Revision of Underseas cables are vital to global economy from Sun, 12/08/2013 - 20:56
Undersea cables are a valuable commodity in the 21st century global communication environment and a critical global infrastructure. The undersea consortium is owned by various international companies such as ATT, and these companies provide high-speed broadband connectivity and capacity for large geographic areas that are important entities of trade and communications around the globe. Disruption of underseas cables can cause significant global economic disruption.
Quicktabs: Arguments
Submarine cables and pipelines are vulnerable assets in the global commons.182 Their protection from undersea attack is a real prescriptive and enforcement challenge because of our extreme reliance on this critical infrastructure; its multi-jurisdictional span beyond territorial seas; the availability of precise locational coordinates; the opaque environment below the waterline; and the accessibility to commercial-grade vehicles that can exploit this environment and inflict disproportionate harm.
The opaque environment and the accessibility to UUVs set this challenge apart from challenges above the water's surface to flagged vessels and platforms. As with cyber threats, this necessitates an effective deterrence policy to compensate for an inability to pinpoint suspected culprits. Not only do legal shortcomings in jurisdiction and security enforcement float above the surface, but arguably more sinister shortcomings lurk below. These threats also require an even more delicate balance between disclosure and secrecy, and between freedom ofnavigation and reasonable restraints for collective security.
In the end, whatever vigor is applied towards cyber security, and whatever balance is struck for internet freedoms should be matched by securing the very cables that transport this life-blood of commerce. Likewise, investment in energy independence should correspond to the security of the very arteries that enable and spur offshore energy exploration.
Canals, tunnels, and bridges over straits, submarine pipelines for oil and gas,28 as well as cables serve communication and transport purposes in the widest sense. These types of marine infrastructure can easily suffer from natural disasters or become targets of terrorism.29 It may be recalled that millions of telephone, telex, TV, and data links are made across the world at every moment. They may travel on radio waves or via satellites, but the majority are transmitted by submarine cables,30 which form a network over the world's seabeds. Cables are special because they provide the privacy and security that radio and satellite lack. They are reliable and long lasting and have an excellent capacity and transmission quality. Cables are vitally important to the global economy, to national security, and to the safety of life.31 The modern version of these arteries of data flow is fiber-optic cables running through oceans, straits, and across land bridges. For example, the bulk of data flow between Europe and the Far East goes by fiber-optic cables that run from the Mediterranean through Egyptian territory into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. A high concentration of cables can be found in the South China Sea, Red Sea, and Mediterranean Sea. Likewise, a growing number of subsea cables for the transport of electricity are or under construction or in the planning process. Building up redundencies or back-up solutions will add to the picture, create additional intrusion on the environment, and offer a target for terrorists. Thus, the protection of “critical” marine infrastructure is part of the agenda.
Over 70% of our country's international telecom traffic, which includes voice, data, and video, is carried on these cables, each of which is only about the diameter of a garden hose. Not counting Canada and Mexico, over 90% of the country's international voice, video, Internet, and data communications are carried on these cables. The disproportionate importance of these cables to the nation's communication infrastructure can be seen by the fact that if all of these cables were suddenly cut, only 7% of the United States traffic could be restored using every single satellite in the sky. Modern fiber optic cables are the lifeblood of the world's economy, carrying almost 100% of global Internet communication. This underscores the revolutionary5 capacity of modern fiber optic submarine cables. By any standard, they constitute critical infrastructure to the United States, and indeed the world.
Fiber-optic submarine cables are the lifeblood of U.S. carriers’ global business. Aside from our land-based connections with Canada and Mexico, more than 95 percent of U.S. international traffic – voice, video, Internet and data – travels over 38 submarine cables, each the diameter of a garden hose. Without these cables, current satellite capacity could carry only 7 percent of the total U.S. international traffic.
Fiber-optic submarine cables are the international digital trade routes of the 21st century. And thus, any disruptions to the submarine cable global network can have significant impact on the flow of digital information around the world, with severe consequences for the world economy. As one official from the Federal Reserve noted in referring to submarine cable networks, “When the communication networks go down, the financial sector does not grind to a halt, it snaps to a halt.”i
The importance of modern fiber-optic cables to the global economy and the Internet cannot be overstated. In the case of the United States, about 36 submarine cables, each the diameter of a garden hose, carry more than 95 percent of the nation’s international voice, data, and video communications.
Every day the Society for Worldwide Interbank Fi- nancial Telecommunications transmits 15 million mes- sages over cables to more than 8,300 banking organiza- tions, securities institutions, and corporate customers in 195 countries. The Continuous Linked Settlement Bank located in the United Kingdom is just one of the critical market infrastructures that rely on those transmissions, providing global settlement of 17 currencies having an average daily equivalent of approximately $3.9 trillion. Similarly, the U.S. Clearing House Interbank Payment System processes in excess of $1 trillion a day to more than 22 countries for investment companies, securities and commodities exchange organizations, banks, and other financial institutions.
The popular belief that international communications are carried largely by satellite is false. The tremendous volume of data carried on less expensive, modern fiber- optic submarine cables dwarfs the limited capacity of the higher-cost satellites. Additionally, the technical transmission delays and other quality limitations inher- ent in satellites make them marginal for continuous transmission of high-speed voice, video, and data traf- fic. If the cables connecting the United States to the world were cut, it is estimated that every single satellite in the sky combined could carry only 7 percent of the current total traffic volume.
