War In The "Cognitive Age": China Seeks To "Play" In Yet Another Domain

[Yooper]

CDR Salamander discusses a whopper. Here's a tease:

While people tend think of satellites and cell towers as the heart of the internet, the most vital component is the 380 submerged cables that carry more than 95 percent of all data and voice traffic between the continents. They were built largely by the U.S. and its allies, ensuring that (from a Western perspective, at least) they were “cleanly” installed without built-in espionage capability available to our opponents. U.S. internet giants including Google, Facebook and Amazon are leasing or buying vast stretches of cables from the mostly private consortia of telecom operators that constructed them.

But now the Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies, the leading firm working to deliver 5G telephony networks globally, has gone to sea. Under its Huawei Marine Networks component, it is constructing or improving nearly 100 submarine cables around the world. Last year it completed a cable stretching nearly 4,000 miles from Brazil to Cameroon. (The cable is partly owned by China Unicom, a state-controlled telecom operator.) Rivals claim that Chinese firms are able to lowball the bidding because they receive subsidies from Beijing.

Not at all in my wheelhouse, so this seems very concerning. At least at first glance. More to the story...? In any event, both links (below) are jarring and I was floored.

CDRSalamander (link):
"If Your Economy is Based on Information, at War, Considered it Targeted" points to...

...the referenced Bloomberg Opinion article (link):
"China’s Next Naval Target Is the Internet’s Underwater Cables"
(from where the tease, above, was snipped).

--- End of line (MCP)

 

[GURPS]

would china really want to cut the cables ?

In know we tapped a Soviet Underwater TelCo line during the Cold War .. with device planted by sub

 

[TCROW]

Huawei, and in turn, China is a big threat to and a huge challenge for US foreign policy types right now.

5g in particular is at issue because the Five Eyes countries don’t all agree on proscription on adopting Huawei tech. The US is leading the charge to make the case that using Huawei tech is equivalent to giving the Chinese government direct access to sensitive information/infrastructure. And we most certainly correct with that admonishment.

It threatens to destroy the underpinnings of the 5eyes Anglophone intelligence sharing union.

As much as this a national security issue so too is it an economic one. The US isn’t ready to supply the world with 5g equipment, so a loss here represents both an economic/wealth one and a national security one. Even more, stovepiping of intelligence will happen as the US backs out of intelligence-sharing arrangements with nations that use Huawei tech. As citizens we tend to be suspicious of a large and complex intelligence apparatus, but information sharing produces better outcomes with respect to actual threat assessment.

This is all related to the arrest of the Huawei exec in Vancouver BC.

Make no mistake, this is a yuuuge deal to the US right now.

I did read the articles and in one of them, the author pointed out that the US government was so deeply involved in the deployment of these network connections so as to be sure to avoid compromise by our enemies.

Well, that’s been happening already:

China has been 'hijacking the vital internet backbone of western countries'

Chinese government turned to local ISP for intelligence gathering after it signed the Obama-Xi cyber pact in late 2015, researchers say.

www.zdnet.com