Opinion | Underwater and unprotected: why Asean and the EU must secure subsea lifelines
With global data at risk from hybrid threats, Southeast Asia and Europe need to look past declarations to secure our shared data arteries
What does the world’s digital economy rest on? Thousands of kilometres of fibre-optic cable lying on the ocean floor and, increasingly, in the crosshairs of great-power rivalry.
The confluence of recent subsea cable disruptions, gaps in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) and intensifying great-power competition has elevated this underwater infrastructure from a technical and commercial concern to a security issue – characterised as “this century’s hidden battleground”. It has also, however, generated momentum for closer Asean–EU collaboration.
Subsea fibre-optic cables carry roughly 99 per cent of intercontinental data traffic, yet this critical infrastructure is highly exposed and has faced repeated disruptions across Europe and the Asia-Pacific.
