Hello everyone and welcome to ZD Tech, ZDNet’s daily editorial podcast. My name is Anne Mignard and today I explain to you what are the risks of submarine telecommunications cables crossing the Black Sea.
As we know, Moscow has made the means of communication one of its favorite targets. On the web first, via hacking or destroying servers. As was the case from the start of the conflict in Ukraine with the cyberattack on the operator ViaSat.
As a reminder, the attack had paralyzed access to this network for many European users on the day of the Russian invasion. Attacks on means of communication by Moscow are also carried out on Earth. Russia only waited a week after the start of the offensive in Ukraine to destroy the television tower in kyiv.
Limited dangers?
But Moscow would also target the seabed, where most of the international fiber optic networks that form what are called “the backbones of the global internet” are located. In 2008 for example, recalls Asma Mhalla, the specialist in the challenges of the digital economy, Russia had in the midst of a crisis with Georgia cut the fiber optic cable which linked Georgia to its neighbors in the Black Sea, just to put the country completely under wraps.
Moscow had done the same also in 2014, during the war in Crimea. And there, it was Ukraine which had seen its cables severed.
So should we expect cuts in this landlocked sea again this time? It is technically possible, according to Camille Morel, of the Institute for Strategy and Defense Studies. She explains that today, only a dozen states, including Russia, have ships that can descend beyond more than 6,000 meters deep. Ships that are able to cut cables in deep waters, where they are least protected, since they are only the size of a wrist.
The whole question is therefore to know what interest Moscow would have today in carrying out this operation. This gesture would be a strong gesture, for Asma Mhalla, but only symbolic. Because these cables today only connect Georgia to Bulgaria. Moreover, the damage for these two countries would only be limited, since each is connected by other means of communication abroad, via alternative transit routes. But the act could still destabilize the region, according to the researcher. With the risks of a Western response.