Russia’s Undersea War Games Expose Nightmare Scenario For Global Internet

Russian submarines allegedly rehearsed deploying technology designed to disable critical undersea communications cables in the Arctic this spring, raising questions about how much of modern civilization would keep functioning if a global war turned the internet’s physical backbone into a battlefield.

British, Norwegian and American forces tracked and confronted the Russian vessels near Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and prevented them from completing the exercise, Reuters reported Thursday, citing two anonymous Western officials. The alleged operation involved Russia’s Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, known as GUGI, a secretive military organization specializing in deep-sea operations.

The alleged Russian operation adds to growing concern over how vulnerable critical infrastructure on the ocean floor could be during a wider conflict, following the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in 2022. The pipeline explosions demonstrated the potential for underwater infrastructure to be severely damaged by sabotage, though the incident has not been attributed to Russia and investigations have increasingly focused on individuals linked to Ukraine, Reuters reported, citing German prosecutors.

An internet infrastructure expert whose research focuses on internet routing told the DCNF that the Domain Name System, or DNS, the system that translates website names into the numerical IP addresses computers use to locate one another online, is the glue holding the global information infrastructure together.

“The DNS, the name system, is dependent on the network, and while caching features heavily in the DNS, as the caches age out a connectivity cut would mean that expired data would not be refreshed and the DNS would slowly dim out and turn dark,” Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, or APNIC, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Once the DNS stops working then we have a massive problem with the infrastructure that supports applications,” Huston told the DCNF. “From mobile phone networks to traffic lights. From electricity grids to water circulation. The failure of flight control systems would totally disrupt aviation, and perhaps more of a concern the failure of the network would precent any attempts to organise a response.”

A global war involving deliberate attacks on those cables could produce consequences considerably more severe than ordinary internet outages, former U.S. Army officer and military communications expert Terry Kelly told the DCNF.

“Not only would undersea cables be cut, but it is likely that there would be at least some if not very significant degradation to satellite comms as well,” Kelly told the DCNF. “However, if WWIII happened, we would see a massive disruption of modern society in any case, whether comms were cut or not.”

No cables were damaged during the alleged operation, which involved Russian deep-sea submersibles simulating deployment of technology intended to disable subsea infrastructure, Reuters reported, citing the Western officials.