While the world’s attention is focused on maritime trade routes and energy pipelines, a vital yet invisible infrastructure, the network of undersea fiber-optic cables, has become the backbone of the modern digital economy. More than 95% of international data traffic travels via submarine fiber-optic cables, which significantly increases the political influence of countries at transit points. Egypt, Singapore and Djibouti are good examples of how countries leverage their geopolitical location to become indispensable hubs in the global communications network.

Egypt serves as the main “land bridge” of the digital world, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Seas. Almost every cable running from Europe to the Indo-Pacific region comes ashore in Egypt, crosses Egyptian territory, and goes back into the sea on the opposite coast. This reality has given Egypt a virtual monopoly on data transmission between the Western and Eastern hemispheres. Approximately 17% of the data traffic connecting Europe and Asia passes through Egypt.  

The Egyptian government, primarily through the state-owned company Telecom Egypt, has transformed itself from a mere “receiver” of cables into a sophisticated regional communications hub. By establishing a network of overland routes across the desert, Egypt ensures the smooth flow of information, thereby turning it into an economic lever as well. By 2026, Egypt will become one of the most important hubs of the global digital infrastructure.  

In the East, Singapore is leveraging its geographical location to position itself as the “central hub” for the Asian internet. If Egypt is a transit hub, then Singapore is a massive hub where cables from the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as from the South China Sea, converge. The most strategic location is the entrance to the Strait of Malacca, where data flows from the world’s most densely populated regions, India, China, and Southeast Asia, converge. Singapore’s strategy is to combine its advantageous geographic location with a regulatory-neutral environment by attracting high-capacity cable systems such as the Asia Direct Cable (ADC) and the APRICOT network. As one of the largest data hubs in Southeast Asia, Singapore ensures that data is not merely routed through its territory, but is also exchanged, processed and stored within its borders. In 2026, Singapore further strengthened its position by ensuring that its maritime routes remained a safe and efficient corridor for the trillions of dollars in digital trade that pass through the region every day.   

Djibouti, located in the Horn of Africa and situated on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is the main entry and exit point for cables from the Red Sea. Thanks to its geographical location, the country is indispensable for more than a dozen major submarine cable systems, including the 2Africa cable. Djibouti’s influence is distinctly regional in nature: it also serves as a digital “hub” for its landlocked neighbors, particularly Ethiopia. The signing of the Horizon Fiber Initiative in February 2026 marked a new milestone, as Djibouti began construction of terrestrial fiber networks to connect undersea cables via Ethiopia to Sudan, effectively creating an east-west digital corridor.  By positioning itself as a stable and energy-rich country in a historically unstable region, Djibouti has transformed its coastline into a favorable environment for data exchange. 
 

The combined influence of these three countries underscores a significant shift in geopolitics. Control over submarine cable hubs gives these countries digital sovereignty that is nearly as powerful as control over oil pipelines or shipping lanes. As artificial intelligence and cloud services continue to evolve, the demand for fast, high-speed connections in 2026 will increasingly enhance the strategic importance of Egypt, Singapore and Djibouti. These are physical hubs that ensure the integrity of the global internet.  

The idea of laying communication cables along the seabed is not a new one. In the mid-19th century, when the telegraph was invented, the idea arose of connecting continents via undersea cables. In 1854, the first telegraph cable crossed the Atlantic Ocean, connecting Valentia Island, located west of Ireland, with Plenty Bay in Canada. The connection was indeed very weak, and as a result of attempts to improve the signal quality, the cable soon broke, but the first step had been taken. In the decades that followed, numerous telegraph cables were laid across oceans and seas, and Great Britain played a leading role in this endeavor: telegraphic communication was vital for maintaining control over the empire’s distant regions, where the sun never set. 

By the early 20th century, telegraphic communication had already taken on strategic importance and for the first time, people began to consider how to deprive the enemy of this strategic advantage. It was at that time that the first attempts to damage or tap into competitors’ undersea cables were recorded.  

