The Internet’s
Undersea Cables
99% of international internet traffic travels through cables on the ocean floor. Not satellites. Not wireless. Thin threads of glass, lying in the dark, 8,000 meters below the surface — and civilization depends on them entirely.
Major submarine cable routes and landing stations. Each line represents one or more cable systems. Thickness indicates data capacity.
Selected major systems by capacity, route, and ownership. Capacity in terabits per second (Tbps).
| Cable System | Capacity | Length | Owner Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2Africa UK → 33 African + Middle East landings Meta / Consortium | 180 Tbps | 45,000 km | 2024 |
| Dunant Virginia Beach → Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, France Google | 250 Tbps | 6,400 km | 2020 |
| Curie Los Angeles → Chile, Panama, Peru Google | 72 Tbps | 10,500 km | 2020 |
| SEA-ME-WE 6 France → Singapore via Middle East Consortium | 100 Tbps | 19,200 km | 2025 |
| Echo / Bifrost US West Coast → Singapore (two routes) Meta / Google | 144 Tbps | 15,000 km | 2024 |
| PEACE Pakistan → Kenya, France via Middle East China-backed | 96 Tbps | 15,000 km | 2022 |
| Marea Virginia Beach → Bilbao, Spain Microsoft / Meta | 200 Tbps | 6,600 km | 2017 |
| Jupiter US West Coast → Japan, Philippines Amazon / SoftBank | 60 Tbps | 14,500 km | 2020 |
Four categories of threat to the global cable network — from accidental to deliberate.
When you send a message from London to New York, the data does not travel through the air. It does not bounce off a satellite in orbit. It travels through a cable thinner than a garden hose, lying on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, at depths of up to 8,000 meters — in absolute darkness, under pressures that would crush an unprotected human instantly.
The global internet runs on 530 active undersea cable systems stretching 1.4 million kilometers — enough to wrap the Earth 35 times. This infrastructure is the actual physical backbone of the modern world economy. Financial markets. Cloud computing. Streaming services. Diplomatic communications. Military command systems. All of it flows through these cables.
“A single point on the map — the Strait of Malacca — carries cables connecting Europe, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and Australia simultaneously. It is the most critical chokepoint in the global internet.”
Who Owns the Internet’s Infrastructure
The 2024 Baltic Cable Incidents
In late 2024, two undersea cables in the Baltic Sea — the C-Lion1 cable connecting Finland and Germany, and the BCS East-West Interlink cable connecting Lithuania and Sweden — were severed within days of each other. Investigations pointed to anchor drag from a vessel suspected of acting deliberately. No formal attribution was made publicly.
The incidents accelerated a shift in how governments and militaries think about undersea infrastructure. NATO announced a dedicated undersea infrastructure protection initiative. The EU fast-tracked legislation classifying submarine cables as critical infrastructure. Several countries began examining whether their internet connectivity had adequate redundancy to survive deliberate attack.
The uncomfortable answer, for most countries, was no.
The undersea cable network is one of the most important and least visible systems in the modern world. It carries 99% of international internet traffic, enables the global financial system, and underpins military command structures — yet most people have never thought about it, and most governments treated it as someone else’s problem until recently.
Three structural shifts are now underway simultaneously. First, the privatization of cable infrastructure into the hands of a small number of technology companies creates both efficiency and concentration risk. Second, the geopolitical competition between the US and China is extending to the ocean floor, with each side moving to exclude the other from critical cable routes. Third, the Baltic incidents have demonstrated that deliberate sabotage of undersea cables is a viable tool of state conflict — with low attribution risk and high strategic impact.
The internet feels wireless. It isn’t. It is glass and copper on the seabed, and the world is beginning to take that seriously for the first time.
