Huawei is investing in undersea cable across continents ... like USA

[Bipin Gautam]

News: Worried about Huawei’s 5G? Wait till it gets into the game for
95 percent of all data and voice traffic.

EXCERPT:

As the West considers the threat posed by China’s naval ambitions,
there is a natural tendency to place overarching attention on the
South China Sea. This is understandable: Consolidating it would
provide Beijing with a huge windfall of oil and natural gas, and a
potential chokehold over up to 40 percent of the world’s shipping.

But this is only the most obvious manifestation of Chinese
maritime strategy. Another key element, one that’s far harder to
discern, is Beijing’s increasing influence in constructing and
repairing the undersea cables that move virtually all the information
on the internet. To understand the totality of China’s “Great Game” at
sea, you have to look down to ocean floor.

While people tend think of satellites and cell towers as the heart
of the internet, the most vital component is the 380 submerged cables
that carry more than 95 percent of all data and voice traffic between
the continents. They were built largely by the U.S. and its allies,
ensuring that (from a Western perspective, at least) they were
“cleanly” installed without built-in espionage capability available to
our opponents. U.S. internet giants including Google, Facebook and
Amazon are leasing or buying vast stretches of cables from the mostly
private consortia of telecom operators that constructed them.

But now the Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies, the leading
firm working to deliver 5G telephony networks globally, has gone to
sea. Under its Huawei Marine Networks component, it is constructing or
improving nearly 100 submarine cables around the world. Last year it
completed a cable stretching nearly 4,000 miles from Brazil to
Cameroon. (The cable is partly owned by China Unicorn, a
state-controlled telecom operator.) Rivals claim that Chinese firms
are able to lowball the bidding because they receive subsidies from
Beijing.

Just as the experts are justifiably concerned about the inclusion
of espionage “back doors” in Huawei’s 5G technology, Western
intelligence professionals oppose the company’s engagement in the
undersea version, which provides a much bigger bang for the buck
because so much data rides on so few cables...

[...]
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-09/china-spying-the-internet-s-underwater-cables-are-next

https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/china-spying-the-internet-s-underwater-cables-are-next