On the eve of World War I, Great Britain had the most advanced system of undersea telegraph cables, which encircled nearly the entire globe. In August 1914, the day after Germany declared war, the British decided to cut the German undersea telegraph cable, which was accomplished by the ship “Alert”. 

Initially, the Germans cut the cables to cut off the enemy’s communications, but they soon began rerouting the wires and intercepting information. A new profession known as “censorship” was emerging around the world. Great Britain used its dominance in the international telegraph infrastructure to control the flow of information from Cairo to Cape Town and from Gibraltar to Zanzibar. During  World War I, 50,000 messages passed through the censorship offices of various British government agencies every day. Overall, approximately 80 million messages were censored during the war.  

The interception of enemy undersea cables saw particularly significant development during the Cold War. One of them was the famous Operation Ivy Bells. Throughout the decades-long Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union, the United States sought to obtain information about Soviet submarine, intercontinental ballistic missile tests, and the capability to launch a first nuclear strike. In the early 1970s, the U.S. Government learned of the laying of an undersea cable in the Sea of Okhotsk. It connected the Soviet Pacific Fleet’s largest military base in Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula with the fleet’s headquarters on the mainland in Vladivostok. In those years, foreign vessels were prohibited from entering the Sea of Okhotsk. In addition, the Soviet Navy deployed a network of sonar devices on the seabed to detect intrusions. Military exercises both on the surface and underwater were also regularly conducted in this area. 

In October 1971, the American submarine USS Halibut entered the Sea of Okhotsk. Divers located the cable at about 120 meters and deployed a 6-meter-long device that “enveloped” the cable without damaging the membrane and recorded all communications. The device was designed to shut down automatically when the cable was brought to the surface for repairs or other purposes. The operation was so secret that most of the submarine’s crew were unaware of its purpose. 

Since digital technology was not yet in use in the 1970s, the intercepted information was recorded on magnetic tape. Every month, the divers retrieved the recordings and installed new tapes. Information about the underwater eavesdropping operation was not revealed until 9 years later, when Ronald Pelton, an employee of the U.S. National Security Agency, defected to the Soviet KGB and began collaborating with them.  

The physical structure of the World Wide Web is not a decentralized cloud of radio signals, but a network of steel cables laid across the ocean floor. More than 95% of all transcontinental data, from trillions of dollars in commercial transactions to confidential diplomatic cables, travels through these deep-sea cables. Thus, the submarine cable industry has evolved from a highly specialized sector of telecommunications into a key factor in 21st-century geopolitics and geoeconomics. As the digital economy has become synonymous with the global economy, the control, protection, and laying of these cables have taken on a strategic importance equal to that of the oil pipelines of the 20th century. 

In recent decades, there have been significant changes in fiber-optic cable installation technology. Whereas communication networks were previously managed mainly by state-owned or state-controlled telecommunications companies, today private digital “giants” play a significant role in this field. Meta, Google, Amazon, Orange and other companies operate and lease their own cable networks, controlling more than half of the world’s undersea digital bandwidth.  

Over the past 2 or 3 decades, the development of global infrastructure has introduced new concepts into the political and diplomatic lexicon, such as “chokepoint diplomacy”. This concept is most clearly evident in the Bab el-Mandeb and Strait of Hormuz. Alongside the transport of cargo and petroleum products, issues involving undersea telecommunications cables,  which have become “digital levers”, are intensifying in key areas. In the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which is only 29 kilometers wide and lies between Yemen and Djibouti, the cables are laid in a narrow section of the seabed, making them vulnerable to both accidental damage and deliberate sabotage. In 2024-2025, several incidents occurred in the Red Sea, the most well-known of which was the incident involving the ship Rubymar. In February 2024, the ship was transporting a cargo of fertilizer from the United Arab Emirates to Bulgaria when it was hit by missile fire from Yemeni Houthi rebels. The crewmembers were all evacuated, and the ship, despite dropping its anchor, had moved more than 70 km without command. Meanwhile, the ship’s anchor damaged several undersea cables, including AAE-1 and Seacom. As a result, internet speeds are slowing down in East Africa and South Asia, proving once again that a conflict at a maritime hub can disrupt connectivity in countries thousands of kilometers away.  

