MPs and friends have launched an inquiry into the UK’s potential to guard undersea web cables that hyperlink the nation with the remainder of the world, following heightened threats of sabotage from Russia, China and different hostile states.
The Joint Committee on the Nationwide Safety Technique, which scrutinises authorities decision-making on nationwide safety, goals to evaluate the UK’s readiness for potential assaults on vital underseas communication cables.
The inquiry follows an announcement by the defence secretary John Healey within the Commons this week, warning that Russian president Vladimir Putin is focusing on the UK’s undersea oil, gasoline, electrical energy and web cables after a Russian spy ship entered British waters.
Healey stated the analysis vessel, Yantar, was engaged in “gathering intelligence and mapping the UK’s vital underwater infrastructure”, following its discovery in UK waters on 20 January 2025. He advised Putin: “We see you, we all know what you’re doing, and we is not going to draw back from strong motion to guard this nation.”
In response to the parliamentary committee’s chairman, Matt Western, 99% of the nation’s knowledge passes by means of underseas web cables, making them a smooth goal for motion by international states looking for to covertly injury the UK.
“Because the geopolitical setting worsens, international states are looking for uneven methods to carry us in danger,” he stated. “Our web cable community seems like an more and more susceptible smooth underbelly. There isn’t any want for panic – we have now diploma of resilience, and consciousness of the problem is rising. However we have to be clear-eyed in regards to the dangers and penalties: an assault of this nature would hit us exhausting.”
The worldwide web, which is vital for worldwide communications and commerce, depends on a community of 500 cables that carry 95% of web visitors. The cables are sometimes in distant locations, making them tough and costly to watch.
Assault may disrupt important providers
The UK depends on about 60 cables to attach it with the remainder of the world that present resilience if one or two are intentionally or by chance broken. Nevertheless, MPs and friends have raised issues {that a} simultaneous assault on a number of cables, notably throughout occasions of heightened stress or battle, may trigger vital disruption.
In response to the UK’s 2025 Nationwide Threat Register, in an affordable worst-case state of affairs, the lack of transatlantic subsea cables linking to the UK would trigger “appreciable disruption” to important providers, together with monetary providers, that depend on offshore datacentres and offshore service suppliers.
There have been plenty of incidents in Northern European waters the place cables have been severed, together with hyperlinks between Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Shetland Islands. Over 50 Russian vessels have been noticed close to areas of excessive cable density within the Baltic Sea, main European international locations to reassess the safety of their underseas infrastructure.
Most just lately, on 25 December 2024, Russian-linked oil tanker Eagle S dragged its anchor for 60 miles within the Baltic, damaging the Estlink-2 energy cable connecting Finland and Estonia and 4 knowledge cables. The tanker has been impounded by Finland.
The UK, together with different army companions, introduced the launch of Operation Nordic Warden in January 2025 to trace potential threats to underseas infrastructure and to watch the actions of Russia’s shadow transport fleet.
The operation will use synthetic intelligence to analyse knowledge from a spread of sources, together with the Computerized Identification System, utilized by ships to broadcast their place, to evaluate the dangers posed by vessels in areas near undersea cables.
The inquiry goals to evaluate the UK’s potential to defend subsea infrastructure, choices for enhancing deterrence, work with army allies and the UK’s resilience within the occasion of main disruption to web infrastructure. The committee has set a deadline of 6 March for proof.
