This content was paid for by Sopra Steria and produced in partnership with the Financial Times Commercial department.
As conflicts escalate and geopolitical tensions soar, the increase in
subsea internet cable sabotage underscores a stark fact: the continent’s
digital lifelines are vulnerable
In September 2025, the Associated Press reported that a ship dragging its anchor along the bottom of the Red Sea was likely to have severed two of the major telecoms cables connecting Europe and Asia.
Companies in India using Microsoft Azure were already experiencing delays to cloud services as network connectivity dropped almost 60 per cent.
Businesses in Pakistan lost access completely.
Industry estimates suggest the economic impact reached $3.5bn.
The incident was one of 150 to 200 cable disruption events recorded on average each year.
A comparable incident affecting European infrastructure would be considerably more expensive, given that 94 per cent of Europe’s businesses rely on internet connectivity.
The growing risk
To date, Europe hasn't experienced cable sabotage on the scale of the Red Sea incident, but as economies accelerate digitalisation, and global tensions increase, the risk is growing.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, 10 subsea cables in the Baltic Sea have been cut or damaged.
In early 2026, Russian submarines were detected in and around UK waters in close proximity to critical undersea cables.
The growing risk affects Europe’s push for innovation, with the EU aiming for at least 75 per cent of enterprises to be using cloud, big data or AI by 2030.
“While this is a policy target, it still points to heavy reliance on cables running from Europe to the US,” says Tony O’Sullivan, Chief Executive of RETN, a network service provider.
“These risks are often unseen, and companies need to understand where their data is processed.
Meanwhile, many European AI data centres are being built in Scandinavia, meaning mainland firms must connect via Baltic Sea routes that are relatively limited.”
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Companies need to understand where their data is processed
Subsea sabotage
During an era of hybrid warfare, undersea cables have become a potential target.
In 2023, Nato confirmed that Russia was “actively mapping” the critical subsea infrastructure of Ukraine's allies, suggesting it was highly likely it would aim to cut cables running through the Baltic Sea in an attempt to disrupt European communications.
“Areas such as the Baltics are at particular risk because the seabed is only around 100m or less at around 24km out," explains Christophe Eugene, Senior Defence Advisor at Sopra Steria, and a former rear admiral in the French Navy.
“If you drop your anchor or deploy a trawl net and start moving, it’s not only easy to sever a cable but also pretty easy to deny.”
In December 2025, a cargo vessel heading from St Petersburg to Israel severed an undersea telecoms cable running from Helsinki to Estonia across the Gulf of Finland by dragging its anchor along the seabed.
Russia denied any involvement, and the crew claimed the anchor had been lowered accidentally.
If you drop your anchor or deploy a trawl net and start moving, it’s not only easy to sever a cable but also pretty easy to deny
“Even if accidental, it’s a huge risk for companies because you need to reroute their internet traffic,” says O’Sullivan.
“In regional outages, traffic can usually be diverted across Europe, which can affect performance for real-time applications.
But larger disruptions can force data onto much longer routes – including via the US – adding around 150 milliseconds of latency.” This is enough to make video conferencing, high-frequency trading and online streaming unworkable, creating serious disruption in companies that rely on cloud-based tools.
The risk to European business is also compounded by the concentration of cable ownership in a handful of American companies.
“Technology companies were only using 13 per cent of international bandwidth demand in 2012 but now use 74 per cent,” says Lane Burdette, Senior Analyst at TeleGeography, a telecom data and analytics provider.
The same pattern exists in cloud computing, in which Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud control roughly 70 per cent of the European market, leaving local providers with only a small share.
Companies need to have contingency plans where, if something were to happen, they’re in a position to react
For years this concentration carried little political cost because transatlantic relations were stable.
But as tensions between the US and European allies rise, policymakers across the EU have become increasingly concerned about relying on infrastructure owned and operated by external organisations.
European spending on sovereign cloud infrastructure is expected to more than triple between 2025 and 2027, according to Gartner.
Yet even after onshoring cloud infrastructure, the majority of Europe’s social media, AI and other telecommunications data will still run through cables on the sea-floor.
Planning for greater cable risk
Europe’s reliance on foreign partners for technological infrastructure puts cable risk alongside cyber and supply-chain risk in enterprise planning, Eugene believes.
That means stress-testing connectivity assumptions, mapping dependencies and investing in fallback options for critical operations.
“Companies need to have contingency plans where, if something were to happen, they’re in a position to react,” says Eugene.
“So, as soon as one channel of communication cables is lost, they need to be prepared to switch to the other – and the other, today, is probably a satellite.”
FS-ISAC, the body that coordinates resilience across the global financial system, has urged companies to map which core services rely on subsea cable connectivity, incorporate cable disruption scenarios into disaster recovery plans, and assess whether they have sufficient alternative network routes and backup capacity in key regions.
For operators running networks worth tens of billions, the cost of waiting may soon outweigh the cost of acting.
As hybrid warfare strategies grow more sophisticated, and Europe’s cable infrastructure expands, the margin for complacency is narrowing fast.
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