Interconnectivity in the Ice: Subsea Cables & Their Importance to Sovereignty

In the tenebrous waters beneath the Atlantic and Arctic lie, resting beyond where sunlight can pierce the nervous system of the world. Where the light does not touch, energy runs fast and fiercely, rushing through cables resting in the tenebrous atmosphere of the seafloor. As the world becomes deeper and deeper engrained in the internet with the explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it faces further dependence on these undersea cables; strategic networks, such as NATO, require communication to one another, secure lines where data cannot be tapped or disrupted, nonetheless, the expanding domains of nations like China and Russia usher in change like a vacuum of space in the ocean, allowing the water to come cascading in.

Submarine cables transmit 99% of data traffic, enabling the world to function not only as a globalized trading system and financial system, but also to share information, navigation, innovation, and ideas. Nonetheless, the focus of the Arctic as a strategic battlefield lies largely in the strength and size of icebreakers, the hard power of the economy and military, the Polar Silk Road, and vessels. Money and guns, in other words. That does not change the fact that the world is within an explosion of information in a digitalized network. Cybersecurity is a modern imperative for national security, as well as national strength, for it is through such systems; SWIFT, for example, depends nearly entirely upon submarine cables. So as electricity rushes underneath the quaking oceans, currency is exchanged, stocks rise and fall, news is transferred, and military intelligence is analyzed. NATO messages are sent and received, ships adjusted in their trajectory as a result. The coordination of the strongest military alliance in history depends in large part on the invisible and discrete nature of a subsea cable. Correspondingly, they act as a chokepoint. A policymaker who ignores such a volatile source of power and communication risks a detrimental loss of coordination and cohesion with allies, financially and militarily. The striking power of US economic warfare with China, for example, depends upon such cables; as does communication with economic allies, or the transfer of payment for resources such as oil. To ignore that which is invisible is to risk all that is. Chokepoint strategy functions entirely due to the sparsity of alternatives and concentration of vulnerabilities and strengths. To have options, therefore, is a key strategy in relieving pressure and vulnerability of a chokepoint. Undersea cables lack just that: alternatives.

It is because of this vulnerability that nations utilize undersea cables as targets to destroy or tamper with; Russia, for example, has utilized GUGI to plant explosive charges on the cables and intercept data through taps, as well as dragging anchors on the seafloor, which destroys the cables and their infrastructure. For this reason, from Norway to Greenland, Arctic undersea cables have become a priority for a plethora of nations, although approaches vary.

To defend national interests in an increasingly exposed region, where chokepoints play a vital role in the methods of warfare and strategy, is also to defend digital sovereignty. The same way the United States deliberately defends against cyberattacks, the insulation of its cables from threats is critical as well. One such solution is to increase quantity to decrease risk: diversified assets. Cut off one head, and it is problematic, but not detrimental. The solution proposed then was a contract between US-based SubCom, an undersea cable contractor, and Norwegian state-owned enterprise, Space Norway.¹ The ramifications of the agreement, as approved in March of 2025, include a 2,350 kilometer cable connecting Bodø, Jan Mayen, and Longyearbyen landings.^{2 3} The cost is roughly 2.8 billion Norwegian Krone, coming out to about $250 million USD.⁴ This cable is known as the Arctic Way, an accurate title given how the cable connects Norway and its archipelago through the Arctic region. Naturally, given US involvement and the US’s own utility of Arctic cables in and around Alaska, the United States holds a stake in the success of not only a US-based company, but also an ally’s digital sovereignty. Such sovereignty of digital infrastructure in the Arctic is imperative for a world where Arctic interests, as Russia and China expand into the region. An additional proposal, Polar Connect, seeks to connect Europe to East Asia through the Arctic Circle, around the North Pole, and is funded by the EU, while being coordinated by NORDUnet.⁵ NORDUnet is the leading cable supplier in Scandinavia and throughout European Arctic nations, working under Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden for research, communication, and educational connection.

Nonetheless, Arctic Way has a fixed price tag; each kilometer of traditional undersea cables, such as Marea, owned by Meta, runs roughly $30,000 to $45,000 per kilometer. The Arctic Way, by contrast, is estimated at $178,500 per kilometer, in part due to the difficult conditions the Arctic presents. Despite this, the difference in length between 6,600 and 7,000 kilometers for a transatlantic cable, compared to only 2,350 kilometers for the Arctic Way, is telling of the difficulty as well as the value of producing such a cable. Undersea cables, despite this, are not treated internationally as infrastructure or categories of strategic investment, so much as one-offs. NATO states treat dual-use infrastructure categorically, as seen with the redundancy of GPS and PNT, or satellite ground stations; while undersea cables are not conventionally treated to such an extent, outside of Norway and the Arctic Way, with other NATO nations. The Arctic Way replaces the dual-cable Svalbard Fibre system, which has been in place since 2004, but was quickly becoming outdated; hence, the replacement of the Arctic Way is expected in 2028.^{6 7} Nonetheless, Norway has stated that existing cables will be kept in place serving as backups for years past 2028, as a redundancy measure.⁸ Thus, it is not a chokepoint, but an insulation and protection of one. In short, it is easier for an enemy power to cut one cable than two; it is also much more tempting, if it can kill communications in one fell swoop, to strike only one. The same cannot be said of redundant systems.

