Data as the New Oil: Undersea Data Infrastructure and Emerging Security Risks in the IORA

By Prashail Tripathi 

Submarine fiber-optic cables are essential to modern international communications. Approximately 90–99% of intercontinental internet traffic passes through these cables, making them a single crucial chokepoint for data, commerce, and state communications. The threat environment for these cables has changed over the past ten years due to three trends: (a) the spatial densification of cables across the Indian Ocean and the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) corridor to connect Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia; (b) the growing tactical rivalry among major countries for undersea presence, repair/laying capacity, and influence over landing stations; and (c) the emergence of state-backed or state-tolerated non-state actors (proxy groups, militias) who may be tasked with harassing shipping, damaging cables, or gathering intelligence for sabotage. These trends turned undersea cables from largely “infrastructure” concerns into geopolitical and hybrid-war targets.

Numerous studies admonish that state actors (and companies associated with them) possess platforms, capabilities, and incentives that could be utilised for subsea network mapping, surveillance, or even manipulation, but investigations have identified Chinese government-affiliated vessels and entities involved in cable-laying/repair roles (and concerns about their behaviour), and analysts have suggested that other countries, particularly Russia, could be involved in or permit activity near cables as part of broader geopolitical pressure. These have been recognized as regional “issues” rather than proven crimes in every case.

Groups like the Houthis have both warned and been suspected of operations that could affect undersea infrastructure in some theatres (such as the Red Sea and southern Arabian Peninsula); open reporting reveals that these groups have published cable maps and signalled strikes, and there have been cable disruptions in nearby waters during times of conflict. These groups may receive indirect support through permissive security environments, or they may be financially supported, sheltered, or politically enabled by regional states. Criminal networks, such as recovery, secret cable intercepting for data theft, or pirates who damage cables to demand repair ransoms, pose a serious threat in regions with poor maritime governance. Although intentional criminal assault and covert monitoring are becoming more common, unintentional damage (anchors, fishing) still accounts for the majority of outages.

RISKS FOR INDIAN OCEAN RIM COUNTRIES

Persistent tampering or large-scale cable cuts increase latency, deteriorate cloud and e-commerce services, interfere with banking and financial operations, increase corporate costs, and push traffic onto longer, less secure routes. There have been noticeable slowdowns throughout South Asia and the Middle East as a result of recent disruptions to the Red Sea cable (affecting IMEWE, SMW4, FALCON, etc.); repairs can take weeks and have significant financial consequences. Subsea fibre tapping or covert interception can reveal government, defence, and diplomatic communications, providing attackers with strategic intelligence, the ability to manipulate data flows (change or postpone messages) and the capacity to spread misinformation. According to policy studies, this is a serious intelligence weakness. Emergency services like banking services, air/sea freight (tracking systems), and SCADA systems in the energy sector that depend on robust communications are all affected by disruptions. Prolonged outages can exacerbate civil dissatisfaction, political instability, and economic collapse in fragile rim nations with low resilience, all of which can lead to escalating conflicts. In smaller island or African rim states that depend on a limited number of cable landings, actors who can threaten or control cables obtain coercive levers (denial of connectivity, targeted outages) that can be used to influence local alignments or put pressure on governments.

ROLE OF INDIA IN CURBING THIS MENACE

To begin with, India needs to take a significant step to lead a regional security group under the IORA, the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative and SAGAR, to regard subsea infrastructre as a common asset of potential security threat from the ever evolving cyberattack sphere, and to build on established standards for protection, notification and incident response that are specific to IOR states. A pressing need is percieved to convene a “subsea security” working group with the relevant parties under already established regional diplomatic forums, and India needs to rise to the ocassion, as an important regional stalwart, to innovate and initiate this process. In order to identify suspicious vessel behaviour near cables (vessel-tracking anomalies, black ship behaviour), it may also be practical to establish a multilateral information-sharing structure (real-time event reporting + cooperative OSINT sharing) among rim governments and include commercial operators. Since the majority of cable assets are privately held, public-private collaborations are essential.

Increasing maritime domain awareness (MDA) along important cable corridors, including more coastal radar, AIS monitoring, and ongoing ocean-domain surveillance using naval and coast guard assets, as well as conducting targeted UAV/surface patrols close to high-risk cable segments, are some ways India can work with the other rim nations to start a crackdown against these activities. The WIO cable settlements may be regularly patrolled by India's along with cooperating countries’ coast guards and navies, and maintenance vessels might be escorted as needed. Stronger security measures at cable landing stations (such as physical fences, on-site monitoring, and hardened network segmentation) are important steps in reducing failures at landings. Providing funding and technical support for alternate connectivity, as well as training the forces and maritime authorities of rim nations on how to spot suspicious cable risks covers the ambit of India following a holistic approach, by taking the rim nations along, to tackle these security threats. Here, India's development diplomacy (credit lines, technology transfer) can be used to increase resilience and foster goodwill.

Prashail Tripathi is a postgraduate in National Security Studies from Central University of Jammu. The above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Kalinga Institute of Indo-Pacific Studies.