back to article Submarine cable resilience board announced on same day maybe-cut-by-China Baltic cable repaired

On the same day that a submarine cable suspected of having been cut by a Chinese ship was repaired, two major telco bodies convened a submarine telecommunication cable resilience advisory board. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) announced the board last …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe?

    First it was "definitely cut by Russia," now it's "maybe cut by China," how soon before Iran gets blamed?

    Or Venezuela? Or Syria? Or any of the other multitude of countries the empire is desperately trying to wage war against?

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Don't be a fool

      A Chinese flagged vessel that sailed from a Russian port. That's been known and stated since the very first report, before the vessel was intercepted.

      "Flagged" rarely has much to do with operated - many US operated ships are flagged in the Bahamas, for example.

      It takes time to investigate, and journalists are generally not allowed to report the details until it's actually gone to court, so any accused can have a fair trial. Most likely the captain will be prosecuted.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Don't be a fool

        "Most likely the captain will be prosecuted."

        You reckon? Can't see it myself, as without full cooperation of the vessel's owners and crew the evidence remains circumstantial. On the guess that China was behind it, why? Simply as a favour to the Russians as part of the modern day Axis of Evil, and keeping in practice for cutting undersea cables that China might want to around some island state they plan to invade.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Don't be a fool

        So if it sailed from a Russian port, who on board dropped anchor at the opportune moment? Did the Captain even know? Was he paid or ordered not to know? Is the State Council of the People's Overlords of China ecstatic or furious?

        Who gives a shit, what dumb fucker imagined it would be safe to leave strategically important cables lying around unprotected in shallow waters? Serve 'em bloody well right.

        1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

          Lying around ... in shallow waters

          I don't believe anyone has yet invented a Continental-Shelf-Cutting Ditch Witch.

          Similarly, countries don't have any useful choices about how shallowly or how steeply their coastline drops off.

        2. Schultz

          Re: Don't be a fool

          "Who gives a shit, what dumb fucker imagined it would be safe to leave strategically important cables lying around unprotected in shallow waters?"

          So when your car is stolen, or your house burnt down, you'd be Allright to hear the same comment from others?

          Looks to me you just exposed yourself as the dumb fucker with your comment.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Don't be a fool

            Put it this way - are you dumb enough to leave your car in a lay-by on a busy road, unlocked and with all your correspondence stacked on the back seat, and expect it to be safe there?

            Sheers, there are dumb fuckers, and then there are DUMB fuckers.

            1. Richard 12 Silver badge
              Boffin

              Re: Don't be a fool

              Clearly you have never seen a ship's anchor!

              If someone dropped one on your car, it won't matter whether or not it was locked.

              It's not possible to protect these cables from malicious damage by surface ships, any more than you can prevent someone smashing down your front door with an articulated lorry or a BelAZ 75710.

              If someone did that, they'd do a lot of damage, and local law enforcement would certainly prosecute.

              Same here, with the added bonus that in shallow waters large surface ships are mostly tracked in real time. (Though this is not perfect)

              The Captain is legally responsible for everything that happens with their ship, so they risk personal sanctions if they anchor in the wrong place - even by mistake. Dragging an anchor several miles across a marked cable trenching area is either gross negligence or a malicious act, with serious consequences either way.

              Hence the ship being intercepted by a military vessel.

  2. Persona Silver badge

    Hanlon's razor

    With a time to repair of only 10 or 11 days I don't see it as likely to have been a malicious attack.

    In context it takes longer than than to get your car repaired when someone drives into the back of you.

    1. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Hanlon's razor

      It's a public fear tactic, I believe. Not a serious threat.. yet. It's like the Russian "Research Vessel" Yantar which a few days earlier turned on its AIS in the Irish Sea and caused a minor panic.

      It doesn't matter that it took a few days (at great expense, i'm sure) to repair it, the point is it made people afraid of what they could/might do.

      e.g. it's much more difficult to repair an underwater high voltage power cable. Or indeed a gas pipeline

    2. dangerous race

      Re: Hanlon's razor

      Maybe it was a test run of a new technique to try and damage undersea cables? Why do something dodgy in your own backyard where the speculation would be greater on how, who and why the incident happened? Russia and China have been cosying up a bit more recently.

      I believe the water near these cables was pretty deep, deeper than most anchor chains would reach. The ship did some odd stuff in the affected area. The ship crossed both cables at almost the exact same time the cables went down - coincidence? Maybe.

      A pretty good look at the movements of the ship, and the area the cables sit, can be found on What's Going on With Shipping - https://youtu.be/a7cS1aVGwUE?feature=shared

      1. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: Hanlon's razor

        It's also possible that they were planting remote or timed detonation charges.. Very difficult to go and inspect all of the cable to look for anything dodgy.. It will naturally include lumps and bumps such as joint boxes, and a timed shaped charge explosive could be as small as a limpet

        One theory is that a sub with a ROV was tailing the freighter, to mask its sonar signature. Such an ROV might have had time to plant something.

