US competes with China to lay undersea internet cables

US authorities intend to support a project to lay an Internet cable connecting Guam, where one of Washington’s key military bases in the region is located, and American Samoa, as well as 12 Pacific island states (Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tuvalu, Fiji, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Cook Islands, Wallis and Futuna Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia). This was reported by Reuters with reference to relevant documents. In addition to the United States, the World Bank and the governments of Australia and New Zealand may participate in financing the initiative.

Some details of the plan were unveiled at the international conference on underwater communications in Singapore on September 27-28 by consultants Paul McCann and John Hibbard (their firm APTelecom is conducting a feasibility study on the project).

On September 26, the White House, following a meeting between President Joe Biden and leaders of Pacific island states, officially confirmed a report from the Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) that Washington would allocate $3 million to study a project to lay an Internet cable under the Pacific Ocean. The message, which USTDA posted on Facebook (part of Meta, which is designated as extremist and banned in Russia), notes that this will be the first high-power fiber-optic submarine cable connecting Tuvalu, an island country of about 11,000 people, to the outside world.

An interdepartmental working group (informal name – Team Telecom) is coordinating actions to remove Chinese companies from such consortia. According to the US Presidential Decree of April 4, 2020 on the Committee to Assess Foreign Participation in the Telecommunications Services Sector, the group consists of officials from the State Department, the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice and the FBI. It, together with the Federal Communications Commission, monitors the participation of foreign entities in projects in the telecommunications sector. Actions related to the blocking of Chinese legal entities are carried out by departments and services reporting to them.

The State Department acknowledged the fact of instructing embassies on the need to convince government representatives of individual countries of the dangers of participating in Chinese projects, Reuters reports, citing an anonymous source. Diplomats also recommended that foreigners cooperate with the American cable-laying company SubCom LLC.

Persuasion tools include the threat of secondary sanctions for cooperation with sanctioned persons and cash grants. During the struggle for the SEA-ME-WE 6 (South East Asia – Middle East – Western Europe) project along the Indian Ocean, USTDA provided five telecom companies – Djibouti Telecom (Djibouti), Telecom Egypt (Egypt), Sri Lanka Telecom (Sri Lanka ), Dhivehi Raajjeyge Gulhun (Maldives), Network i2i Limited (India) – training grants totaling $3.8 million for choosing SubCom as a partner instead of China Telecom and China Mobile.

One of the main targets of the American departments was the company HMN Tech (Huawei Marine Networks), which belonged to Huawei until 2019, when, as a result of sanctions pressure from the United States, the Hengtong company (which produces power and fiber-optic cables) acquired the main share. As a result, the United States, Australia and Japan agreed to finance the first project. Later, in December 2021, the US Department of Commerce added HMN to the sanctions “entity list”, limiting the company’s access to American technologies.

But the Chinese do not intend to give up their share of the Internet cable market. In April 2023, China announced a project – an alternative to SEA-ME-WE 6, the implementation of which will be carried out by China Telecom and China Mobile, which previously lost the tender, and HMN Tech will design the cable.

Against the backdrop of strengthening ties between China and the Pacific states, the United States is afraid of losing the initiative in relations with island countries, which is why they are ready to sponsor such projects, St. Petersburg State University professor Yana Leksyutina told Vedomosti. “At the recent summit between Biden and the leaders of the Pacific island countries, the American leader promised to provide diverse, including economic, support. This can be seen as a manifestation of support for Australia, which considers these islands an important part of its own security system and is concerned about the growing ties of these islands with China,” the expert emphasized.

Beijing has been trying for several years to create a new format of relations with the Pacific islands, including defense cooperation, which is not beneficial to either Washington or Canberra, Leksyutina concludes.

The implementation of such initiatives can be used by the United States, including for the needs of its own intelligence services, says General Director of Infoline Analytics Mikhail Burmistrov. According to the expert, despite the technological complexity of laying submarine cables, tracking the information passing through them does not pose significant difficulties for the intelligence services of countries such as the United States. “The Internet cable market has, in addition to financial, strategic importance, which is understood both in Washington and Beijing,” the expert concluded.