Never thought of this…..
By cutting some of the undersea cables you could really hurt an entire nation/country economically.
While no US Navy or intelligence officials would go on the record regarding their concerns, the Navy’s Commander of US Naval Forces Europe and US Naval Forces Africa, Admiral Mark Furguson, noted that Russian submarine patrols have risen in number by nearly 50 percent in the last year. Unnamed military and intelligence officials told the Times that much of the activity is happening along cable routes. A European diplomat, unnamed by NYT, was quoted as saying, ““The level of activity is comparable to what we saw in the Cold War.”
While cable breaks happen all the time because of seismic activity or even shark attacks, a concerted effort to cut multiple undersea cables could cause disruption of the global Internet and have both economic and military repercussions. Despite its network of communications satellites, the US military is heavily dependent on undersea cables for much of its communications.
The other thing mentioned (briefly) in that article is the fact that nations have been tapping into these cables to eavesdrop on the communications in and out of the nation. So that is another option for what we are all doing to each other, stealing data.
Just how close to the edge are we?
