Behind Tonga's "Missing Contact": Geopolitical and Security Risks

Reporter | Liu Zixiang

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On Saturday, after the sudden eruption of a volcano in Tonga, local cables were disrupted, disrupting communications and causing contact with the outside world to be lost. Neighboring countries want to help, but they can't get in touch.

The damaged cable is expected to take weeks to repair, and the cost of repairs can be as high as $250,000 or more. Dean Veverka, director of the International Commission on Cable Protection, estimates that the vessels needed for maintenance are currently as far away as Papua New Guinea, 2,500 kilometres away.

"Tonga's missing contact" highlights the fragility of the global submarine cable network. In the highly interconnected modern world, more than 95% of the world's data transmission is carried out via fiber optic cables. By the end of 2021, there are about 436 submarine cables in use worldwide, with a total length of more than 1.3 million kilometers.

These cables are usually laid on the shortest distance between two points on the earth's surface because they cost the least. At the same time, in order to facilitate installation, they must also be laid along a specific geographical location, which causes many cables to accumulate at a certain location, creating a "blocking point".

The Hawaiian Islands, the Suez Canal, Guam and Indonesia's Sunda Strait are all major transportation routes and have become "choke points" for submarine cables. However, these areas are often also disaster and accident-prone areas, and cables are susceptible to natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

Submarine cables are crucial for island nations scattered across the vast Pacific Ocean. They are eager to improve connectivity to the outside world, and some countries are happy to fund it.

Australia funded the Coral Sea cable system in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, which was launched in December 2019. New Zealand supports the Cook Islands portion of the Manatua Cable, which has landed in the Cook Islands in September 2020. Australia, the United States and Japan are also planning a second cable for Palau.

At the same time, the laying of submarine cables is inevitably intertwined with geopolitics. The Internet originated as a project of the U.S. military, but is still dominated by the United States today.

Nick Merrill, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, believes that since at least 2015, the core services of the Internet have increasingly concentrated in the hands of American companies. They estimate that U.S. companies, nonprofits, and government agencies can block up to 96 percent of the content on the global internet to some degree.

As other countries participate in the laying of submarine cables, geopolitics is influencing key decisions to lay cables in the Pacific.

The East Micronesia Cable project, funded by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, aims to build submarine cables to improve connectivity between the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru and Kiribati. When Chinese, Japanese and French companies competed separately, the United States warned the bidding country that "the low price of the company poses a security threat." In March 2021, the bidding country finally decided to void all the tenders of the three companies. According to Reuters, in September last year, the Federated States of Micronesia decided to use U.S. funds to replace some of the lines of the previous Chinese bidding project.

The Solomon Islands government had organized a foreign company to lay a cable from the Solomon Islands to Australia, but the Australian government stepped in to fund the project. In August, a company from a third country was also forced to withdraw from a cable project linking the Philippines to the United States.

The Conversation article on news sites argues that U.S. dominance of the Internet is unlikely to last, facing challenges from rivals, traditional allies, and tech companies.

In fact, in the past, the complex and expensive project of laying submarine cables was mainly done by telecommunications companies, but now high-tech giants have begun to invest a lot of money. With increasing demands on data transmission efficiency, having a new submarine cable is very attractive to tech giants.

TeleGeography estimates that companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have spent more than $1.5 billion on cable construction in the past five years.

But the reliance on cables has pushed tech giants into the geopolitical realm. In March, Facebook abandoned plans to lay cables between California and East Asian megacities, reportedly due to pressure from U.S. national security officials. The Royal Navy also announced it was building surveillance vessels to protect "critical" submarine cables, citing possible risks. The surveillance vessel will be operational in 2024 and will operate in UK and international waters.

Geopolitics is not the only concern. Nick Merrill believes that at present, the Internet is facing a double danger. One is the threat of monopoly, and the power of the Internet has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of American institutions.

Second, attempts to challenge the status of "hegemony" may destabilize the global Internet. Not everyone is happy with the U.S.-led internet, and the struggle for control could disrupt and divide the internet. And a divided Internet threatens speech, trade and global scientific cooperation.

Disruption or disruption of the critical infrastructure of network communications can have catastrophic consequences locally, regionally, or even globally. This is exactly what happened in Tonga after the volcanic eruption disaster.

Amanda H A Watson, a researcher in the Department of Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University, said that just like cooperation under the FRAMEWORK OF THE US,UK-AUSTRALIA AUKUS, Australia can work with partner countries to develop strategic connectivity agreements. Ideally, the agreement would put the needs of the receiving country and its citizens first, and would also consider the environmental consequences of construction and operation. "In the current circumstances, though, geopolitical factors seem likely to seriously influence policymakers."

The United States dominates the Internet and controls the laying of submarine cables in the Pacific Ocean and elsewhere. What does this mean for the people of the Pacific Islands? Will the hopes of small islands in the far Pacific Ocean that want to connect with the world be hindered by the geopolitical situation? These remain to be seen.