AT SEA, CHINA - JUNE 22: Pipes are sent underwater on June 22, 2023 in the South China Sea. China on Thursday completed the laying of the 115.5-kilometer underwater oil and gas pipeline for Phase II project of China's first independently-developed deepwater gas field Shenhai-1, or Deep Sea No.1, in the South China Sea. (Photo by Zhang Wujun/VCG via Getty Images)VCG via Getty ImagesUndersea cables and pipelines are a part of critical infrastructure in the modern world under an increasing threat. More than 95% of international internet traffic travels through undersea fiber-optic cables, connecting virtually every major digital service. Companies including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and many telecommunications providers invest directly in subsea cables to support demand that affects our daily lives. Similarly, undersea pipelines transport enormous volumes of natural gas and oil between nations. Entire countries may depend on a handful of undersea pipelines to sustain their energy consumption. This hidden infrastructure is increasingly coming under attack, yet the West – including the U.S. – is being slow to respond. Baltic BeginningsThe Baltic Sea, bordered by Scandinavia, northeastern Europe, and Russia, has become a hotbed of undersea sabotage. The opening salvo in this silent battle may have been launched by the West. In September 2022, the Nord Stream Pipeline, which was being built to ship Russian gas to Germany and other European countries, supplying significant portions of the Western, Central, and Southern European gas grid, mysteriously exploded. Several times. Nord Stream had long been a controversial project. Critics, including this author, argued, that it would increase the dependency of both Germany and the rest of Europe on Russian energy. At the same time, it put Germany in the spotlight for its planned participation with Russia in weakening Europe’s already shaky energy security, as the Kremlin deliberately deprived Eastern European countries, particularly Ukraine, of both transit revenue and the leverage gained through overland transit rights. After the explosion which “killed” Nordstream, a few countries alleged sabotage, and a round of finger pointing ensued. While nothing has been definitively proven, in late June 2026 a Ukrainian man was charged by a German court for the act and a second Ukrainian suspect was arrested on August 19th.MORE FOR YOUThe ocean is the perfect place for sabotage with plausible deniability as it is almost impossible to patrol and police. The Baltic Sea is an easy target: shallow waters, averaging about 180 feet deep, and numerous pipelines and cables close enough to the surface that any of the roughly 4,000 vessels that cross the region daily can reach them. Ten subsea cables connecting the region have been cut since 2022, with seven of those incidents occurring between November 2024 and January 2025 alone. This isn’t a simple story about Russian retaliation for Nord Stream. In October 2023, the Baltic connector gas pipeline and two data cables connecting Finland, Estonia, and Sweden were damaged by a Chinese vessel that dragged its anchor for over 100 miles. Beijing denied involvement. Ten months later, it admitted the ship was responsible, and blamed the weather. How convenient…The cuts kept coming. On November 17, 2024, a cable connecting Sweden and Lithuania was severed, cutting a fifth of Lithuania’s internet capacity. Less than a day later, a second cable linking Finland and Germany was cut too. Investigators traced both incidents to a Chinese-flagged ship that had just left a Russian port. On December 25, 2024, a Russian oil tanker dragged its anchor nearly 62 miles across the seabed, severing four more cables. Great Powers, Great SabotageThe Baltic Sea is not an isolated theater. The same vulnerability appears in other strategic waterways, although the perpetrators and their motives vary. Taiwan may be the clearest example of what deliberate undersea cable disruption could look like during a great-power confrontation. In February 2023, two submarine cables connecting Taiwan to the Matsu Islands were severed within days of each other, leaving approximately 14,000 residents with severely degraded communications for weeks. With both cables severed, residents were forced to rely on microwave transmission for basic connectivity. Banking, government services, commerce, and ordinary communications were all degraded. Taiwanese authorities identified a Chinese fishing vessel and a Chinese cargo ship as the likely causes, although they stopped short of conclusively determining that the damage was deliberate. The frequency of incidents involving Chinese vessels, however, has made accidental explanations increasingly difficult to dismiss.The incidents continued. In January 2025, Taiwan investigated the Chinese-crewed the Shunxin 39 after an international cable was damaged near the island. In February 2025, the Chinese-crewed, Togo-flagged the Hong Tai 58 was detained after another cable was damaged off southwestern Taiwan. Taiwan eventually charged the ship’s Chinese captain with intentionally damaging the cable, the first such prosecution on the island. China denied involvement and accused Taiwan of politicizing the incident before the facts were established.If these incidents are deliberate, Beijing has an obvious motive. Cutting a cable is not an act of war in the conventional sense, although it is an increasingly vital part of asymmetric warfare. It does not require a missile launch, a blockade, or a military landing. It simply creates uncertainty and imposes costs. Taiwan's dependence on a limited number of physical connections means that even temporary disruption can degrade military communications, economic activity, and public confidence. Undersea TerrorismYou don’t need to be a great power to attack undersea infrastructure. The Red Sea demonstrates a different model. The perpetrators are much less ambiguous: Yemen’s Houthi terrorists, with their slogan “Allah is the Greatest; Death to America; Death to Israel; A Curse upon the Jews; Victory to Islam!” have attacked commercial shipping throughout the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden on the open sea as part of their campaign, which they most recently connected to solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. What is less clear is whether the Houthis are targeting undersea cables themselves.In February 2024, three submarine cables were damaged in the Red Sea after a Houthi missile attack on the cargo ship the Rubymar. The vessel was subsequently abandoned and sank, and its dragging anchor was the likely cause of the cable damage. The incident disrupted communications between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. That distinction is important because the Houthis may not have needed to deliberately cut a single cable. Their attacks on shipping created the conditions for cables to be torn as collateral damage. In dense maritime chokepoints such as Bab el-Mandeb, a strike against a commercial vessel can become an attack on the global communications system without the attacker ever having to locate a cable. 17% of global internet traffic traverses the Red Sea’s southern exit.The Persian Gulf presents an even more consequential vulnerability, although circumstances diverge. No comparable series of confirmed deliberate cable-cutting incidents are attributable to Iran. What exists instead is a strategic chokepoint filled with infrastructure, bordered by a state that has both the capability and the incentive to threaten Western interests. Iran has already made the threat explicit. In February 2026, IRGC threatened to disrupt the cables. In May 2026, an Iranian military spokesman warned that Tehran would impose fees on internet cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Later the anti-regime Iran Times warned that if anything happened to cables in the Strait, it "could affect banking networks, military communications, AI cloud systems, online services, and global commerce." Two major cables, FALCON and Gulf Bridge International, run through the Iranian waters. Disrupting them would be easy.Washington Hasn’t Caught Up to the ThreatEven though 90 to 95 percent of U.S. government communications flow through privately-owned subsea cables, the country still lacks a coherent national strategy for protecting them. Congress needs to give the Pentagon, the Intelligence Community, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the authority to treat cable security like the national security issue it is, not a permitting afterthought. The White House should create a single federal point of contact for cable security, something the fragmented current process still lacks.The ocean floor has quietly become one of the most contested battlegrounds on the planet. A dragged anchor doesn’t trigger a NATO Article 5 response, and that’s exactly why it works. Until the U.S. begins treating the sabotage of undersea energy and communications cables with the urgency they require, the ocean floor will remain a weak spot in the broader U.S. and global national security picture.