US House of Representatives lawmakers have pressed Google, Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Amazon and Microsoft over safeguards to undersea cables, amidst increased threats to communications infrastructure.
Representative John Moolenaar, chair of a House panel on China, and representatives Carlos Gimenez and Keith Self, who chair subcommittees, raised concerns about Chinese-affiliated companies carrying out maintenance on cables with which the US companies have financial links.
In a letter, the Republican representatives said China-affiliated companies such as SBSS, Huawei Marine, China Telecom and China Unicom “have continued to provide maintenance or servicing to cable systems in which your companies maintain direct or indirect operational involvement or ownership”.
Foreign adversaries
The letter said the committees run by the representatives are “examining the extent to which foreign adversarial actors are positioning themselves, both overtly and covertly, to compromise subsea cable systems at key points of vulnerability”.
They asked the companies to disclose by 8 August whether they bare aware of suspected hardware tampering, optical signal tapping, unexpected signal distortion or other irregularities during cable repair or maintenance events.
They said they were concerned about “coordinated malign activity” linked to China or Russia targeting subsea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, the Indo-Pacific and other strategic regions.
The letter comes after Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr said last week that the agency plans to adopt new rules that will prevent companies from connecting undersea cables to the US that use Chinese technology or equipment.
A number of fibre-optic communications cables have been cut in recent months in instances of suspected sabotage, including two incidents in November 2024 in the Baltic.
In 2023 Taiwan accused Chinese vessels of cutting cables that provided internet access to the Matsu Islands.
Houthi attacks in the Red Sea may have led to three Red Sea cables being cut that provided internet access to Europe and Asia.
Cable-cutting device
In March Chinese researchers detailed a deep-sea cable-cutting device that could threaten critical communications networks during times of crisis.
While the device was developed for civilian us in salvage or seabed mining, it is also capable of cutting armored cables at depths of up to 4,000 metres, twice the maximum operational depth of existing subsea communications infrastructure, according to local media reports.
It is designed for integration with China’s crewed and uncrewed submersibles, the largest fleet of its kind in the world Chinese media said at the time.