Brief
Undersea Cable Geopolitics: Power Below the Waves
Undersea Cable Geopolitics: Power Below the Waves
Internet GovernanceGlobal2024
Roughly 95% of intercontinental data traffic travels through undersea cables, making this physical layer a quiet but decisive site of geopolitical leverage.
Cable landing stations and repair capacity are concentrated among a small number of firms and states, creating chokepoints that rarely appear in digital sovereignty debates.
Recent cable-cutting incidents have prompted calls for a binding international protection regime, though jurisdictional overlap in international waters complicates enforcement.
States increasingly treat cable route diversification as a national security priority, reshaping investment patterns away from pure commercial logic.