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House Homeland Security hearing urges a national strategy to defend subsea cables from foreign threats
Summary
Witnesses at a joint House Homeland Security hearing warned that China, Russia and other actors pose a growing risk to subsea telecommunications cables and urged Congress to designate a single federal lead, streamline permitting, expand U.S. repair capacity and raise penalties to deter sabotage.
Experts told a joint House Homeland Security hearing on subsea telecommunications cables that the U.S. lacks a unified federal strategy to deter, attribute and respond to attacks on the undersea network that carries the vast majority of global communications.
Dr. Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center and a Georgetown professor, framed the risk as geopolitical and urgent: “China and Russia's threats to subsea cables present a serious challenge to the global communications and energy systems that underpin U.S. and allied security, prosperity, and way of life,” he said, calling for a three‑pillar approach of resilience, monitoring and accountability.
The hearing highlighted the scale of the infrastructure involved and the asymmetric vulnerabilities it creates for national security. Tim Strong, chief research officer at Telegeography, summarized the technical problem: “They are vulnerable, they are critical, and they are irreplaceable,” adding that operators already…
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