Space Norway, as a state-owned enterprise, works with SubCom not for a merely commercial endeavor; rather, it is specific and strategic. The Norwegian Armed Forces are a designated primary customer for certain capacity segments. The population of the islands is dwarfed by the strategic value of a cable system, one which is redundant to a pre-existing system. The Arctic as an opening frontier is naturally at the front of the mind for an Arctic nation such as Norway, hence the coordination with the construction and utility of the Arctic Way through Norway’s Ministry of Defense and Forsvarsbygg defense estates agency.⁹ Forsvarsbygg is also independently building the Jan Mayen landing station on an island without a permanent civilian population; therefore, it is sound to reason that the utility of the Arctic Way is entirely military, as well as research, as only the Armed Forces and Meteorological Institute personnel routinely stay on the island.¹⁰ Such a doctrinal logic is already applied to NATO infrastructure and systems, particularly seen in GPS and PNT as mentioned prior, wherein categories of infrastructure which were once commercial provision are in the modern era routinely purchased directly by the government for defense purposes of the state. The Arctic Way is the flagship indicating NATO strategic logic, in the Arctic as well as in undersea cables, as the emergence of a larger pattern of NATO categorization. Norway is not alone in this endeavor and the expansion of infrastructure. The Pan-Arctic Cable System (PACS) established in February 2025, an MoU among six European parties, including the Dutch Subsea Cable Coalition, Cinia Oy, NORDUnet, Tusass, GlobalConnect and Tampnet, has been designated as a cable project of European interest; and is co-funded directly by the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) digital project.^{11 12} The expansion of undersea cables as a strategic asset before it is utilized against European nations is a replicating process. While it may be most prominent in the Arctic in Norway’s example, the expansion of submarine cables as a whole displays a shift in European chokepoint policy. The PACS project is estimated to be ready for service in early 2030, and is conducted largely by Cinia Oy, a Finnish-owned company.¹³ The aforementioned NORDUnet provides the other five Nordic nations, while Tussass is Greenland’s state telecom operator. The interested nations in undersea cables are not those like the United Kingdom, France, or warmer-climate countries. They are instead the ones with proximity to Russia in the Arctic, and strategic concerns regarding the tampering, restricting, or cutting of subsea cables. The interconnectivity of Europe as a whole is, of course, imperative to EU policy and strategy; that does not change the fact that it is prioritized in action in the Arctic and Nordic regions. The Far North Fiber, which works with Cinia and Alaska’s Far North Digital, launched initially in 2021, a shift for Finland to work with the United States rather than Russia, following the Finland-Russia Arctic Connect Cable collapse in May 2021.¹⁴ Arctic nations are looking for secure submarine cables for strategic purposes.

Put simply, there is a pattern, one of Nordic European states working to secure sovereign digital infrastructure as a strategic precaution against chokepointing by other Arctic nations, namely Russia.

Greenland follows a unique approach to the same strategy, in that it is selective in its allies, and utilizes domestic infrastructure to own the cables it utilizes, so that it is not caught flat-footed in terms of cable sovereignty, if and when such a jurisdiction becomes a question. Tusass holds a legal monopoly on Greenland’s submarine cable market, not because Greenland is an island which encourages monopolies, but because it does benefit from subsidies favoring one specific company to act quickly and effectively to establish safeguards to national security concerns. A nation does not care for a temporary monopoly if it protects long-term security. Furthermore, Greenland, by working only with Tusass, effectively excludes Starlink.¹⁵ A partnership with Eutelsat OneWeb was explicitly framed, by this logic, around sovereign control over subsea cables.^{16 17} In an interconnected world, where the connection between nations is more imperative for military and economic reasons, as well as commercial and domestic requirements, no assurances can be built on alliances which can lose contact with the cutting of a single wire. Instead, building that web to connect the nations is a prerogative for nations which have seen disruption in subsea cables in their neighboring regions, and desire protection from Russian tampering. Greenland’s insulation, then, by excluding Starlink, may at first seem counterintuitive- isolationist, in fact. However, this is not the case; instead, by working with the EU to fund a separate new cable around Greenland’s Coast, while Tusass invests its funds to build out a new Nuuk data center, Greenland is instead strategically selecting its allies and partners. Such logic is furthered by the remembrance of US dominance towards Greenland, with quotes of ownership emanating from the White House regarding the nation. Greenland is not acting in an isolatory way, despite utilizing a monopoly and acting out of a desire to cut out specific alliances; instead, it is picking and choosing which leverage and exposure it is comfortable with, and what trade-offs correspond. It is, as chokepoint warfare fundamentally comes down to, assets and liabilities.

