On December 25, 2024, Finnish special forces helicoptered onto the oil tanker Eagle S in the Gulf of Finland. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo had interrupted his Christmas holiday with family to give the orders himself. Over the course of six hours that day, Eagle S had dragged its anchor across the seabed of the Baltic Sea for 100 kilometres, severing a powerline and three fibre-optic cables. The incident made headlines with European officials and politicians calling the ship part of Russia’s “shadow fleet”, which is used to skirt sanctions on Russian energy exports. They also accused Moscow of carrying out “hybrid warfare” by deploying cargo ships that deliberately target undersea cables.
The captain of Eagle S told Finnish authorities that the vessel’s anchor came loose accidentally. But Finnish Coast Guard Commander Mikko Simola told CBS’s primetime show 60 Minutes that it was hard to believe the captain was unaware for such a long time whether the anchor was hoisted or not. Despite all the concerns surrounding the incident involving Eagle S, a Finnish court last year dismissed charges of alleged sabotage against the ship’s owner and the crew, which consisted of Georgian and Indian nationals.
Ships’ anchors damaging cables is nothing unusual. Every week, four cables get damaged on average somewhere in the world because of accidents caused by human error, according to the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC). The two main industry bodies, ICPC and the European Subsea Cable Association (ESCA), maintain that there is no evidence to support the theory of deliberate targeting. “I don’t recall any incident where the physical network was [deliberately] attacked,” says Julian Rawle, a fibre-optic cable consultant. “It’s more of a hype,” he tells. “I use the word hysteria. People don’t seem to understand that we can switch traffic to other routes.”
Since the Russia-Ukraine war began in 2022 and Nord Stream gas pipelines were blown up a year later in the Baltic Sea, officials have constantly spoken about the security of cables and pointed at recurring accidents as evidence of a deteriorating situation. This has not stopped security hawks from bringing up the spectre of cables being attacked deliberately in news articles and policy debates. But is it really such a major cause for concern? The facts suggest otherwise, as industry experts point to human error as the primary driver of faults.
ICPC and ESCA emphasize that accidents linked to fishing boats and cargo vessels are far more likely to damage cables than any malicious actor. Fishermen rely on bottom trawling, or demersal trawling, to scoop shellfish from the seafloor with heavy gear. Fishing is the single largest cause of submarine cable faults, according to ICPC. In its March 2021 report, ICPC attributed nearly 41 percent of cable damage to fishermen. The second-biggest culprit is dragging anchors, which can damage undersea cables when cargo ships leave them trailing along the seabed.
Between late 2023 and early 2025, a series of incidents involving Russia’s “shadow fleet” and Chinese vessels in the Baltic Sea heightened tensions. The fear of deliberate cable sabotage reached such a height that the ESCA had to issue a statement on LinkedIn, reminding lawmakers that only four anchor-drag accidents were recorded in the Baltic Sea between 2023 and 2025, compared with seven in UK waters between 2007 and 2009. This data suggests that current incident rates are not anomalous, yet the political narrative continues to focus on malicious intent.
While there are hundreds of subsea oil and gas pipelines and electricity cables known as interconnectors, governments are focused on the security and safety of 596 fibre optic cables that crisscross ocean floors. Almost all of the world’s internet traffic is carried by these fibre optic cables, each the size of a garden hose. Whether it’s a post you see on Instagram or the $12 trillion that central banks move each day, all online activity depends on these cables. With AI applications flooding the market and the threat of cyber attacks increasing, there is a heightened fear that a bad actor could cripple global communications.
However, Rawle argues that an attack is more likely to occur on the fibre optic infrastructure on the seashore or in shallow water rather than in the deep ocean. In any case, most developed countries have internet access connected by more than two cables, and data transfer switches from one to another automatically if a fault occurs. Around 98 percent of cables that have been damaged lie within 200 nautical miles from the coast, an area that has the highest concentration of maritime traffic and fishing activity.
