Abundance of US multinationals leaves Ireland prone to undersea cable attacks, expert says

The Swedish security expert said the geopolitical instability and spreading 'lawlessness' has made a labyrinth of undersea cables a target. File picture

Ireland is more vulnerable to undersea cable attacks due to how many key US multinationals it hosts, a security expert has said.

Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security with the US think tank the Atlantic Council, said that increased global instability and a heavy reliance on data connectivity means that undersea cables are at greater risk of interference.

The Swedish security expert, in Dublin after the launch of her book, The Undersea War, also warned of the risk of “accidental or unintentional conflict” at sea.

She told the event, hosted by the Institute of International and European Affairs, that the geopolitical instability and spreading “lawlessness” has made a labyrinth of undersea cables a target.

She said this particularly applied to Ireland, which she called “the world’s cable junction”, as Ireland is “a major hub” for US companies.

“This, in a paradoxical kind of way, makes Ireland even more vulnerable to interference with its cables because if you wanted to cause harm to a particular country or to business, then you would certainly go for Ireland simply because there are so many cables around here — and I don’t need to tell you what defence of the borders looks like,” she said.

She said that while globalisation had benefitted Ireland, geopolitics is “looming on the seabed”.

She referenced the crisis in the Middle East, and a threat from Iran to impose tolls on US tech companies operating undersea cables in the Strait of Hormuz as a significant development.

“Why should countries follow the rules if they can make some pretty significant gains by violating the rules?” 

If data connectivity were disrupted through undersea cables being damaged or cut, experts have warned it could disrupt financial and communications systems.

“All of that works so extremely well on a daily basis, yet, it could be taken from us if somebody decided to interfere with cables, and that’s why the disorder we are seeing on the oceans is so important to bear in mind," she said.

Attention needs to turn towards boosting capacity for repairing undersea cables quickly, but against developing too many “new gadgets” to monitor developments underwater, she added.

“Let’s say an Irish drone were to detect suspicious activity around a cable, what would be the next step, who would intervene? Let’s say the Irish naval service developed the ability to intervene, if it intervened, then it would face the risk of whoever had interfered with the cable hitting back, and it would escalate.”