Subsea cable projects owned by US companies such as Google and Meta face some of the greatest risks from the threat of deep-sea sabotage in the Pacific Ocean, according to a new report. That coincides with Chinese research ships spending an extraordinary amount of time apparently surveying undersea cables—not to mention Chinese commercial ships being investigated for cutting cables in both European and Asian waters.

Most damage to the undersea cables that form the Internet’s backbone is the result of accidents involving bottom-trawling fishing nets and ship anchors dragging on the seabed, with storms and undersea landslides also factoring in. But the recent rise in international tensions and open conflicts have placed new scrutiny on more suspicious instances of cable-cutting damage, with analysts warning about Russia and China in particular engaging in cable sabotage or tampering as “gray zone” tactics that fall short of direct military confrontation.

One of the newest risk assessments of China’s gray zone tactics targeting the Internet’s undersea infrastructure comes from a research report published by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an independent government commission that advises Congress. The report was contracted to the London-based think tank China Strategic Risks Institute and published in September 2026.

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Despite the expansion of Starlink and other communications satellite services, most of the world’s Internet traffic still travels through subsea cables crisscrossing the ocean floors. Those fiber-optic cables coexist with a network of oil and gas pipelines and submarine power cables—and all these crucial links connecting countries and continents now face growing sabotage risks as gray-zone warfare and open conflicts have become widespread.

The rising risks to the world’s invisible infrastructure beneath the waves are the main subject of a new book by Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who leads the Threats to the Global Maritime Order Initiative. Her book, titled Undersea War, explores the modern rise in suspicious incidents in which ships dragging their anchors for unusually long periods have cut or damaged undersea cables and pipelines, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean.

Braw acknowledges that about 60 percent of undersea cable damage is primarily due to human error during fishing and shipping activities, when weighted nets or anchors drag across the seabed. Natural hazards like storms and undersea landslides also account for a smaller proportion of such incidents. In total, between 150 and 200 cables are damaged each year and usually repaired quickly.

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