what if Putin cut us off the internet?

Is it possible to cut cables located 6,000 meters under the Atlantic? The answer is yes. Is it possible to prevent it? The answer is probably no. These candid words from a senior French official in charge of defense issues sum up the strong concern that has reigned in Ukraine since the start of the war: the Russians would have all the weapons to significantly disrupt Internet connections for several weeks. of the western world.

Read also: Russia seeks to create an internet independent of foreign servers

If they took action, Vladimir Putin’s forces would deal a severe blow to global economic activity. Financial markets, whose real-time transactions depend on high-speed data exchanges under the sea, would be the most affected. Companies that have foreign subsidiaries and those, very many, that use American data centers would be in difficulty. No profession would be spared by the brutal disorganization of the economy: most of our daily activities mobilize the Internet. As for our social life, it should learn to do without Facebook, Twitter or WhatsApp. In total, the Internet represents 3.4% of the GDP of the economies of developed countries. Its economic weight is greater than that of education, agriculture or mining activities. This threat is not just a whim of the military. “Yes, there is a risk”, we recognize at Google.

In question, the proliferation of submarine cables, through which pass 99% of the global Internet. They have been laid for a hundred and seventy years to run telephone lines; but their number has exploded over the past ten years, in the face of the needs of digital globalization. For a long time, telecommunications operators like Orange or Vodafone were on the move. Now, the Gafam (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) are investing in their own cables. Objective: to secure the exponential growth of their activity without depending on others.

Last summer, the ‘Yantar’, a Russian submarine-carrying ship, traveled the Irish Sea following two major cables

Together, the champions of the Net represent almost one out of two orders against 10% in 2013, which is a delight for the three main cable installers in the world. The largest of them is the French Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), a subsidiary of the Nokia group. “The market has doubled, from 2 to 4 billion euros,” says Paul Gabla, vice-president in charge of sales and marketing at ASN. According to him, around twenty cables now cross the Atlantic. And nearly 450 connect the different continents. About the size of a very large garden hose, they are increasingly powerful. They carry between 16 and 24 pairs of fibers – each ensuring outward and return communication – instead of 6 to 8 ten years ago. Enough to deal with peaks in traffic: when, for example, users of a video game update or when, in full confinement, Netflix consumption has broken records.

However, these cables are neither hidden nor protected, but simply laid on the bottom of the sea by specialized ships, the cable ships, which unroll huge reels. Every 100 kilometers, junction boxes, also called repeaters, are installed to regenerate the quality of the transmitted signal.

The number of accidents in peacetime remains limited. “The closer you get to the coast, the more a cable can be damaged by a fishing trawl or by another human activity such as drilling,” explains Hugues Foulon, executive director of strategy at Orange. Natural events can also cause great damage. Last January, the Tonga Islands were cut off from the world after the eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano and the resulting tsunami. The only cable linking them to Fiji was torn over a length of 80 kilometers! Repairs took several weeks. Operators such as Alcatel and Orange have small fleets of repair boats, positioned at various strategic points. Loaded with machine tools, these floating factories are guided towards the intervention area using reflectometry instruments, which diagnose the operating condition of the cables. Once there, the ends of the severed cables are fished out using a grapple. On board, they are welded to a new section, fiber by fiber, before being submerged again.

But the repair capacities available would not be sufficient to cope with a simultaneous attack on several cables in the middle of the Atlantic. This disaster scenario is made credible by the capabilities of the Russian fleet to operate in the deep seabed. On the surface, it has “oceanographic” ships that can drop a mini-submarine up to 6,000 meters deep. One of these boats, the “Yantar”, based in Murmansk, the main Russian naval base, is suspected of having carried out a long scouting mission in the Irish Sea during the summer of 2021, near two cables of communication. According to the ‘Times’, the vessel spent time zigzagging off counties Mayo and Donegal before heading away into the Atlantic. A “highly suspicious” behavior, according to British military sources. Consequently, France watches for its slightest movements. “We think he is about to leave on a mission, explains Commander Éric Lavault, spokesman for the navy. In this case, it will take a short week to reach the Atlantic. If he’s operating in international waters, we can track him and interrogate him by radio to find out what he’s doing. But the principle of freedom prevails. Outside territorial waters, which extend up to 12 nautical miles, he can do what he wants! What if he cut off his transponder, this radar system that makes him detectable at all times? “No matter, we will follow him. »

The largest marine cable installer is the French Alcatel

While it is easy enough to track a ship on the surface, the movements of submarines are almost undetectable. The general opinion is that the Russian fleet was moribund when Putin came to power in 1999. He put it back in battle order after the accident of the “Kursk”, which sank with its 118 men crew in 2000. “Their boats are of excellent quality today”, observes Laurent Collet-Billon, head of the Directorate General of Armaments from 2008 to 2017. Some submarines have been lengthened to carry out missions in water very deep and are capable of carrying more nuclear warheads. Undetectable, they belong to the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research, called GUGI, an organization that depends on the Directorate of Military Intelligence, the GRU. They are nested submersibles: on their deck are hung mini-submarines that can be detached to go on a mission. One hundred percent electric, they are totally discreet. And everything indicates that they are able to go and shear cables.

Is it just a deterrent weapon? Will Putin launch a maneuver which would be similar to a declaration of war and which could also penalize his country? French military experts do not rule out any hypothesis, from an isolated cut to a more massive operation. On January 7, off the coast of Norway, a cable intended for the collection of information sent by satellites, installed at a very great depth, suddenly stopped working. The Norwegian authorities spoke of sabotage, possibly perpetrated by a Russian submarine.

The French government has taken up the subject. On February 14, ten days before the start of the offensive in Ukraine, Florence Parly, the Minister for the Armed Forces, presented a ministerial strategy for controlling the seabed. “I have decided to equip our armies with means capable of reaching a depth of 6,000 meters,” she announced. This covers 97% of the seabed. To do this, this year we will equip ourselves with underwater drones and intervention robots. In the meantime, our navy remains in a weak position. “We can only act up to 2,000 meters deep,” laments Commander Lavault. Can we try to block enemy submarines? “We can have them tracked by frigates, but it is a very complex field of struggle. Mastering the seabed is similar to what happens in cyberspace. It is an environment difficult to access, in which malicious acts are difficult to impute. “Our means of detection are at the best level for conventional operations, but it is more complicated at great depth,” adds a former leader of the powerful Directorate General of Armaments. “You cannot permanently monitor a 7,000 kilometer cable,” concludes a government adviser.

Could satellites take over in the event of a giant failure? Impossible, according to the experts interviewed. Their capacity is too low. “Cables are highways, satellites are small slip roads,” says Paul Gabla. On the other hand, the operators could use detours, by diverting, for example, part of the Internet connections to Africa to then bring them back to Europe. As a precaution, the Gafam make sure to quadruple the lines that connect their servers. “If a cable falls, we can pass the traffic through others,” confirms Hugues Foulon at Orange. This is the concept of “redundancy”, which consists of permanently having plans B. “But if there is a big problem, we will still be forced to limit the flow”, warns a senior official. In Brest, Calais and several other ports around the world, the crews of the repair boats are on high alert. In the event of a total blackout, they will have the heavy responsibility of reviving the world economy as quickly as possible.