In the space of a week, six undersea cables were recently mauled in the Baltic Sea. In a world built on constant connectivity, incidents like these carry serious consequences. Undersea fibre-optic cables are the unseen backbone of the modern internet, carrying around 99 per cent of international data traffic — from emails and video calls to financial transactions.
That makes them an attractive target. Disrupt enough connections and daily life quickly begins to fray: communication falters, payments fail, and uncertainty spreads.
Acts of sabotage like this are not new. But they do appear to be becoming more frequent — often timed to coincide with moments when global attention is focused elsewhere.
Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. She recently wrote for Foreign Policy about the growing threat posed by data outages, and she joins Georgina Godwin to explain how such attacks are carried out — and what can be done to prevent a catastrophic global blackout.
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