The official told Business Insider that the alliance was stepping up measures to protect the cables in the wake of a report that they’re being targeted by Russia’s General Staff Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research.
“Since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, threats to subsea infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines as well as data cables have increased,” said the source.
“Allies have long warned of the risk that Russian spy ships and sabotage vessels patrolling subsea cable routes could pose to critical underwater infrastructure.”
It comes after two US officials told CNN on September 13 that Russia had deployed a secret submarine unit called The General Staff Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research. Known by its Russian acronym, GUGI, the unit’s goal is to surveil and possibly destroy the undersea cables the West relies on for the internet.
The cables run for thousands of miles under the ocean between Europe and North America, carrying everything from communications to streaming and financial data.
A Pentagon official told BI that “we are aware” of these reports, but had nothing further to add at this time.
A unit specializing in undersea sabotage
Analysts have long warned that the cables that stretch unprotected for thousands of miles underwater are exposed to being attacked and disabled by Russia.
The cables, which carried telegram data during World War I, have long been seen as military targets.
But as the world has become more dependent on internet data, the potential for disruption caused by sabotage has become greater.
And with relations between Russia and the West deteriorating in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, the Kremlin is signaling that these cables are a legitimate target.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, in June warned that Russia could attack the cables in response to the destruction of the Norstream pipeline.
The threat is not idle with GUGI, specifically formed for subversion back in the Cold War, reportedly gearing up its operations.
Sidharth Kaushal, an analyst at London’s Rusi think tank, told BI that the unit’s core aims were “surveillance, espionage, and sabotage,” and it operated not as part of the navy but under the direct command of the Russian Ministry of Defense because of the sensitivity of its missions.
The unit operates a small fleet of specialist deep water submarines capable of operating at a depth of around 2,500 metres and a surveillance vessel, the Yantar, which was spotted near sensitive cables off the UK coast in 2019.
As BI previously reported, GUGI appears to be an elite and difficult-to-join unit. Soviet-era candidates needed to be officers and have at least five years of experience in the submarine service.
GUGI members receive “considerable salaries” because the organization treats their “effective salaries as a deployment bonus related to the time they spend at extreme depths,” Kaushal said in a report last year. “As a result, in 2012, GUGI personnel were earning 600,000 roubles,” or about $20,000, a month.
There is already evidence that Russian units may have tampered with undersea cables, with experts saying that Russian units likely played a role in the disappearance of miles of the cables near Lofoten off the coast of Norway in 2021.
Kaushal said that if a direct conflict breaks out between Russia and a NATO state, GUGI would likely first seek to sever military cables, specifically those enabling the tracking of Russian military submarines.
But it could also menace the cables civilian communications depend on as a “useful means of calibrated coercion,” he said.
Though the cables are exposed to damage in storms or can be accidentally damaged by anchors, an act of calculated sabotage would cause damage on a different scale.
“Recovering from a deliberate sabotage campaign would take time,” Mark Cancian, an analyst with the CSIS think tank in Washington, DC, told BI.
NATO steps up patrols
In a recent report, experts at the CSIS called on countries to intensify efforts to safeguard the infrastructure, warning that “without coordinated international efforts to safeguard these cables, the risks of disruption, espionage, and economic instability will continue to grow.”
The NATO official said that the alliance had “stepped up naval patrols near undersea infrastructure” and said that “NATO’s North Atlantic Council has stated clearly that any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure will be met with a united and determined response.”
But Kaushal said that because no Western nations were officially at war with Russia, it was unclear what could be done beyond monitoring the activity of Russian vessels such as GUGI’s near sensitive undersea cables.
“What is more challenging is the question of what rules of engagement exist when suspicious activity is occurring on international waters in peacetime when there is no legal basis to deny Russian platforms access,” he said.
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