        We wouldn't know until er.. see icon

        TBH just sitting here speculating and getting worried about it is exactly what Putin & chums want us to do. A better idea would be to assume they WILL try something, and build resilience into our infrastructure.

        A full scale test of the Black Start procedure would be a good idea IMO (I am skeptical as to whether the grid can be restarted with the proportion of renewables that the government wants us to have...). As would be a few SAM sites along the coast and maybe a Trident missile test. Putin is rattling his sabre so we need to make sure that ours still works.

        Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

        1. midgepad

          Charges...

          They might not now be the only people to plant charges near cables.

          A few notations "Do not anchor in minefield" might maintain the attention of the navigation teams.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Hanlon's razor

          > and maybe a Trident missile test. Putin is rattling his sabre so we need to make sure that ours still works.

          Didn't Trident shoot off in completely the wrong direction during the last test?

          Might be better not to sabre rattle on that one - leave him thinking they might work rather than showing that they might work but won't go where intended.

          1. collinsl Silver badge

            Re: Hanlon's razor

            Didn't Trident shoot off in completely the wrong direction during the last test?

            If you mean the one in 2016 then it did, but that's more likely to be human error than a fault with the weapon. Someone punched in New York as a joke and then never cleared it or something.

            Although it can't be as bad as all that, at least the warheads fit the ends of the rockets and we didn't create a new bunker on Sandwich golf course, although that never really happened

        3. druck Silver badge

          Re: Hanlon's razor

          As we've had to fight like buggery just to keep the few remaining black start units from being mothballed, it's not at all certain bet would could bring the entire grid back up easily.

          Since the process was planned there have been a lot of changes which have unintended consequences to the resilience of the system. Such as gas fired power stations which can run on oil for 24 hours while the grid is down (no gas pressure), which were designed to use river water as cooling, but the environmentalists got upset about that, so they switched to mains water which will only last 2 hours with the grid out.

    3. collinsl Silver badge

      Re: Hanlon's razor

      Russia is currently at war with the west. It's a grey, non-kinetic war, but they are waging it none the less. Call it a "war of inconvenience". They'll pay local crime gangs to assassinate people (like the defected pilot who was living in Spain) or to set fire to a warehouse (as happened in the UK and Germany IIRC a couple of times), or you get a local agent to put up some drones over an airport and force all the flights to be grounded for several hours (as happened in Stockholm recently), or you cut some undersea cables, or you get your criminal networks to co-operate with local criminal networks to get more drugs onto the streets to get more people addicted so that the cost to society goes up (in terms of unemployed people, drug-related crime, increased healthcare costs etc), or you get hackers to break into the water supply companies and trash everything, or break into healthcare companies and steal all the patient data etc.

      It's all being done right now in un-attributable ways, and will continue to be done until Russia is satisfied that we're co-operating with it, which will be never, so it'll carry on forever (or until a change of leadership which wants closer western co-operation).

      There will also be the occasional semi-attributable attack as well like the Novichok poisonings in 2017/2018 in the UK, just to remind people that Russia can and will use it's grey warfare power to reach out when it feels it needs to.

  3. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
    Pirate

    We need to hire some sharks with frickin' lasers to guard the things. That is all.

    1. breakfast

      Unfortunately sharks have a well-documented propensity to attack underwater cables themselves so giving them lasers could prove counterproductive.

      1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        If we promise to pay them in spare cable, can we hire them?

    2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Joke

      Bah!

      Sharks are old and busted. Orcas are the new hotness.

      1. steelpillow Silver badge

        Re: Bah!

        Drones, man! Gotta be AI drones. Those lasers should be able to cut the Russian's blockchains as well.*

        * Hey, how do they make 'em out of blocks anyway? I suppose someone put all the links on the Internet, so they had to figure something else. Superglue?

      2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        Re: Bah!

        The trouble with Orca is they have to come up for air. Could we equip them with some diving helmets, maybe...?

  4. Goodwin Sands

    Have a read

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/29/yi-peng-3-ship-submarine-cable-china-baltic-denmark-russia/

    or same article on yahoo

    https://uk.news.yahoo.com/curious-case-chinese-cargo-ship-133924629.html

  5. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Never assign

    to malevolence to something that could be incompetance.

    I doubt the chinese shipping company pays any more than a western shipping company when it comes to recruiting crew, therefore its entirely likely that the captain went "Raise anchor" , and the crewman went "its done sir "

    Then the captain noticed how slow the ship was going and yells out "Is the anchor up" and the crewman goes "Oh... was it me supposed to raise the anchor?"

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Spot the problem..

    Meetings will occur twice yearly, beginning virtually in December 2024

    That is, assuming the cables remain intact :)

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