According to NATO intelligence officials, if Russia chose to do so, some of the services we take for granted in our daily lives could easily be disrupted. Analysts believe that Russia is already planning and developing further strategies to jam internet and Global Positioning System (GPS) networks around the world.
Analysts believe Russia is mapping the undersea fiber-optic cables that transmit data between continents. Officials speculate that Russia may already be conducting smaller-scale attacks on communications and GPS networks. NATO believes Russia may be planning to target those networks in retaliation for Western countries supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the warning clear in June after an attack on the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline linking Russia with Germany. Medvedev, who believes the West was behind the attack that blew up the pipeline, said nothing would stop Russia from “destroying the enemy’s undersea cable communications.”
In 2023, a cable running under the Baltic Sea was damaged, disrupting communications between Sweden and Estonia. Russia strongly denied any involvement, but Sweden’s civil defense minister said the damage was the result of “external forces or tampering.”
More recently, Russia has been blamed for an attack on GPS navigation systems that grounded a flight from Helsinki, Finland to Tartu, Estonia for a month in April. Melanie Gerson, an international security expert at University College London, told Business Insider that Russia has long been developing this “cheap and effective method of malign grey-zone interference” without descending into open warfare.
In an increasingly internet-dependent world, the flow of data between continents relies on undersea communications cables. This fiber-optic cable network stretches some 745,000 miles and transmits 95% of international data. These cables have been considered potential military targets for decades, and were monitored by both the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Russia is far less reliant on undersea cables than the rest of the world, thanks to its land-based internet connections to Europe and Central Asia. That makes recent Russian naval and intelligence activity worrying, with Russian spy ships and submarines lurking near undersea cable routes, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In response, NATO countries have stepped up surveillance and patrols in vulnerable areas. NATO itself has stepped up aerial patrols off the coast of Ireland over concerns about Russian submarine activity. NATO is also building a system to automatically warn of attempts to jam maritime fiber-optic cables and reroute communications via satellite.
Unfortunately, Western countries lack backup systems for the undersea fiber optic cable networks and GPS systems that aviation relies on. CSIS called on the United States to step up international cooperation to better coordinate responses to potential attacks on these critical infrastructures, and for the rest of the world to work to develop robust alternatives to international communications systems.
