An undersea fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged on Sunday, likely as a result of external influence, Latvia said, triggering an investigation by local and NATO maritime forces in the Baltic Sea:
"We have determined that there is most likely external damage and that it is significant," Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina told reporters following an extraordinary government meeting.
Latvia is coordinating with NATO and the countries of the Baltic Sea region to clarify the circumstances, she said separately in a post on X.
Latvia's navy earlier on Sunday said it had dispatched a patrol boat to inspect a ship and that two other vessels were also subject to investigation.
From Zerohedge's coverage:
Over the past 18 months, three alarming incidents have been reported in which commercial ships traveling to or from Russian ports are suspected of severing undersea cables in the Baltic region.
Washington Post recently cited Western officials who said these cable incidents are likely maritime accidents - not sabotage by Russia and/or China.
Due to all the cable severing risks, intentional and unintentional, a report from late November via TechCrunch [linked by submitter] said Meta planned a new "W" formation undersea cable route around the world to "avoid areas of geopolitical tension."
Related:
- NATO Plans to Build Satellite Links as Backups to Undersea Cables
- Finnish Investigators Discover Anchor Drag Marks of "Almost a Hundred Kilometers" in Cable Case
- Undersea Power Cable Connecting Finland And Estonia Experiences Outage Capacity Reduced To 35%
- Two Undersea Internet Cables Connecting Finland and Sweden to Europe Have Been Cut
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EU leaders suspect sabatoge:
An internet cable connecting Finland to Germany and another one between Lithuania and Sweden, both running under the Baltic Sea, were cut within 24 hours of one another. While accidental damage on undersea cables happens, CNN says these are rare events. So, the disruption of two cables around 65 miles apart and happening nearly simultaneously is a sign of sabotage, says German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
"Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed," said Pistorius. "We have to know that, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a hybrid action, and we also have to assume that, without knowing by whom yet, that this is sabotage." The Finnish and German foreign ministers have also issued a joint statement, saying, "The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicious of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times." They also add, "Our European security is not only under threat from Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors."
These events came a few months after NATO warned that Russia was developing strategies to disrupt the global internet, with the latter mapping undersea fiber optic cables as future reference. Right before the suspected sabotage occurred, the US government also recently allowed Ukraine to use some long-range US weapons to attack targets in the Kursk region inside Russia, enflaming tensions further and heightening suspicions of Russian involvement.
[...] Despite these attacks, internet disruption remains limited. Telia Lithuania, the company that runs the Lithuania-Sweden cable, says that the damaged cable handled about a third of Lithuania's internet capacity but that traffic has already been restored even though the cable is yet to be repaired. Cinia, the company behind Finland-Germany fiber optic cable, also confirmed that service through that line was down. It also said that its telecommunications network is run through multiple links, thus limiting disruption.
Update 11/20/2024 03:38 PT: The Danish Navy has boarded and detained the Chinese Bulk Carrier Yi Peng 3 in the Danish Straits, near the exit of the Great Belt, according to reports in Eurasia Daily and Defence24. The detention reportedly took place on the evening of November 18. Officials have not verified those reports, however. According to Financial Times sources, Swedish authorities are "carefully studying the Chinese vessel."
Related:
- Opinion: What's Really Up With Data Disconnects in the Deep Blue Sea?
- UK Official Warns of Russian Risk to Undersea Cables
- Could Russian Subs Stop the Internet?
Undersea Power Cable Connecting Finland And Estonia Experiences Outage Capacity Reduced To 35%
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Sabotage isn’t ruled out yet.
Estlink 2, an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia, has unexpectedly been disrupted at around 12:26 pm local time (10:26 am GMT) on Christmas Day. While Finland Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that the outage hasn’t affected the country’s power supply, Reuters said that it did reduce the availability capacity between the two countries to 358 megawatts from its designed 1,106-megawatt installed capacity. The incident comes after the suspected sabotage of two undersea internet cables that connect Finland and Sweden to the rest Europe.
At the time of the incident, some 658 megawatts of power have been flowing from Finland to Estonia, says Finnish national electricity transmission operator Fingrid. Estonia’s electricity transmission operator Elering has also acknowledged the incident but is yet to report any disruption in its electrical supply.
There are two undersea power cables between Finland and Estonia—Estlink 1, which is west of Helsinki and Tallinna and has a capacity of 350 megawatts, and Estlink 2, which lies east of both cities and has a larger capacity of 650 megawatts. Finnish public broadcaster Yle says that Estlink 2 was unserviceable for several months earlier this year as it was undergoing maintenance, but the connection has since been restored in September. Because of this, Fingrid Operations Manager Arto Pahkin said that action by external forces could not be discounted.
