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soapbox The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat—Michael Matis Cmdr. Michael Ma- tis is a naval reserv- ist deployed to the Horn of Africa after graduating from the U.S. Army War Col- lege in June 2012. He holds a bachelor's in marine engineering from Massachusetts Maritime Academy and a master's in orga- nizational dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania. In his civilian career, he was an assistant professor in the war gaming de- partment at the U.S. Naval War College. M any people around the world be- lieve that their e-mails and phone calls are being sent through satellites. They are mistaken: Satellites account for less than 5 percent of this mes- sage traffic. Undersea cables provide 95 percent of the world's international voice and data traffic. As vital infra- structure, this global communication system runs the global economy. About 150 years ago, the first com- mercial international submarine cable was laid between Dover, England, and Calais, France. In 1858, the first trans- atlantic telegraph cable linked Lon- don with the New World, via New- foundland, Canada. The message, 143 words transmitted in 10 hours, sur- passed a one-way dispatch that would have taken about 12 days by inland telegraph and fast steamer. In the past 25 years, the Internet has sparked a communications revolution that has fostered a stunning growth of undersea cables. This demand is ex- pected to increase across the globe. The United States and Europe are not the only players in this communication revolution: China, India, Brazil and Africa are seeking more bandwidth for communication access. Financial markets utilize undersea cables to transfer trillions of dollars daily. In 2004, 9 million messages and approximately $7.4 trillion a day was traded on cables transmitting data among 208 countries, according to "Cyberspace in Deep Water: Protect ing Undersea Commun ications Ca bles," a policy paper that was presented to the Department of Home land Security in 2010. Undersea cables play a critical role in global commerce and commu- nication, and are also instrumental in U.S. national security. Disruption of submarine cables can cripple the world economy. In 2006, a powerful earthquake off the coast of Southern Taiwan cut nine cables. It took 11 repair ships and 49 days to fix them. This protracted disruption af- fected Internet links, financial markets, banking, airline bookings and gen- eral communications in China, Hong Kong, India, Singa pore, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and the United States. The Inter national Cable Pro tection Com mittee estimated interruptions of undersea cable communications sys- tems have a financial impact in excess of $1.5 million per hour. Although hundreds of cables cross global seabeds, this network lacks suffi- cient redundancies to assume uninter- rupted communications. In turn, there is little regulation of the allocation of the vast amount of bandwidth needed to access this network that is mostly owned and operated by the commer- cial sector. The U.S. government does not own and operate its own undersea cable system but instead relies on the commercial market for access to the network. Cable repair vessels are designed specifically to lay and repair cables, which typically have the diameter of a garden hose. As expensive and chal- lenging marine operations that require highly trained crews and engineers, cable repairs are not directed by na- tional governments, who rely on con- tracts to carry out repairs. If these cables were inadvertently cut or damaged, the global Internet would not function. They are vulnerable to man-made and natural disruptions. The global community needs an overarch- ing organization to coordinate informa- tion sharing among the various entities tasked to minimize cable disruptions. World leaders must formulate an agreed on international, tiered scheme to pro- tect undersea cable routes based on a viable grid restoration plan. A new undersea cable construction regulatory regime could be modeled on the Maritime Safety and Security Information System (MSSIS), which www.sea-technology.com was developed by the U.S. Navy Com- mand Sixth Fleet and the U.S. Depart- ment of Transportation's Volpe Center. This unclassified, multinational, freely shared AIS network tracks the global traffic of merchant ships. By sharing data on vessel locations near undersea cables, the 69 MSSIS participant countries have access to a picture of the maritime domain that far exceeds the data they can gather alone. MSSIS is a data aggregator that gathers real-time streams of data and combines them into a single stream. In addition to operating and maintaining the MSSIS network, the Volpe Center provides the client software Transview (TV32) free to users. What sets the MSSIS apart from ex- isting AIS networks is that it provides users with enhanced maritime domain awareness capabilities. MSSIS is a dip- lomatic tool that helps foster coopera- tion among nations in the larger goal of increasing the safety and security of the world's oceans. With a system similar to MSSIS, undersea cable consortiums would be able to share data freely on cable locations through an open exchange. Such a system would enhance inter- national cooperation and strengthen cable security. A system based on the MSSIS model could prevent and miti- gate cable damage. It could coordinate responses among cable repair ships, commercial and government entities when cables are damaged. The challenge in implementing such a system for the cable industry is that MSSIS is only available to gov- ernment agencies, and having gov- ernment control of cables is not the answer. The industry could serve as the enabler for participants to achieve maritime security through exchanges of information and best practices be- tween national governments and cable owners, as some members may have few resources to provide their own security. The resulting benefit is that participants from emerging economies have a greater stake in securing their own undersea cables, leading to more favorable conditions for cable security at a fraction of the cost of individual command and control systems. n SEPTEMBER 2012 / st 89