They are the bedrock of the internet, keeping everything from TikTok to emergency services, business, banking systems and political and military communications running smoothly.
But deep under the sea, the network of cables around British and Irish shores are being considered as increasingly attractive targets for military, terrorist or criminal actors after several incidents in the Baltics where internet cables were severed and internet communications were disrupted.
With 75% of all transatlantic cables going through, or close to, Ireland, it has an outsized strategic importance in relation to the UK and Europe.
Since the cutting of cables between Finland and Estonia two years ago, and another incident in November severing links between Finland and Germany, and Sweden to Lithuania, questions are being asked as to who exactly secures the seabed in Ireland’s territorial waters and its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) which stretches 230 miles beyond a nation’s shores.
Ireland is not in Nato and has no submarines, and it operates a policy of neutrality, with one of the smallest defence forces in Europe, spending less than countries including Croatia, Slovakia or Portugal.
Gerard Craughwell, an Irish senator who has campaigned on defence issues for the past decade, told the Guardian it is time for the Irish public to realise that the country’s neutrality is no shield in modern warfare or criminality.
“It is our economy, Europe’s economies that is at risk. But our public have been led to believe that because we are loved all over the world, nobody would attack us.
“I find it deeply, deeply worrying that we are selling this nonsense to the public that neutrality means we can’t defend ourselves.
Craughwell added: “If a rogue actor takes out the cables, it could have a catastrophic effect not just on our economy but the UK’s and Europe’s.
“The EU countries are not happy with the open flank that is Ireland and Ireland has just not stepped up to the plate,” he added.
With $10tn in financial transactions a day going through subsea cables globally, the stakes are high, said the European Subsea Cable Association which also points to everything from TikTok videos to emergency services that rely upon the cable network for data transfer.
Craughwell is pushing the government on several fronts and has taken it to the high court to try to establish if an alleged secret informal agreement with the UK exists that allows the Royal Air Force to intercept any hostile flights over Irish airspace.
That case is due in court in February. A spokesperson for the Irish government said it does not comment on national security matters but all defence policies “are conducted with full respect for the constitution, Irish sovereign decision-making authority and for Ireland’s policy of military neutrality”.
Micheál Martin, the incoming taoiseach, has recently acknowledged that Ireland faces “new and emerging threats” because of its role as a gateway in subsea infrastructure. “The potential risk implications are stark,” he said at a conference on the subject in Valencia in October.
Irish and Icelandic defence representatives met in December to discuss maritime security and the Irish government is developing a maritime security strategy.
Jacqui McCrum, the secretary general of Ireland’s Department of Defence, acknowledged that “Ireland and Iceland’s waters are home to critical infrastructure that is of both national and global significance”, adding neither state is immune to world events just because of geographical isolation.
Sturla Sigurjónsson, Iceland’s ambassador to Ireland – as well as the UK, Malta, Jordan and Qatar – and McCrum pledged to continue collaboration on security.
Robert McCabe, an academic specialising in subsea infrastructure security and government, said that at the moment Ireland is “inadequately resourced to monitor or respond to potential threats” with resources for just one or two vessels to be at sea in the event of an attack.
“There is probably no border country in Europe that invests as little, or has invested so little for so long in defence infrastructure as Ireland,” he said.
“I think it’s in everyone’s interests that this infrastructure is secure and monitored, and people understand what type of threats it faces,” the assistant professor at Coventry University added.
Eoin McNamara, a research fellow on global security and governance at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, said Russia has been taunting Ireland, not just because it is seen as a threat to the Kremlin but because of its geographical proximity to Britain.
The whereabouts of the cables are well charted, so this was all about intimidation. “They were not just thinking about Ireland, they are thinking about Britain and other north Atlantic nations, many of which are supportive of Ukraine. They are saying ‘you guys are projecting power on our doorstep by feeding Ukraine weapons, so we can also, in a different hybrid way, project power on your doorstep and give you something to think about’,” said McNamara.
According to McCabe, “the best way to defend neutrality is to have a defence force”. Craughwell agrees, adding that the Irish government has to start an honest debate with the public.
“We need to have a properly resourced defence force with modern aircraft, vessels, undersea surveillance capacity, sonar, primary radar and a rapid response plan that can immediately respond to a threat be it from Russia or anybody else,” he said.
Ultimately Ireland needs at least three naval bases in Dublin, Donegal and Wexford, with three or four ships on sea at any one time, he said.
“I think we need a formal role and agreement with all the countries facing the Atlantic: Ireland, the UK, the Nordics, France, Spain, Portugal, Iceland,” he said.
McNamara described Ireland as “kind of crevice or weak link” in the European landscape without the apparatus in its naval vessels to monitor the seabed.
“Dublin is quite a strategically important city in terms of supply chains and datacentres and conducting drills off the coast is about intimidation. It is saying ‘we can hit connections important to the European economy’,” he said.
Ireland had already been on high alert since a Russian spy ship, the Yantar, stationed itself for several hours in the Irish Sea in November, operating drones and surveillance equipment. The same ship entered UK waters on Monday this week but on this occasion did not loiter as it was tracked closely by the Royal Navy. The UK’s defence secretary, John Healey, told the Commons on Tuesday that the Yantar was a Russian vessel engaged in “mapping the UK’s critical underwater infrastructure”.
Experts have said it would be wrong to suggest that one sabotaged cable could lead to a catastrophic black out of the internet given the huge capacity to divert data flows to continent cables. But that, said McNamara, would be to miss the point.
“If you can’t surveil, you don’t have evidence, you can’t bring anyone to justice,” said McNamara.
Questions about the protection of subsea cables are not confined to Ireland, McCabe said, with a phenomenon known as “sea blindness” studied by academics, which references the lack of political traction that invisible subsea infrastructure has in the public discourse.
He said that the infrastructure is routinely maintained by the private companies that own the cables and this has not been an issue. But in the event of a terrorist attack, private sector personnel would not be expected to investigate, gather evidence, or at worst go into a hostile environment where they could come under attack.
“There has to be investment in the navy. Defence forces are important, and particularly for a neutral country,” said McCabe, adding that infrastructure would become even more critical with the expansion of offshore windfarms.
“We are talking about the country’s energy supply. If someone did want to do something there needs to be some sort of deterrent. There’s needs to be monitoring and an understanding if there is an escalated threat,” McCabe added.
McCabe said “it makes sense” for a country with a small navy and a large maritime space to cooperate more with countries with larger navies and more assets.
In response to a series of questions, Ireland’s defence department said it was participating in a number of security programmes including six EU permanent structured cooperation projects, including those focusing on critical infrastructure protection, the upgrading of maritime surveillance and measures to counter submarine mines.
It is also a member of the European Defence Agency’s maritime surveillance project and a member of Nato’s partnership for peace forum since 1999.
