connecting Europe, Asia and Africa and is finishing up links across the Gulf of California in Mexico.
Altogether, the company has worked on some 90 projects to build or upgrade seabed fiber-optic links, gaining fast on the three U.S., European and Japanese firms that dominate the industry.
These officials say the company’s knowledge of and access to undersea cables could allow China to attach devices that divert or monitor data traffic—or, in a conflict, to sever links to entire nations.
Such interference could be done remotely, via Huawei network management software and other equipment at coastal landing stations, where submarine cables join land-based networks, these officials say.
“We are acutely aware of counterintelligence and security threats to undersea cables from a variety of actors,” said William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. “Given that undersea cables carry the bulk of the world’s telecommunications data, safeguarding these cables remains a key priority for the U.S. government and its allies.”
So far, Western allies have pushed the company out of at least one international project and tried unsuccessfully to thwart another.
Huawei Marine said in an email that no customer, industry player or government has directly raised security concerns about its products and operations.
Joe Kelly, a Huawei spokesman, said the company is privately owned and has never been asked by any government to do anything that would jeopardize its customers or business. “If asked to do so,” he said, “we would refuse.”
The U.S. has been lobbying allies hard, warning Germany in recent days that it would limit intelligence sharing with Berlin if Huawei built the country’s next-generation mobile-internet infrastructure.
Last week, Huawei filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court challenging a law that restricts federal agencies from doing business with the company.
Longer term, the U.S. and some of its allies see Huawei and its undersea cable business as part of China’s strategy to boost its global influence by building telecom infrastructure and exporting digital technology, including surveillance tools...MUCH MORE
