It’s impossible to protect these cables so the only thing you can do is build in massive redundancy. Strategically it is probably cheaper to lay down many dozens of these cables in different locations than expect to protect them
Agreed, but at the same time it would also be worthwhile to look at ways to increase our detection and policing of shipping around these cables. I'm no expert but I imagine there are ways to speed up naval reaction times, tighten penalties for ships going dark (transponder off) and set new policy norms enabling rapid investigation.
Basically things that make it harder for bad actors to maintain plausible deniability. So far, a lot of this has been done with relatively low cost and low risk for the perpetrators. The fact this Chinese ship was chased down and stopped before getting too far away was actually pretty lucky. If we formalize new systems and policies to ensure the instant a cable is cut there are navy ships converging on suspect ships - that will shift the cost calculus of the bad guys. If every cable attack requires a special submarine deploying a demolition team underwater near the target, it gets a lot more expensive and if caught there's little deniability.
If these kinds of attacks continue then I expect we'll see some extra-judicial direct action consequences imposed. Like a ship that gets away later having a mysterious accident causing it to slowly sink in deep water (thank goodness another passing ship was nearby to rescue the crew!). While I don't like it, when bad actors figure out a way to repeatedly avoid consequences, sometimes a little rule bending is needed.
On the transponders off point, I imagine soon we will have enough satellites such that we can map every object on the surface of the earth (specially something as large as a boat).
The soviets did exactly that so they can attack large US convoys with long-range Anti-Ship Missiles
They had to use a fission reactor onboard those satellites to power the radar array
It consisted of 2 satellite types. US-A (active) and US-P (passive). US-A used radar and US-P used passive antennas so they can "see" signals from ships.
The usual issue with satellites is they'll see the whole surface of the earth _eventually_, but it takes some time before they're back over the same spot, so tracking moving objects isn't really what they are best at.
I think the broad, practical answer to that is 'almost certainly'. I'm pretty sure if warships hadn't shown up and asked to come over and have a chat, the ship wouldn't still be sitting there. There's also probably a very technical legal answer which may indicate they weren't "stopped" at all based on the precise wording actually communicated and relevant maritime law.
Interestingly, a long time ago I got to experience being on a freighter in the South China Sea and having some sizable Singapore navy warships pull up and ask to have a chat and take a look around. Warships pulling up at sea certainly has a way of commanding your undivided attention. It's like being pulled over by a cop, except the cop is heavily armed commandos in an Apache attack helicopter.
I suspect the only reason the navy hasn't boarded that ship yet is because the captain is being ordered to stonewall by the owners and the government would prefer to avoid breaking maritime law (especially with everyone paying attention). However, if the relevant governments determine there's sufficient value in searching the ship, they'll just have their maritime lawyers come up with the best excuse or "exigent circumstances" pretense they can and board anyway.
The ship I was on was flying a Liberian flag but Indonesian owned. Given that we were in international waters and these guys weren't even customs, police or port authority (who are the dudes who usually pull over freighters), the captain could have technically denied their request but he didn't even consider it. He later told me, basically, if you are not 'the droids they're looking for' then you let them the fuck on board. As a commercial hauler there's simply no upside to making trouble for the Navy, they have a lot of ways to ruin your day and you might someday need their help if you've got an emergency (or pirates chasing you, which is not impossible in those waters). The only freighter captains who insist on exercising their rights under maritime law when facing a naval warship typically have a political motivation or maybe are actually pirates, spies or smugglers (of weapons or people - warships don't give a fuck about that undeclared container of stereos). Naval warships (at least in that area) also don't usually care much about expired paperwork, lapsed passports or even outstanding warrants. They aren't law enforcement and a warship like that costs over a million dollars a day to keep at sea. They are there under national command authority for reasons that are way above a freighter captain's pay grade. The captain and crew are usually just contractors hired to drive the ship. Our captain had been at sea 15 years and that was the first time he'd ever had a naval warship pay any attention to him.
Thank you for your description of your first hand experience - very interesting. Life at sea is rather different to on land!
"except the cop is heavily armed commandos in an Apache attack helicopter."
Apaches don't deploy at sea. They are land based beasties. They don't carry commandos either. Pilot and CPG - two crew. Perhaps you meant a Blackhawk, if you are thinking about an American setup, which I think has a maritime variant or two. Brits will come at you with a Lynx or a Merlin.
You'll probably never see an Apache at sea. Their usual targets will sink without any assistance Anyway, I think you mean marines in a Blackhawk. Commando is also a bit British.
When someone use an analogy they are not saying that something is literally like that. They were not saying they had apaches or whatever, but that it was like being pulled over by a cop in an apache helicopter.
Just the same way that if I say that there was this dude helping me out with carrying a dead tree, and it was like it was a elephant had strolled by and decided to pick up a toot-pick. I am not saying that it was a literal elephant.
I'm aware that Apache helicopters don't carry troops. My analogy was a quick aside and should have been clearer that I wasn't suggesting Apache helicopters deploying troops at sea. I was drawing a parallel to a more familiar circumstance because some might assume that a warship confronting a freighter at sea is similar to a routine law enforcement encounter like a police officer pulling your car over in your home town - where a well-informed citizen might reasonably assert their rights if the officer exceeds their authority.
