Digital Silk Road Peace: Subsea Cable Connections to the ICT

Subsea cables, much like other information and communications technology (ICT) components, are often taken for granted. Of particular interest to the study of the Digital Silk Road (DSR) are the subsea cables and cable landing stations that advance the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) strategy for global digital dominance.

This paper discusses the associated technologies, including cable landing stations, recent subsea cable disruption examples, and emerging subsea cable system vulnerabilities.

Subsea cables are a key part of the world’s information superhighways, used to make over $10 trillion in US Dollars (USD) of financial transactions each day and carry an estimated 95 to 99 percent of the world’s voice and electronic data traffic. Over the next few years, the number of subsea cables is expected to grow by some 30 percent annually. Subsea cables connect to terrestrial cables and move data between a wide variety of end users and services via data centers, the cloud, and internet exchange points. Many of the newest and longest routes are being financed, designed, and built by hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

The Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) submarine cable system, connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe provides open, flexible, and carrier-neutral services to its customers. PEACE, as part of the DSR, is a high-speed, 15,000-kilometer undersea cable system that, when complete, will offer high-capacity, low-latency routes connecting China, Europe, and Africa. PEACE could yield economic benefit for eastern African states. MITRE’s DSR economic impact study indicates that Djibouti’s PEACE cable connection could raise their gross domestic product by as much as $23 million in USD over the next five years.  

Recent subsea cable outages highlight the adverse impact to entire populations and regions with loss of cable availability. U.S. and other military interests in eastern Africa need to consider the potential risk posed by the PRC’s ability to collect, mine, and use data flowing through the PEACE cables. Recent growing political unrest in the Red Sea region, although linked to other political actors, clearly demonstrates the impact the PRC could have on eastern Africa as well as global connections via the DSR. Greater attention to physical protection of cable landing facilities and logical protection of data running through cable landing stations is needed to protect both economic and military interests. Understanding and applying lessons learned about vulnerabilities and risks inherent to end-to-end subsea cable systems, especially in the context of the DSR and PEACE cables, in eastern Africa and their connections to the ICT is critical.