Referring to the submarine cable networks, the Federal Reserve’s staff director for management, Ste- phen Malphrus, observed that “when the communication networks go down, the financial sector does not grind to a halt, it snaps to a halt.” The same can be said for most sectors enmeshed in the global economy through the Internet, including shipping, airlines, and manufacturing.
As the amount of cable disruptions increases (i.e., more cables are cut), on the other hand, the amount of data traffic that is lost increases exponentially.33 For example, an analysis was done of possible disruptions of the cable lines connecting Europe and India.34 It found that although "India is fairly resilient in the case of one or two cable disruptions," nearly seventy percent of traffic to and from India would be lost with just three concurrent cable disruptions.35 Actual data exists that supports similar predictions.36 In 2006, an earthquake along the coast of Taiwan triggered undersea landslides and broke nine undersea cables.37 This event had repercussions extending beyond the country of Taiwan.38 Internet telecommunications linking Southeast Asia were seriously impaired.39 More than six hundred gigabits of capacity went offline, and trading of the Korean won temporarily stopped.40 Even a week after the quake, an Internet provider in Hong Kong publicly apologized for continued slow Internet speeds.41
As a result, companies, governments, and individuals can send and receive more data than ever before. In 1993, Internet users transmitted around 100 terabits of data in a year; today, they send about 150 terabits every second. And this number is expected to exceed 1,000 terabits by 2020, fueled in large part by the expansion of cellular networks in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Nearly all that data will travel along the seabed. Imagine, then, how damaging a determined attack on undersea infrastructure could be. One need only consider the destruction possible from natural causes and inadvertent interference. In 2006, an undersea earthquake near Taiwan snapped nine cables. It took 11 ships 49 days to finish repairs, while China, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam lost critical communication links, disrupting regional banking, markets, and trade. In 2007, Vietnamese fishermen seeking to salvage copper from a defunct coaxial cable pulled up active lines instead, disrupting Vietnam’s communications with Hong Kong and Thailand for nearly three months and requiring repairs that cost millions. Given the scarcity of equipment and personnel, it could take months, if not years, for the United States to recover from a large-scale, coordinated assault. Attackers wouldn’t even need to target U.S. assets, since U.S. traffic flows through more than a dozen other countries that serve as major hubs for the global undersea cable network.
Much of this infrastructure allows the global economy to function. Every day, SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, transmits some 20 million messages to more than 8,000 banking organizations, security institutions, and corporate customers in nearly 200 countries, reconciling trillions of dollars’ worth of assets across global financial markets. Intercontinental Exchange, which operates a global network of currency exchanges and clearing-houses, typically processes over ten million contracts each day, covering the energy, commodity, financial, and equity derivatives markets. Without the undersea fiber-optic network, this type of electronic banking and commerce simply could not happen. And in the event that the cable system shut down, millions of transactions would be cut short.
The U.S. Department of Defense listed the world’s cable landing sites as among the most critical of infrastructures for the United States.183 Cable landing sites are concentrated in a few geographic areas due to high expense and economies of scale.184 According to one report, there are at least ten major cable chokepoints that exist globally.185 As observed by one commentator:
The most dangerous vulnerability is the aggregation of high-capacity bandwidth circuits into a small number of unprotected carrier hotels in which several hundred net- work operators interconnect their circuits in one non-secure building. These buildings often feed directly into the international undersea cable system. Security is often farcical. This lack of protection exists in several carrier hotels on transit points along the axis of the international telecommunications system that includes Dubai, Zurich, Frankfurt, London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.186
Apart from cable landing sites, another vulnerability is the vast network of submarine cables on the seabed itself. Telecommunications companies “concentrate a large percentage of overall bandwidth in just a few major cable systems because new cable designs also incorporate tremendous capacity.”187 Cables also tend to be bundled together, “offering a potentially lucrative, consolidated target for sabotage.”188 If a bundle of cables are severed all at once, it could result in responders having little to no chance of restoring the connection by rerouting the traffic to mitigate the effects of the cut.189 Due to the unpredictable ocean environment, there are obvious challenges in actually carrying out an attack, however, a disruption could occur as a result of something as simple as dropping an anchor on a cable or sending a scuba diver down to physically cut them (all cable routes are publicly available).190 Further, one scholar has pointed out the possibility of nefarious elements using an Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) to attack cables.191
National economies now rely on undersea connectivity for a growing portion of their overall output. Today, essentially every consumer or commercial product contains commodities and parts drawn from dozens of separate countries in a “manufacturing chain” of subcomponent builders, product assemblers, suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers. These disparate players are able to seamlessly integrate their efforts using the Internet, enabling greater specialization and economies of scale within each step of the manufacturing process. This, in turn, promotes economic growth in countries that no longer have to either build an entire product domestically with great inefficiency or import it at high cost.
Global manufacturing chains and financial services are made possible by transoceanic cables, and more cable is being laid each year to meet the growing demand for bandwidth. The Asia Pacific Gateway cable, installed in 2014, transmits 55 terabytes of data per second (Tbps) – the equivalent of 100 computer hard drives – between East Asian countries from Malaysia to South Korea, funded in part by Facebook. Similarly, Google helped fund the installation of the FASTER cable between the United States and Japan, which will carry 60 Tbps, and is bankrolling a new 64 Tbps submarine cable between the United States and Brazil. Both content companies are hoping the new networks will increase their user rolls and reduce costs in underserved areas such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Data transmission to these regions with older cables can cost up to 10 times more than to Europe or Japan.
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