However, a naval warship isn't typically used for law enforcement like customs, harbor police or immigration. A warship confronting a freighter at sea isn't at all routine, it's extraordinary. It would be more akin to having your car pulled over in your home town by a squad of special forces backed up by attack helicopters and tanks. Any rational person would immediately realize this ain't a routine traffic stop by local cops, it's something very fucking serious. A reasonable person might conclude today may not be the day to quibble over legal technicalities and instead just cooperate, at least until they figure out what the hell is going on. That's certainly what the captain of the freighter I was on decided. And as I stared down all those guns and twitchy locked and loaded sailors on the open sea, I fully agreed with him - despite usually being quite concerned about due process when I'm going about my business in the U.S.
The point being that the captain of that Chinese freighter refusing to cooperate with those warships is not akin to a civil rights enthusiast merely asserting their rights during a routine traffic stop. It's either somebody with a cavalier disregard for their own near-term safety or a person under orders they cannot afford to refuse, possibly reinforced by phone calls from family members suddenly in custody back home. Assuming that captain was being paid to drag his ship's anchor in a certain location, I suspect he now realizes it wasn't nearly enough to become an overnight seagoing celebrity who never captains a ship again. Not to mention being detained, possibly charged and having his ship impounded. Most people who hire freighter captains prefer boring, predictable pros who ensure their owner's ships arrive quickly and safely, not detained by warships on the international news. If he's lucky he'll only lose his license and be blacklisted for life by insurers.
They're creating an analogy saying that getting stopped by a warship at sea is like getting pulled over on the highway by an Apache. Not literally saying an Apache at sea.
As far as I'm aware, the ship still also have to go through the strait between Sweden/Denmark (or through pure Danish territory) to reach the Atlantic ocean, so there are plenty of waters ahead where these governments very well could do more if economic waters it's not enough.
So that probably also helps with not wanting to just escape. Where it's now it can at least escape through international water all the way to Russia if it wants to.
To me it feels like it's stuck between a hard rock and a stone...
It seems you have it backwards: the ship Yi Peng 3 was already allowed to pass through the Denmark-Sweden straits and to the Kattegat sea area before it was stopped. What it cannot do is return through the straits to Baltic Sea and St Petersburg.
I can not find any recent updates, but this one (from 29/11, in Swedish) mentions ongoing discussions with China making progress on reaching an agreement to allow the Swedish navy to board the ship:
Thank you for sharing the story. I’m always fascinated by these industries that exist in international waters. Are there any books you recommend that capture what modern seafaring is like?
Sorry but I don't. This was many decades ago and I wasn't even a sailor. I was a teenager and my dad was able to arrange me spending two months one Summer aboard that freighter as a kind of informal, unofficial intern. I guess he thought it would be kind of like an outward bound experience. I'm not really sure how it even came together and I imagine it couldn't happen today. Things were a lot less structured back then, especially on an Indonesian freighter in the South China Sea. It was a lot of hard work and the conditions on board were rough, especially from the perspective of an American teenager among an all Indonesian crew but I learned an enormous amount about life in the real world.
Yes, there may be no way to avoid it turning into another cycle of measures vs counter-measures. The important thing is to increase the costs and difficulty for the bad guys while decreasing the disruption caused by attacking one cable.
Attaching an explosive to an undersea cable requires trained divers or an ROV, plus at least a little bit of specialized equipment and a few hours to work. It can be done but it's a lot harder than just dragging an anchor.
The seas are vast. If it were that easy to combat bad actors with strong military presence, piracy wouldn’t have been an issue for as long as it has been.
If you consider an underwater cable running from Finland to Germany or Sweden to Lithuania in the Baltic Sea, it is virtually impossible for a ship travelling from St. Petersburg to the Kattegat to avoid passing over it, so redundancy can do only that much there.
> If you consider an underwater cable running from Finland to Germany or Sweden
Well, if you only think about direct links, then yes. But run 5 cables up and down the coasts of Sweden<>Finland, then also for Sweden<>Germany, Denmark<>Sweden and Denmark<>Germany and you start having a lot of redundancy.
Of course, that also adds a lot of ongoing costs for infrastructure, monitoring and maintenance, so not a silver bullet exactly.
Maybe a stupid question, but is it possible to run a power cable next to the internet cables, so any ship dragging its anchor over the cables gets a rude surprise? Or that wouldn't work underwater?
"straight to ground" is not how electricity works, but yes, they'd probably just destroy the cable in that spot, and the anchor would have only a slight scar on it at most
Operational costs (outside of repairing cuts) round to zero in comparison to the capital costs of laying the initial cable. There are OLD cables that are still active, despite relatively low bandwidth, because going and disconnecting everything on either end (even though the cable would remain there) is considered an additional unnecessary cost.
There's already underwater powered trenching/laying equipment they use to bury the cables within X miles from the shore. The Baltic Sea is probably shallow enough to bury it all the way across at a higher cost per mile of course.
I don't know the engineering required but wouldn't a few small exploding drones handle this? (by "handle" I mean break the cable). 20 cables, 20+ drones (send 100 for redundancy). We've had deep sea ROVs since the 80s. Communication is harder but we have autonomous navigation now so fire and forget?
How much more are you willing to pay for your Internet service for this redundancy? Me? Zero. It is not a good idea. To me, it is right up there with having extra aeroplanes waiting in case there is a malfunction, but exactly zero customers want to pay for that privilege.