The original, classical definition of a chokepoint is geographical; it is the Bosphorus’s thin opening between two great bodies of water; it is the Malacca Strait’s potential to constrict Chinese trade flow, or Bab-el-Mandeb, or the Panama Canal, and so on and so forth; most recently depicted in the Suez Canal (2020) and the Strait of Hormuz. However, chokepoints are more critically just vulnerabilities; they are a limited route or limited action; in short, they are dependence upon rather than independence from. A nation which obtains all its grain from another- or all its oil for that matter- lacks leverage, and holds a deep dependence. Such is a chokepoint, if pressure is applied. The undersea cables connecting northern Europe are no different. The leverage in the Arctic runs through the dependence- namely the sparsity of alternatives and concentration of vulnerability- in undersea cables. There are only so many cables; there is, however, so much dependence upon them. The relaxation of dependence upon these cables exists in the expansion of them, as the Nordic nations clearly are conducting. It also requires increased legal and regulatory terms of a cable’s operation, regardless of ownership, as so many nations depend upon cables. The security of the cable is imperative to all nations which utilize them, not just those who own them, in short. The precedent for restrictive access, as Greenland has conducted, is a strategic decision, even if a short-term limiting one; the US withdrew a landing approval for the Hong Kong segment of the Pacific Light Cable Network due to national security concerns, for example. Such mirrors the actions taken by Greenland to isolate itself from Starlink.

The line a nation must walk is that between being far too open; wherein a nation takes cables from all who offer, and the data is more exposed to tampering and tapping, and being too tightly shut; wherein a nation has only one or two cables which have high vulnerability and act as a chokepoint. Part of the chokepointing of the Arctic therefore lies in this second explanation, as only three global cable manufacturing firms dominate the market: Alcatel Submarine Networks, a French company, SubCom, the aforementioned American company, and NEC, a Japanese company. Even narrower, SubCom is the only publicly identified as holding polar-certified work, with Reliance-class ships; hence its selection for Norway’s Arctic Way.¹⁸ There is effectively only one path to take for nations wishing to expand their Arctic cable security, and it is a United States-owned company.

Additionally, the concentration of landing sites for the cables is limited in the Arctic, particularly Greenland, Iceland and Russia. Russia naturally holds direct interest in the development of sea cables not only for its long history of tampering, seen on Christmas Day 2024, the cuts of the Baltic cables by Russian shadow fleet, wherein the Eagle S dragged its anchor along the seafloor, severing five telecom links, one which connected Finland and Estonia- thus denoting Finland’s deep interest in investment of new cables, as well as tampering and physical data plants, and explosive charges.^{19 20 21 22} The Bosphorus is a single chokepoint in that it has no alternative routes; once closed, there are no alternatives. The undersea cables are akin in that there are such limited options; it creates an effective chokepoint, even if not to the same extent. A limitation of options (a lack of diversity of investments) leads to a vulnerability, bluntly put.

The Polar Express, despite its nomenclature, is a vital Russian cable, initially announced per an October presidential decree in 2020, which was followed up by the actualization the month after announcement, that November. The water does not crystallize on the ocean floor in the Arctic, not at the depth at which undersea cables are placed, in any event. In short, ice is no obstacle at the bottom of the top of the world. For this reason, Russia has worked towards 12,650 kilometers of cable, stretching from Murmansk to Vladivostok, along the entirety of the Russian Arctic coastline.^{23 24} As opposed to just one or two cables, there are six fiber pairs, able to process 52 to 104 terabytes in their ideal capacity; the cost was steep, roughly 65 billion rubles or $889 million USD, which was financed entirely and exclusively by the Russian state, after a prior private-led initiative stalled- a project known as Russian Connect.^{25 26} The Ministry of Transport operates the initiative, while the first phase, which connected Teriberka to Amderma, was completed two years after the initiation, in October 2022.^{27 28} The remaining sections are scheduled for service from 2026-2028, an extension from the 2026 target. Arctic Way is designed to be smaller, swifter, and narrower. It is cheaper, shorter, and built around military needs to provide redundancy and security for a small Arctic NATO state. The Polar Express, by contrast, is an expensive long-term investment aimed at sovereign presence projection across the entirety of the Northern Sea Route coastline. Russia is in effect laying the route for a modern railroad, a digital one, and a maritime one, built to take advantage of an increasingly valuable piece of the world. Norway is simply trying to eliminate a chokepoint; the message is therefore rather simple: offense and defense.