In November 2025, Tim Stronge, the Chief Research Officer at TeleGeography, told the US House of Representatives Committee that cable networks experience around 200 faults a year. “It is critical to understand that the vast majority of cable damage is accidental, not malicious,” he said in his written response. Similarly, ESCA’s Vice Chair Peter Jamieson told the UK Parliament in February last year: “There is no evidence, publicly available, to say that Russia (or anyone else) is deliberately targeting cables.”
“We, in the submarine cable industry, used to complain that governments weren’t paying enough attention and weren’t setting up regulatory regimes that protected the cables,” says Rawle. “And now we’re in a position where we’re actually a bit worried that there’s going to be government overreach.” The industry fears that new, reactive regulations based on the “sabotage” narrative could complicate routine maintenance and repair operations, which are already logistically challenging.
Furthermore, Russian oil tankers are more likely to be involved in accidents simply because they are often older vessels. Their reliance on aging equipment and potentially less experienced crews in high-traffic corridors increases the statistical probability of dragging an anchor or experiencing mechanical failure. By framing these incidents solely through the lens of hybrid warfare, authorities may be overlooking systemic issues related to maritime safety and the aging global tanker fleet.
Ultimately, the disconnect between the technical reality of subsea cable maintenance and the political rhetoric surrounding “shadow fleets” remains stark. While vigilance is necessary for critical infrastructure, industry leaders warn that the current climate of hysteria risks distracting from the mundane, yet far more frequent, causes of cable failure. As long as the narrative remains focused on sabotage, the practical, collaborative solutions needed to improve cable protection—such as better maritime traffic management and cooperation with the fishing industry—may remain sidelined.
The average age of tankers used to transport Russian oil i ncreased from 15.4 years in 2020 to 29.3 years in January 2024.
Since the first transoceanic fibre optic cable, TAT-8, was built between the US, UK and France in 1988, humans have intentionally, or due to negligence, damaged the cables in many different ways.
In the 1990s, Rene van Kessel worked at Van Oord Offshore, a Netherlands-based marine contractor, which built rock installations to protect undersea cables, power lines and oil pipes.
At the time, fishing boat-related accidents were damaging so many cables and pipes that Kessel would joke with his bosses that they could rent a fishing boat, drag it over the cables, sever them and then do rock installation work for a profit.
Kessel is a marine industry veteran with decades of experience.
He and many others like him have watched with concern as the issue of protecting cables from fishing boats has gradually turned into a matter of national security.
British officials, including then defence secretary John Healey, were concerned that Yantar was a spy ship sent to map undersea cables, leaving the country’s internet access vulnerable.
“I think defence organisations and companies see a threat because they want to sell their products,” says Kessel.
“The military boys like their toys.”
In May 2026, the AUKUS security alliance between the US, UK and Australia announced that it will develop and deploy unmanned submarines for the protection of fibre optic cables.
The UK alone will contribute $201 million for the project.
Sunak was an MP from Richmond, Yorkshire, in 2017, when he authored a report Undersea Cables: Indispensable, Insecure.
The report highlighted the vulnerability of the cables and the threat posed by Russia, which he accused of causing an internet blackout in 2014 when it was annexing Crimea.
“I don’t know what Rishi’s motivation was in the first place, but that to me is where governments started to get aware that these cables actually carry 99 percent of the world’s internet traffic,” says Rawle, the consultant.
“It was really designed to get more budget for the British Navy, and it succeeded in the end.
The British Navy actually now has a couple of vessels stationed around the North and Baltic seas to try to prevent sabotage.”
Over the years, several attempts have been made to cut the cables and extract copper, which fetches good money in the scrap market.
In 2013, Egyptian authorities arrested three scuba divers who tried to steal a section of SEA-ME-WE 4 cable and a few years earlier, fishermen scooped up 80 tonnes of cable off the coast of Vietnam believing everything that lies in the water was up for grabs.
But these innocuous incidents have completely gone off the radar of politicians and military officials.
The US and UK lawmakers have held multiple hearings on this issue and published detailed reports.
Experts say there’s no denying that the Russian military has used brute force against Ukraine and created a sense of insecurity for Europe’s eastern flank.
However, they warn that too much emphasis on something that has never happened complicates the work of companies, which are building fibre-optic and power cables in the waters.