Europe and Taiwan are both targets of subsea cable sabotage
Such operations, in peacetime, offer a high dividend to aggressor states.
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” That quotation from Goldfinger, the iconic James Bond film, belonging to a genre that first habituated cinema-goers to the spectacle of sea-bed warfare between contending frogmen, might serve as a comment on a new form of aggression that is currently threatening Western security.
In October 2023, the anchor of the vessel NewNew Polar Bear, Hong Kong-flagged and Chinese-registered, damaged two subsea data cables and the balticconnector natural gas pipeline in the Gulf of Finland. Happenstance? Then, in November 2024, the Yi Peng 3, a Chinese cargo ship, is alleged to have severed two subsea communications cables, one connecting Germany to Finland, the other linking Lithuania and Sweden. Coincidence? On 26 December, Finland detained a Russian tanker suspected of cutting a power cable between Finland and Estonia. Enemy action?