“The possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out. However, we are examining the situation as a whole and will provide information once the cause is identified,” says Pahkin. He also said, “An investigation into the incident has been initiated.” Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo also weighed in on the matter, saying on X (formerly Twitter) (machine translated), “Authorities are still on standby over Christmas and are investigating the matter.”
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) discovered anchor drag marks on the seabed after mapping it from start to finish. However, Finnish news outlet Helsingin Sanomat reports that the authorities are still looking for the anchor that caused the damage. NBI Detective Chief Inspector Sami Paila says, “So far, a possible anchor detachment point has not been confirmed.”
The investigation focuses on the Eagle S, suspected of dragging its anchor on Christmas Day to cut the Estlink 2 power cable and several other internet and communications cables connecting Finland and Estonia. Authorities have already boarded the ship, but its anchor is reportedly missing. The authorities then sailed the Eagle S into Finland's territorial waters. They moved it to an even more secure anchorage in Svartbäck to facilitate the investigation, with other ships restricted from approaching the ship to maintain security. Its crew has also remained aboard for further questioning, with Finnish Customs authorities also looking into its cargo.
“The vessel’s captain and crew have remained on board and active during the move [from its original stopping point]. Once anchored, we will resume investigative procedures, focusing on whether this ship caused the damage,” said Helsinki Police Superintendent Heikki Porola to Finland’s national broadcasting company Yle.
The investigators discovered anchor drag marks on the seabed just a day after moving the ship. “East of that point, there are several tens of kilometers [of dragging], if we are not talking about almost a hundred kilometers,” says Paila. He added, “The track ends where the ship lifted the anchor chain.”
Because of this, Finland is adding aggravated telecommunications interference to the charges against the Eagle S and its crew. This is in addition to the initial aggravated arson charge and the aggravated regulation offense that Finland customs is investigating regarding the oil cargo it carries.
Sources say the Eagle S is part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” a collection of poorly maintained ships with murky ownership and registration that the country uses to circumvent sanctions and smuggle its oil exports despite the embargoes.
This is the second such incident in the last two months. In mid-November, a Chinese vessel, Yi Peng 3, is suspected of cutting undersea cables connecting Lithuania to Sweden and Germany to Finland. Underwater cameras also revealed drag marks that coincided with the vessel's maneuvers, further proving that it dragged its anchor to cause the damage.
Related:
• Undersea Power Cable Connecting Finland And Estonia Experiences Outage Capacity Reduced To 35%
• Chinese Ship's Crew Suspected of Deliberately Dragging Anchor for 100 Miles to Cut Baltic Cables
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Because of the increasing number of undersea cable disruptions happening in the past couple of years, NATO is building on a system that will locate damage to undersea cables with an accuracy of one meter and find more routes that data can take if a disruption does occur in a particular line. This project will be called HEIST, says the IEEE in a report, which stands for Hybrid Space-Submarine Architecture Ensuring Infosec of Telecommunications.
The value of transactions transmitted through undersea cables exceeds $10 trillion in total, with Henric Johnson, the vice-chancellor of Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) and HEIST testbed coordinator, saying, “What we’re talking about now is critical infrastructure in the society.” BTH, located in Karlskrona, near the southern coast of Sweden, is one of the partners in the HEIST program. Engineers will work there to develop smart systems that allow cable breaks to be quickly located and develop protocols to quickly and automatically reroute the affected data to satellites.
“We have had incidents of cables that have been sabotaged between Sweden, Estonia, and Finland,” added Johnson. “So those incidents are, for us, a reality.”
Although it may seem that undersea cables are tough infrastructure because of the environment they’re in, these intercontinental connections are very fragile. That’s because these cables, about the thickness of a garden hose, lie on the seafloor instead of being buried underneath. Anything dragging on the ocean floor—a sea creature, a loose anchor, or a submarine—could easily damage or even sever these communications cables.
This shows how fragile our internet-driven world is, especially given that over 95% of global data traffic is carried through these undersea fiber optics. About a hundred cable cuts happen each year, with about 600 undersea cables globally, meaning that about 16% of global connections are down yearly. Although there are specially designed ships stationed worldwide to repair faults as soon as they happen, these often take days or weeks and could cost millions of dollars.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Username on Thursday January 30, @03:39PM (14 children)
They should just drill across the shipping channel, or change the shape of the cable so it cannot be snagged, or bury it, or something else besides doing the same thing and crying when it happens again.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Thursday January 30, @05:10PM (11 children)
The average depth of the Baltic is only 55m [johnnurmisensaatio.fi] and just over 400m at the deepest point. Cables and pipelines are going to be accessible from surface ships and their anchors. That's just the reality. Now maybe they could lay a trip-guard like shield over every centimeter of cable or pipeline but that will make the costs exorbitantly high while maybe not shielding sufficiently. The pipes are going to stick up, regardless. Maybe making laying the new cables encased in such a shield would be feasible, if the cost is within reach. Any data on how well it works?
