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House Homeland Security hearing flags gaps in subsea cable security, urges DHS role and faster repairs
Summary
Witnesses told the House Homeland Security subcommittee that U.S. subsea cables are broadly resilient but face gaps in federal coordination, outdated penalties, slow permitting and limited repair capacity. They recommended a single federal lead (DHS proposed), stronger deterrence, two-way intelligence sharing, more U.S. repair ships and clearer permitting to speed fixes.
Witnesses at a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing said the United States benefits from abundant subsea cable capacity but lacks coherent federal leadership, legal deterrence and repair capacity to manage deliberate or accidental disruptions.
Alex Botting, senior director for global security and technology strategy at Venable, told the panel that “redundancy is resilience,” and that abundant cables and swift repairs limit the impact of any incident. Botting said roughly 70% of observed subsea cable disruptions are caused by human activity, but investigations rarely determine whether damage was accidental or malicious.
Kevin Frazier, an AI innovation and law fellow at the University of Texas School of Law, urged Congress to shape policy around deterrence — raising the cost of attacks, increasing the likelihood of detection and reducing the potential impact. Frazier cited the Submarine Cable Act and related…
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