Editor’s note: The following is a sponsored blog post from QA.
Hidden under the oceans and absent from our thoughts, subsea cables have been viewed as an invisible part of our global telecommunications ecosystem. These fiber-optic arteries quietly carried the data flows that silently enable globalization, digital transformation, financial markets, cloud computing and the AI revolution. Today, most major AI ecosystems (let alone global supply chains) rely on them and every sovereign AI strategy will depend upon them in some way.
I’m reminded of a recent prolonged weekend power outage at home, as we descended into digital darkness still reflected by the candle wax on some of our most played boardgames. If only we could be certain power and digital connectivity could be guaranteed.
As the world enters an era of persistent geopolitical competition, the seabed is a quietly contested domain where economic security, national resilience, technological advantage and state power converge. The nations that recognize this shift first will be better positioned to secure not only their networks, but the strategic foundations upon which their future digital sovereignty depends.
The race for sovereignty
Governments across Europe, North America, the Gulf and the Indo-Pacific are investing billions in sovereign cloud infrastructure, hyperscale data centers, advanced semiconductors and domestic AI capabilities. Policymakers now view AI as a strategic asset capable of influencing economic competitiveness, military advantage, technological leadership and national resilience.
While we focus on AI-specific processors (GPUs), large language models (LLMs) and compute infrastructure, a critical dependency remains at risk. AI sovereignty is almost impossible without connectivity sovereignty.
As geopolitical competition intensifies and grey-zone security operations becomes an increasingly common feature of international relations, subsea cable networks aren’t just commercial infrastructure – they are vital strategic assets. Governments, intelligence agencies, defense planners and critical infrastructure operators are acknowledging a reality that’s long been understood: the global digital economy is built upon physical infrastructure that remains remarkably exposed.
The issue is not simply that subsea cables can be damaged or go dark. Bear in mind that 95% of all intercontinental digital traffic is reliant on this invisible ocean floor network. Cable faults occur regularly and operators have developed sophisticated repair and resilience mechanisms. The strategic concern emerges when cable disruptions become deliberate, coordinated or politically motivated. Or, dare I say, all three at the same time.
The grey-zone competition
Across the Atlantic, Baltic Sea, Red Sea and waters surrounding Taiwan, concerns have grown regarding damage to subsea infrastructure and the vulnerability of critical digital networks. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) designed to provide a legal framework for protection of subsea cables is no longer fit for purpose, even if it wasn’t ever ratified by the US. While most cable faults continue to result from fishing activity, anchors and natural events, distinguishing sabotage from accident is often less difficult than it first appears. Investigators look for indicators such as vessels disabling tracking systems, anomalous navigation patterns near cable routes, suspicious communications activity and coordinated disruptions affecting multiple cables across a wide geographic area.
Governments and security agencies are now increasingly focused on a different threat: the deliberate intention to disrupt subsea infrastructure (as seen in UK waters in April this year) operating below the threshold of conventional conflict.
Unlike kinetic attacks against military installations or critical infrastructure, subsea cable incidents present unique challenges. While concrete attribution can be difficult, intentions remain contested and responses are often constrained by legal and necessary (but often frustrating) diplomatic vagueness. Under international law, enforcement action often rests with the vessel's flag state, creating opportunities for hostile actors to operate through proxy ships and flags of convenience while maintaining plausible deniability and limiting accountability. For adversaries seeking to impose costs without triggering conventional military escalation, this ambiguity creates opportunity and makes subsea infrastructure very attractive.
For those seeking leverage, connectivity disruption offers an asymmetric opportunity. Rather than attacking highly protected data centers, government networks, or military facilities, hostile actors may target the infrastructure connecting them. If they wanted to disrupt AI (or any digital) sovereign strategic intent, they may seek to degrade the physical networks upon which those systems depend.
Strategic rivalries influence cable routing decisions, landing station investments, equipment suppliers and repair permissions. In contested regions such as the South China Sea, the ability to delay, deny or influence cable deployment and maintenance can create leverage without requiring military confrontation, ahead of potentially turning Taiwan digitally dark.
For national security leaders, this should prompt a reassessment of what constitutes critical infrastructure. Resilience can no longer be measured solely through cyber controls, data backups or cloud redundancy. AI workloads, global supply chains and financial networks depend on the high-capacity, low-latency connectivity provided by subsea fiber-optic cables. While satellites can provide resilience and coverage, they cannot currently match the bandwidth, latency or cost-efficiency required to support the scale of modern data flows.
