Report: Chinese scientists have dabbled in undersea cable-cutting tech

BERLIN — Chinese scientists have been researching ways to cut undersea cables since at least the late 2000s, according to a recent report in the U.S. magazine Newsweek. The revelation comes amid a series of events in which undersea infrastructure in geopolitically tense regions was damaged under unclear circumstances.

Reporters at Newsweek uncovered two patent applications Chinese researchers filed for towed undersea cable-cutting devices and associated methods to inflict such damage.

The patent applications, which the magazine reported were both ultimately dropped for unknown reasons, show devices shaped similarly to anchors that are meant to be dragged along the ocean floor to dig up and sever undersea cables.

There is a striking similarity to recent events of purported sabotage of undersea cables by ostensibly civilian vessels dragging their anchors along the seabed. This happened in the Baltic Sea, severing communications and data transfer cables. It has also recently occurred close to Taiwan. The island, which has governed itself ever since the Chinese Civil War, is claimed by Beijing as part of China. President Xi Jinping has made it clear that annexation – or reunification, as Beijing calls it – is a central policy of his term.

Policymakers and experts have called these incidents acts of “hybrid warfare” and sabotage.

The more recent of the two patent applications was developed in 2020 by a group of engineers from Lishui University. The institution is located in Zhejiang province, just across the strait from Taiwan. The invention was filed as a “dragging type submarine cable cutting device.” Newsweek quoted the document’s authors as saying that “with the development of science and technology, more and more submarine cables and communication cables are laid on the seabed of all parts of the world and the cables need to be cut off in some emergency situations.”

The magazine also discovered an application from a coastal research institution in the south of China from 2009 for a similar device. That application referenced the need to be able to counteract “illegal” cables off Chinese shores, a purported use case that experts dismissed as being highly unlikely.

In response to the story, the Chinese embassy in D.C. told Newsweek that “the Chinese government had always welcomed and supported other countries and telecommunications companies laying international submarine cables in waters under China’s jurisdiction.” The spokesperson said China would “continue to work with the international community to actively promote the construction of global information infrastructure such as submarine cables, jointly protect submarine cables, and work together to build a community with a shared future in cyberspace.”

As a knock-on effect of the global geopolitical instability precipitated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, undersea infrastructure has become an area of focus and concern. In the Baltic Sea, countries are stepping up countermeasures after Chinese-owned ships operating out of Russian ports were involved in several incidents where pipelines and cables were damaged by dragged anchors.

It is unclear to what extent the Chinese government was involved in recent cable-cutting incidents involving apparently civilian ships in the Baltic Sea. In at least one of the incidents, the Chinese government has publicly called the event an “accident.”

Experts have also voiced concern that as part of Beijing’s pressure tactics surrounding Taiwan, attacks on undersea infrastructure could be used as a gray-zone, hybrid-warfare tactic.