Cybersecurity

Could Russia really 'cut' the Internet?

The extent of Russia's ability to cause untold damage to U.S. military and commercial interests by simply cutting undersea data cables, a fear stoked by a report this weekend in The New York Times, is unknown. But Moscow’s willingness to cut off civilian populations from the Internet — a tactic it has already used against regional political threats — may be cause for alarm.

The Times article quoted U.S. and European military and intelligence officials as saying they have observed a 50 percent increase in Russian naval patrols over the past year, including along critical points of the global Internet infrastructure — thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables, often sunk in hard-to-monitor depths of the ocean. Officials, speaking anonymously, told the Times that the increased submarine and spy ship activity has exacerbated concerns about underwater infrastructure being vulnerable to attack.