As power flows through submarine cables, law of the sea must evolve
The global commons of the seabed is in effect being governed by private actors with the capital and tech to build and maintain cable systems
Beneath the surface of the world’s oceans lies an infrastructure so essential, modern life would stall without it – yet so invisible it rarely enters public debate. Submarine cables, slender fibre-optic systems laid across the seabed, carry over 95 per cent of global internet traffic, transmitting the data that underpins financial markets, diplomatic exchanges and everyday communication.
Unclos was negotiated in a pre-digital era, when the ocean was primarily understood through the lenses of territory, navigation and resource extraction. It enshrines the freedom to lay submarine cables across the seabed, including areas beyond national jurisdiction. It did not anticipate a world in which these cables would evolve into dense, privately owned digital arteries.
Today, they are increasingly controlled not by states, but by powerful corporations whose infrastructural reach rivals sovereign authority. The result is a paradox: the seabed, legally open as a global commons, is functionally governed by those with the capital and technological capacity to build and maintain cable systems.