◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek March 8, 202124
● The country is vying with the U.S. to
control the world’s digital infrastructure,
and Europe is caught in the middleChina’s Subsea Cable
Is Dividing the Internet
An undersea cable will emerge this year near a
popular sunbathing spot in the French port of
Marseille. The cable, known as Peace, will travel
overland from China to Pakistan, where it heads
underwater and snakes along about 7,500 miles
of ocean floor via the Horn of Africa before termi-
nating in France.
The Peace cable, which is being built by Chinese
companies, will be able to transport enough data
in one second to stream 90,000 hours of Netflix.
It will also speed up service for Chinese compa-
nies doing business in Europe and Africa. “This
is a plan to project power beyond China toward
Europe and Africa,” says Jean-Luc Vuillemin, head
of international networks at Orange SA, the French
phone company that will operate the cable’s land-
ing station in Marseille.
The project represents a new flashpoint in the
geopolitics of the internet. Huawei Technologies
Co., which is at the center of a long-simmering strug-
gle between China and the U.S., is the third-largest
shareholder in Hengtong Optic-Electric Co., the
company building the cable. Huawei is also making
the equipment for the Peace cable’s landing stations
and underwater transmission gear.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. say
they won’t be using Peace because they have
enough capacity already. Even if they wanted to
use the cable, it would be hard for the companies
because of the U.S.-led boycott of many Chinese
telecommunications equipment makers, including
Huawei, for national security reasons.
Right now about 400 cables carry roughly 98%
of international internet data and telephone traffic
around the world. Many are owned and operated
by U.S. companies—helping reinforce the country’s
dominance over the internet while giving a sense of
security to the U.S. and its allies that may be con-
cerned about sabotage or surveillance.
The U.S. has talked up the threat from Chinese-
built infrastructure. In a statement last year,
then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the
international community to “ensure the undersea
cables connecting our country to the global inter-
net are not subverted for intelligence gathering
by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] at hyper
scale.” But France doesn’t want to isolate ChinaTHE BOTTOM LINE Geopolitical considerations are becoming an
increasingly prominent aspect of the job of building the pipes that
make up the internet.from internet infrastructure, in part to avoid being
overreliant on the U.S.
Limiting use of internet infrastructure for secu-
rity reasons has its costs, says Mike Hollands, a sales
executive at data center company Interxion, which
is involved in the project. Yet the global submarine
cable system may become only more fragmented.
The Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies and the
Netherlands-based Leiden Asia Centre estimate
that by 2019, China had become a landing point,
owner, or supplier for 11.4% of the world’s underseaThe Peace Cable
An undersea link will aid Chinese companies doing business in EuropeMombasa,Mombasa, Kenya Kenya Victoria, SeychellesGeroskipou,Geroskipou, Cyprus CyprusKarachi,Karachi, Pakistan PakistanMarseille,Marseille, France FranceDATA: TELEGEOGRAPHY SUBMARINE CABLE MAPArabian
Seacables. They expect this proportion to grow to 20%
sometime between 2025 and 2030. On numerous
occasions in recent years, the U.S. and its allies have
blocked projects with Chinese involvement.
“It’s really a matter of regret to see those geo-
politics descending right down the stack into the
physical layers of the internet,” says Emily Taylor, a
cyberpolicy expert and a fellow in security at inter-
national affairs think tank Chatham House. “What
we’re all going to have to come to terms with this is:
How do we try to keep as many doors open as we
can without laying ourselves open to national secu-
rity threats?” �Helene Fouquet, with Thomas Seal