At this point, it is worth mentioning another new political concept, commonly referred to as “bypass geopolitics”. Currently, governments and supranational organizations are spending billions of dollars on developing backup routes, a prime example of which is the Blue-Raman cable system. This route stretches from Europe to Israel, then across the Arabian Peninsula to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Bab el-Mandeb and Strait of Hormuz. China, in turn, is seeking to create a terrestrial and undersea network that will connect Asia, Africa and Europe as part of its Digital Silk Road initiative. This competition for dominance in communication channels suggests that, in the near future, there will not be a single global network, but rather a group of fragmented networks limited by physical connection cables.

As we have already mentioned, underwater cable breaks were quite common. However, in recent years, new types of cable damage have emerged. Between 2023 and 2026,  there were numerous incidents in which several cables were severed simultaneously. These disruptions are not merely technical inconveniences: they are so-called “gray zone” attacks designed to test the security systems of rival or hostile nations, undermine control over underwater and surface navigation, and gain operational and tactical advantages. As is well known, modern submarine cables also perform certain reconnaissance functions: for example, they can detect sound waves and track the routes and technical capabilities of submarines and regular ships. It is precisely for this reason that attempts are sometimes made to damage or disrupt the operation of undersea cables in certain “gray” zones. 

In early 2024, a submarine fiber-optic cable connecting the mainland to the Svalbard archipelago and the Jan Mayen research station was damaged off the coast of Norway. Research indicates that the Russian research vessel “Yantar”, known for its deep-sea equipment, has anchored near the damaged section of the cable. A similar incident occurred in 2022, and a fishing vessel was cited as the cause.  

Svalbard is home to one of the world’s largest satellite stations (SvalSat), which plays a crucial role in analyzing data from satellites in polar orbit. Although there is no direct evidence, many experts believe the purpose of cutting the cables was to limit the West’s satellite intelligence capabilities. 

In October 2023, the Balticconnector gas pipeline and the associated data cable connecting Finland and Estonia were damaged. The Hong Kong -flagged ship Newnew Polar Bear dragged its anchor more than 100  kilometers along the seabed, damaging a pipeline and a cable. 

These incidents demonstrate that undersea cables can also damage ordinary merchant ships, which effectively precludes the possibility of bringing any formal charges or making any formal claims against a rival country.  

Because of these and many other incidents, special attention is being paid to cable safety. First, their outer coating has been reinforced to prevent damage from accidental impacts. Depending on the water depth, the cables have different protective layers and conductors. There is a common misconception that all undersea cables are huge armored pipes. In fact, their thickness is determined by the installation depth: cables laid in water at depths of 2000 meters or more are about 3 centimeters thick, since at that depth the likelihood of human interference is virtually zero. In shallower areas, at depths of up to 1000 meters, the cables have a multi-layered metallic shielding, with a thickness of 7-10 cm. 

In shallow coastal areas, trenches up to 3 meters deep are dug to protect the cables, and specially equipped vessels carry out this work. In rocky areas of the seabed, special remote-controlled machines are used to dig trenches using high-pressure water jets. In addition to physical protection, new data transmission methods are used to ensure uninterrupted communication even if cables are damaged.  

Submarine fiber-optic cables, the invisible backbone of the modern world, and their concentration at key locations such as Suez, Bab el-Mandeb, the Strait of Hormuz, and others have created new global risks. As competition among the major powers intensifies, the struggle for control of the seabed will only grow more intense. Countries that succeed in diversifying their routes, ensuring the security of their coastal stations, and equipping their submarine cable protection systems with innovative technologies will shape the digital future.