Senators want Biden administration review of undersea cable vulnerabilities

More than 95 per cent of international internet traffic travels on undersea cables and the locations of the cables are often openly published to prevent accidental damage.

The United States for years has expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and potential for espionage.

More than 400 subsea cables form the backbone of the internet, carrying more than 95 per cent of the world’s data traffic.

In 2020, Federal Communications Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said the agency “must ensure that adversary countries and other hostile actors can’t tamper with, block, or intercept the communications they carry”.

The senators, including Marco Rubio, Brian Schatz, Tim Kaine and Dan Sullivan, said ensuring internet traffic security must be a national priority and raised a number of questions including what is the “administration’s overall strategy to guarantee the security of America’s undersea infrastructure and to promote the security of that of our allies and partners?”