The siltiest parts are still only about 40% silt [marinefinland.fi] with the rest being bedrock or a little hard clay. So digging is out for almost all of it. In the few areas with soft silt, a heavy anchor will be dragged deep into the silt by its flukes anyway. So, I'd predict that burying in silt would offer little benefit for the high cost.
A ban on dodgy ships would work, for now, but that'd have to be enforced near the entrance around Kattegat or at the entrance of Øresund at the latest. Even if there is political will and enough unity to do so, it will be a tall order given the problematic neighbor to the east.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday January 30, @05:41PM (5 children)
As noted this would make laying undersea cables explode in cost. It might still be worth it, at least for some cables if not all.
A ban on dodgy ships with poor insurance being blocked to enter the Baltic. That is an idea. Technically it would be possible. But it would also collide with various conventions regarding the strait and borders between Sweden and Denmark. As it is now as far as shipping is concerned it's an international waterway even tho depending on the point you are at you are either in Sweden or Denmark. But the strait is about 120 km long and the width at some points is quite narrow, only about four km. So technically Sweden and Denmark could just agree to close the whole thing down if they wanted to. It's probably not going to be received well as it would cut water access to a lot of countries including Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Germany could probably still sneak in via Kiel but they wouldn't like it either. But mostly Russia would blow their lid about it. Which is the source of the entire problem, cause they clearly don't give a shit about all these rust-buckets they use to traffic to and from them. But perhaps some alteration that all ships entering need to have extra anchor and cable insurance to cover any associated costs with any sort of undersea damage they create "by accident". After all some of these ships are in such poor condition they are not even worth the cost of salvage and they won't cover the cost of the damage they create.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Thursday January 30, @05:51PM (4 children)
Well a slow and rather weak approach would be to play whack-a-mole through applying sanctions to the individual shipping companies involved. There's just too many companies passing their rusty scows through the Baltic for that to be for anything other than show. Even then they would lose little when a low-value ship are intercepted on their way to the scrapyard.
Right now the EU is doing everything possible to de-escalate, but belligerents are working overtime to maneuver either individual nations or the EU as a whole into a corner.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30, @08:47PM (3 children)
Whether this is accidental or malicious, the damage is the same.
Ships entering many harbors and other sensitive / challenging areas are required to take on a locally trained pilot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_pilot [wikipedia.org]
If the costs of cable repairs are high enough, requiring ships transiting the Baltic to either demonstrate competency or take a pilot onboard for the duration is something that could be implemented quickly and relatively cheaply, at least compared to far out ideas like burying or otherwise armoring the cables.
Demonstration of competency could be a simple track record of not having been associated with a cable break issue in the area in the past X years, or possibly posting a cable damage bond and continuous real-time high resolution tracking information. Ships which don't meet those criteria could be required to have a local pilot onboard for the duration of their transit.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday January 31, @03:25PM (2 children)
That's a good idea (tho a bodyguard with the pilot might not go amiss) especially considering one of these ships was outside the established channel at the time of the incident.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31, @10:51PM (1 child)
Oh, yeah, such precautions as are warranted...
Cheaper to put a couple of guys on each suspect ship than it is to steam a destroyer escort on every one. If the guys ever lose radio contact... (potential) instant military response.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday January 31, @11:00PM
Absolutely. And I'll be very surprised if something of the sort doesn't soon become regular practice.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday January 31, @02:31AM (2 children)
More practical would be to fine the living shit out of shipowners for whatever culpability exists (you want your ship back? Pay up), graduated from avoidable maintenance-related accidents up to to deliberate malfeasance, as each case may be.
Analysis by someone with experience as a merchant marine (now teaches at one of the merchant marine academies)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrT1Pl3pR6Y [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WOWpMAQAGs [youtube.com]
With some 2000 ships there at any given time, 4 in a row is probably (mostly) chance, even so it doesn't hurt to target the problem.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Friday January 31, @08:14AM (1 child)
Fining the living shit out of respectable ship owners would have a strong effect, but they would not be in such a position to begin with. These ships are all throw-away rust buckets nearing their last trip and, I gather, mostly owned by throw-away shell companies to boot. It's like with software patents, take one down and an identical new company spins up at the same PO box. Even confiscating the ships will have limited deterrence because the ships are such garbage that the owners don't need much incentive to walk away [apnews.com].
Maybe a prerequisite for entering the Baltic should be proof of good standing and maybe a deposit? It's not like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, or Lithuania are dealing much with throw-away ships. It'd be hard, but they could be intercepted at Kattegat or even Skagerrak. If the latter, Norway would have to be involved too, but they are in NATO. The worst of these unsafe ships pass the full length of the Norwegian coast and pose such a risk that Norway now patrols it long coast with ships capable of being able to pull those scows to sea when they lose power and start to drift towards the Norwegian coast, like they often do.