Finally, a shift in policy and investment
Across Europe, North America and the Indo-Pacific, governments are beginning to treat subsea infrastructure in much the same way they treat energy grids, transportation systems and defense industrial assets. The British government has recently examined how legal reforms and resilience measures can strengthen protections around critical undersea infrastructure.
The coastal states of the Baltic and North Sea (Baltic Sentry), led through the UK, issued a statement focused on closing the legal gaps that currently allow subsea sabotage to occur without consequence. It must also encompass route diversity, landing station protection and provide international cooperation mechanisms capable of responding to emerging threats below the waterline.
The European Defence Fund is investing in a new generation of layered seabed security capabilities designed to protect critical infrastructure including subsea cables, pipelines, offshore energy assets, and ports. The initiative, which it calls PESCO Critical Seabed Infrastructure Protection (CSIP) reflects a growing recognition that the seabed has become a contested operational domain, requiring persistent monitoring, rapid response and integrated deterrence against both conventional and grey-zone threats.
In the U.S., the proposed Strategic Subsea Cables Act of 2026 views subsea infrastructure as a national security priority rather than a telecommunications issue. The various legislation endeavors (better late than never, as they say) aim to strengthen deterrence, international coordination, intelligence sharing and resilience against state-backed threats targeting the digital sovereign foundations of modern economies.
Organizations such as ingeniSPACE (based in Taiwan) now offer governments insights to strengthen the protection of critical subsea infrastructure through enhanced monitoring and maritime domain awareness. This includes the use of autonomous surface systems to detect suspicious activity and emerging grey-zone threats around critical cable routes.
Sovereign AI lens
The strategic implications will become more significant when viewed through the lens of AI and digital sovereignty. Much of the current UK digital policy debate assumes that sovereignty can be achieved through domestic investment in compute capacity, data governance and AI regulation. Yes, these are important but overlook the reality that modern AI ecosystems remain deeply interconnected and globally distributed.
A nation may possess sovereign AI models, sovereign data centers, sovereign regulatory frameworks and sovereign cloud architecture, yet remain vulnerable if the wider geographical networks connecting those assets can be disrupted by external actors.
Connectivity is a strategic dependency, which is further complicated by the evolving ownership structure of global digital infrastructure. Historically, subsea cable networks were primarily developed through very large opaque telecommunications groups, with around two million kilometres of subsea cables, and amplifiers or repeaters sending data vast distances. Today, hyperscale technology companies are the dominant investors and operators, such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, which increasingly control the infrastructure underpinning global data movement, blurring the boundaries between commercial capability and strategic national security infrastructure.
AI sovereignty is a critical component of economic and geopolitical competition. The concentration of digital infrastructure within a small number of private entities introduces new questions regarding resilience, governance, influence and sovereignty for those being left behind.
The issue is no longer simply who owns the data
Do we really know who controls the pathways through which our data moves? This shift is occurring alongside a broader geopolitical transformation. Governments are beginning to recognize the seabed as a contested operational domain. Just as nations invest in cyber defense, space surveillance, and intelligence collection, increasing attention is being directed toward maritime domain awareness, seabed monitoring, cable security and infrastructure resilience.
Iconically, AI-powered maritime surveillance is now capable of ‘listening’ with Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), which turns an ordinary fiber-optic cable into a continuous sensor that can detect vibrations and disturbances along its entire length. From a national security perspective, the significance is substantial. Historically, subsea cables were passive infrastructure. This technology enables those same cables to become part of a broader sensing and monitoring network, providing persistent awareness across large stretches of the seabed without deploying thousands of dedicated sensors. The infrastructure carrying the world’s data is rapidly becoming an intelligence platform.
Connectivity as a strategic weapon
The future of national security will increasingly depend upon what happens beneath the surface for many nations. This evolution marks the emergence of what may become the next critical dimension of sovereignty. The past two decades were defined by concerns over digital sovereignty, and the next decade is likely to be shaped by questions of AI sovereignty, while both will depend on connectivity sovereignty.
In my mind, subsea infrastructure will continue to be targeted and test our collective resolve, whether nations are prepared or not. In a world where connectivity is a strategic critical national asset, resilience (not statements on AI sovereignty) will determine who maintains their national security advantage when our adversaries attempt to turn connectivity into a strategic weapon.
