U.S. Helsinki Commission podcast guest: Russia’s "shadow war" now targets undersea cables and energy infrastructure

Benjamin Schmidt, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, told the U.S. Helsinki Commission’s The Transatlantic podcast that Russia is conducting a "shadow war" against the West that increasingly targets critical infrastructure, including satellites and subsea cables, and requires a stronger political and security response.

Schmidt, who researches energy and national security and leads field investigations into subsea incidents, said the pattern of attacks has moved beyond cyber and influence operations into physical sabotage. "There is no doubt in my mind that this is war by any other name," he said, arguing that calling the phenomenon a form of war makes clear the need for a robust policy and security response.

Why it matters: subsea cables carry the vast majority of global trunk-line data and many countries’ energy and communications networks are linked by pipelines and undersea lines. Schmidt described multiple incidents in the Baltic region — including cables and a pipeline near Svalbard and others he and investigators cataloged — and singled out a Nov. 15, 2021 direct-ascent anti-satellite test as an early, dangerous example of physical escalation that threatened other satellites and crew aboard the International Space Station.

Schmidt described his team's open-source, field-driven approach: combining geospatial satellite imagery, synthetic aperture radar and marine engineering assessments with interviews of first responders. He recounted hiring a fishing vessel to collect seabed sonar at the Nord Stream blast site and said his group’s objective findings informed a subjective assessment that placed Russian involvement in the Nord Stream blasts at roughly 70%, Ukrainian involvement at about 30% and U.S. involvement at 10% or less.

Schmidt warned against simplistic attribution. He said some incidents have been linked to so-called shadow-fleet vessels but that many other attacks involved PRC-flagged container or bulk carriers and poor seamanship is not a sufficient explanation for repeated, localized damage. "Policymakers, please, the details really matter here," he said.

On the policy front, Schmidt urged stronger public denunciation and political pressure. He recommended NATO members use the Article 4 consultative mechanism to publicly acknowledge and condemn shadow-warfare incidents so allied governments can justify allocating more resources and funding to protect offshore infrastructure and to increase political costs on the Kremlin. He also urged U.S. lawmakers to consider legislation (referred to in the interview as the "Shame Act" or a "Stop Helping Adversaries" measure) to curb senior officials moving to work on behalf of adversary states.

Schmidt illustrated the civilian impact with a January 2024 anecdote: a same-day rail trip he planned from Bonn to Frankfurt was disrupted by vandalism-flagged cancellations that were later attributed to sabotage of power cabling, forcing travelers to take slower routes.

The podcast closed with Schmidt calling for a bipartisan, sustained focus that integrates military, intelligence, commercial and investigative resources to detect, attribute and deter attacks on critical infrastructure. The host, Bach Tienishona, the commission's senior policy adviser, said the episode would help amplify Schmidt’s work and urged listeners to follow the research.

Next steps: Schmidt urged clearer public acknowledgment of incidents and wider use of cooperative NATO mechanisms and increased civil-military coordination to improve resilience and deterrence.