It's a difficult problem and no matter how you slice it will require fairly broad cooperation at a regional level.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday January 31, @03:14PM
While there are a lot of barely-floating hulks out there that would be better sent to the breaker yards and no loss to anyone, here that was not the case. IIRC, the Chinese vessel is brand new. MV Vezhen was built in 2022.
https://maritimeoptima.com/public/vessels/pages/imo:9937270/mmsi:229659000/VEZHEN.html [maritimeoptima.com]
Lots of photos
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:7148754/mmsi:229659000/imo:9937270/vessel:VEZHEN [marinetraffic.com]
However, I do like Joe Merchant's idea about requiring a pilot if your record is less than spotless. That way there's an official witness (assuming he doesn't "fall overboard"). Deposit is also a good idea. Pinch 'em in the pocketbook, one way or another. I think that would also quickly separate the failing and merely slop-ass (who wouldn't have that money to burn for no purpose and might at least make an effort) from state-funded nefarious actors, who wouldn't much care if you confiscated ship, cargo, and all.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Username on Friday January 31, @03:19PM (1 child)
Dropping rock on top should be enough to bury it. Not a ship guy, but from my experiences there are main shipping channels that make the shortest b-line between ports. Just need to cover those areas. Ships deviating from those channels are obviously trying to wreck something.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday January 31, @03:38PM
As a matter of scale, that would be a bridge abutment depth of rock for many miles, and even heavy stuff dropped into the sea doesn't fall straight down; currents move it, sometimes unpredictably. And something with the mass and momentum of a ship is still going to be able to drag an anchor through it. Great deal of cost and effort, iffy protection, PITA when you need to dredge the channel. There are thousands of these cables worldwide, and at some point every one of them comes into sufficiently shallow water.
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ [submarinecablemap.com]
And yes, one of the culprits was outside the shipping lane at the time of the incident. That happens regardless, but I think now will be a much bigger redflag.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lars_stefan_axelsson on Friday January 31, @11:24AM (1 child)
But this cable was buried! There is a lot of bottom trawling in the area, so the cable was plowed into the bottom to make sure that an unattentive fisherman didn't snag it with the trawl. And that worked well for a very long time.
This of course doesn't matter one bit when someone drags a several meter tall anchor over the bottom.
As has been pointed out many times already, the cables across the Baltic were all fine for decades, and now, all of a sudden, we're having "accident" upon "accident". So what do you mean by "same thing"? And, even if we tried to massively up the protection of new cables, that doesn't help with all the ones that are already there. And that obviously have been fine against accidents for a very long time.
There is no way to protect an installation as massive as an undersea cable from those that are deliberately trying to destroy or damage it. They only have to hit it at one point, while we have to defend its total length. As is true of all other security; you can prevent simple everyday attacks, or accidents, for a reasonable cost, but you will not defend against a concerted effort by a competent attacker. And all these attacks fall into the latter category.
No, the only way to address this is make these attacks economically unattractive. (A situation where "the process is the punishment" could be put to good use.) And, of course, deal with the source.
Stefan Axelsson
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday January 31, @03:46PM
There are about fifty cables across the Baltic (and thousands worldwide), and about 2000 ships in the area at any given time. Statistical chance could easily give us four incidents in a clot, but I think more likely was 3 chance and one taking advantage (two were newish ships, and IIRC the Chinese ship was outside the channel, so wear and tear accident wasn't it). As you say, it's not a defensible target, so making it financially unattractive is a better preventive.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RedGreen on Thursday January 30, @04:04PM (2 children)
In other ground breaking news, bears shit in the woods, tune in at eleven for more of these unbelievable news stories. What a bunch of clowns it is well past time for every ship headed to or leaving from Russia to be followed. If dragging an anchor at any point of the journey then be seized or sunk.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday January 30, @08:01PM (1 child)
I'd be far more surprised if the damage were caused by an internal force, given that the internals are just optical fibres.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30, @09:20PM
Could be internal. How much bullshit can you push into an intertube before you burst it?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30, @08:49PM
I wonder if the W plan will be implemented before geopolitical tensions shift sufficiently to put the W at risk too?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday January 31, @03:21AM
Because as we all know, when someone wants to hurt you, all you need to do is move your stuff out of the way because nobody strays outside of areas of conflict to hurt someone.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Friday January 31, @03:45AM
ZeroHedge is a far-right conspiracy-theory web site, you may as well quote Russia Today for the story, which will no doubt give you the exact opposite view.
By all means report it, but use a reliable source, not a conspiracy-theory site.