Sabotage operations conducted against cables and pipelines in European waters, which are generally attributed to Russia, have made marine infrastructure attacks a hot topic over the past couple of years. At the same time, we have seen a growth of attacks on cables connecting Taiwan and its outlying islands, blame for which is commonly attributed to the People’s Republic of China. While this surge of attacks has ensured that marine infrastructure has become somewhat less “invisible” than it has traditionally been, efforts to target this infrastructure are not new. Most of the time, we view efforts to interfere with cables through two lenses. It is either an effort to tap an adversary’s cables for eavesdropping, like the Cold War-era Operation Ivy Bells, or it is an effort of sabotage, aimed at disrupting communication for military advantage or to undermine civil society.
Yet examples from the First and Second World Wars suggests other impacts can be arguably even more significant in shaping the information environment.
Undersea cable control: The information dimension | Lowy Institute
