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https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-could-take-out-west-internet-gps-back-up-plan-2024-8
Russia is signaling it could take out the West's internet and GPS.
There's no good backup plan.
Tom Porter Aug 27, 2024, 7:52 AM PDT
Three Russian submarines are spotted in the ocean during training
exercises near Vladivostok in Russia.
Russian submarines training near Vladivostok in 2023. Russia may be
targeting undersea cables that enable global electronic communications.
PAVEL KOROLYOV via Getty Images
Russia is likely mapping underwater internet cables, a NATO official said.
The country is also believed to be behind flight GPS interference.
It's signaling it could wreak havoc with the West's electronic
infrastructure, experts say.
Insider Today
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council,
issued a stark warning in June.
The undersea cables that enable global communications had become a
legitimate target for Russia, he said.
Medvedev's warning came after Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that transfers
gas from Russia to Germany, was blown up. Russian officials believed the
West had been involved in the attack. (Recent reports suggest Ukraine
was actually behind the attack.)
"If we proceed from the proven complicity of Western countries in
blowing up the Nord Streams, then we have no constraints - even moral -
left to prevent us from destroying the ocean floor cable communications
of our enemies," Medvedev posted on Telegram.
Medvedev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has a long
history of making incendiary claims.
But some analysts say this wasn't just another idle threat.
A serious warning
The vast network of undersea fiber-optic cables that transfer data
between continents is indeed vulnerable to hostile powers, including
Russia, the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned in a
report this month.
In May, NATO's intelligence chief David Cattler warned that Russia may
be planning to target the cables in retribution for the West's support
for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
It's a scenario that has NATO's planners increasingly worried.
If the cables are seriously damaged or disabled, swaths of the internet services we take for granted and that our economies rely on, including
calls, financial transactions, and streaming, would be wiped out.
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Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden's minister for civil defense, said damage to a telecommunications cable running under the Baltic Sea in 2023 was the
result of "external force or tampering," though he did not provide details.
And in June, NATO stepped up aircraft patrols off the coast of Ireland
amid concerns about Russian submarine activity, The Sunday Times reported.
The threat to GPS
Security analysts say that the internet is not the only network that
Russia is probing for vulnerabilities.
In recent months, Russia has been accused of interfering with GPS
navigation systems, causing havoc on commercial airline routes. As a
result, flights from Helsinki to Tartu, Estonia, ground to a halt for a
month in April.
Melanie Garson, an international security expert at University College
London, said it was part of Russia's "gray zone" campaign against the
West, which involves covert actions that fall below the threshold of
open warfare.
"Russia has long been developing this capability and it is currently a
cheap and effective way of malicious gray-zone interference," said Garson.
"As we increase our reliance on connectivity and space data in
everything from agriculture to food delivery, disrupting national and
economic security through interfering with subsea cables and GPS becomes increasingly effective," she added.
Fiber optic cables on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.
Fiber-optic cables on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. The vast
network of undersea cables that transfer data between continents is
vulnerable to attack by hostile powers. Sybille Reuter via Getty images
Russia puts the West 'on notice'
For decades, the world has depended on data carried by underwater cables
that run for thousands of miles. In the early 20th century, the cables
carried telegraph signals and later telephone calls.
Robert Dover, a professor of international security at Hull University
in the UK, said the cables have long been seen as potential military
targets, and both the US and USSR surveilled them during the height of
the Cold War.
As the world has become more dependent on the internet, the cables have
become increasingly vital. The cables now span around 745,000 miles and
are responsible for transmitting 95% of international data.
"The growth in electronic communications has made the undersea cables —
vital for international communications, the internet, finance, and so on
— a point of vulnerability for nations who use them extensively and for
those who don't publicly have an obvious fallback position," Dover said.
Similarly, GPS signals are increasingly vital to the airline industry.
They are used to safely guide planes to their destinations and land them.
Planes do have backup navigation systems in the event that GPS fails,
but Baltic officials are warning that disrupted GPS signals can still
put planes in danger.
During its war with Ukraine, Russia has enhanced its already
sophisticated electronic-warfare capabilities, enabling it to remotely
scramble the GPS coordinates used to guide missiles and drones.
That's already affected commercial-aviation GPS in Eastern and Northern
Europe. Some analysts believe that Russia is sending a signal to the West.
"The targeting of civil-aviation GPS is a means by which to undermine
the surety of Western publics in aviation, in particular, and shows the reliance on satellite platforms for ordinary citizens to navigate
around," Dover said.
"It also puts governments on notice about the political risks of mass
transit accidents that have a plausibly deniable cause."
A fence is seen along the border to the Russian semi-exclave of Kaliningrad.
A fence runs along the Lithuanian border with the Russian semi-exclave
of Kaliningrad. Earlier this year, sources of interference were located
near St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, and Pskov. Sean Gallup
A backup plan is urgently needed, says expert
Foreign Policy reported in June that NATO has begun taking more action
to safeguard undersea cables, setting up a system that would
automatically warn of attempted interference.
But Garson said it's not enough, and more government fallback plans are
needed in case the systems fail entirely.
"Countries need to not only take measures to protect but also to make
sure that the communications system is resilient, e.g., with robust alternatives," Garson said.
She said satellites transmitting GPS data often lack safeguards against attempted interference, while the task of protecting undersea cables
often falls on the private companies that own and maintain them.
"It's key to visualize these strategic futures and have a clear
resilience plan that accounts for potential systemic risk and to keep
countries operational if key comms infrastructure is compromised,"
Garson said.
In its report this month, the CSIS called for the US to increase
international cooperation to coordinate a response to a potential attack
on cables.
It said that the current legal and international framework for
undersea-cable sabotage was "complex and fragmented, with different international legal regimes determining responsibility and punishment."
"When cables are sabotaged in international waters, there is no regime
to hold the perpetrator accountable," it said.
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