China, by contrast, for its claims of being a "near Arctic power," has no coastline in the Arctic, and therefore no landing access. Nonetheless, in 2017 China and Finland held talks on the Arctic Connect cable, which was to be implemented by Cinia Group potentially in conjunction with China’s Telecom. Despite its distance from the region, China seeks to get a foot in the door. The project for the Arctic Connect also required the Russian partner, MegaFon, which failed to establish the initial Russian Connect project, hence forcing the state to take over. MegaFon announced in May 2021 a reconsideration of Arctic Connect’s structure and financing; and so the project lay dead in its tracks.²⁹ Finland nonetheless persisted; it pivoted instead to Far North Fiber, working with US-based Far North Digital.³⁰ Finland chose the West in this instance, but that does not alter the fact that it initially chose to work with Russia and China instead; it was only because the initial project failed to come to fruition that Finland’s hand was forced. Nonetheless, Finland’s ambition for such cables led to what would become part of PACS, by working with Far North Digital. China was fundamentally locked out of negotiation unless it could buy in through a third party; namely Russia. China depends upon Russia for its access to the High North and was iced out when the project faltered. Interestingly, in 2011 Chinese investor Huang Nubo bid to buy land in northeastern Iceland, assumed for tourism, which was rejected by Icelandic authorities due to concerns regarding Chinese state access and influence. Nations are wary of China due to its lack of legitimacy and shadowy undertakings, and despite China’s desire for a Digital Silk Road, the Arctic remains a firmly Russian and NATO-contested ground, at least in terms of the cables which sit in the murky waters underneath the thick ice.

The conclusion to draw therefore is that three main powers vie for influence in the Arctic for digital sovereignty and influence. Most prominently is Russia, focused on expansion and domination in the region, seeking to crystallize the way the ice cannot, on the seafloor, the Northern Sea Route as a viable and live pathway for trade and data. Norway, by contrast, seeks not to expand its reach but to defend its sovereignty; a shield rather than a sword, which is insulated and protected by newly built cables to protect from Russian tampering. Lastly lies China, which seeks to get in the room with the Arctic powers for its own interests, but is faced with great difficulty and skepticism in doing so. It is fairly plausible China seeks to expand influence in the Arctic utilizing its tell-tale infrastructure as a leverage strategy, wherein it implements a technology or means for one infrastructure and holds it hostage to the nations who depend upon it. Put simply, it is the deliberate creation of a chokepoint; give the state the carrot, then use it as a stick.

And then there is the United States. While Norway reflects broader patterns among North European powers and NATO members, the United States seeks a dual-pronged approach of insulation from chokepoints and expansion of influence. Passing the Strategic Subsea Cable Act of 2026, a law that directly imposes bellicose economic sanctions on foreign entities that sabotage underwater lines; a threat which protects legitimacy while retaining power, and one clearly directed at Russia, at least at present.^{31 32 33} That is not to say other powers will not later on utilize the same tactics- perhaps under the cover that it was Russia- to harm the United States. The US naturally has also worked to expand the 14,500-kilometer Far North Fiber project; however, US action is limited largely to the Alaskan region and depends upon reliance on Finland, Japan, Canada, and Ireland to bypass Russian territory.³⁴ Such a project would connect the Western world like never before, from East to West, across the chokepoint of the Arctic. The Subsea Cable Act also allows for coordination with these Western powers in case of a strike- to harm this Far North Fiber anywhere from Japan to Ireland would be to enact US sanctions, thus defending allies and alliances without signing any new treaties.^{35 36 37} This Far North Fiber is critical not only in US expansion in the Arctic and the physical tethering of allies, but also due to its novel technology- SMART (Scientific Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications) capabilities. These are embedded sensors within the seafloor which track seismic activity, ocean temperatures, and acoustic data. Such sensors are not merely for nature analysts and oceanographers, however; they double as defensive listening ports, an ear in the Arctic which allows the US and allies to listen to Russian submarine movements, and potential sabotage in real time. Combined with the Act, this creates a dynamic occurring in minutes: the US senses cable tampering within minutes of its occurrence, is able to brace with other domestic cables for the damage to data; or else stop transmitting so it is not intercepted by Russia, and then immediately enact sanctions upon Russia for the incident. Like Norway, the United States is also establishing multiple domestic lines around Alaska, including the presently operating 1,900 kilometer which stretches around the northern coast of Alaska, connecting Prudhoe Bay and Utqiagvik to Nome, better involving Native communities as well as industrial sites.³⁸ 2027 holds the promise of a $77 million project to lay an additional 1,545 kilometers to close the circuit between northern Alaska and the state’s southern cities, down to Homer, as well as extensions throughout Hooper Bay to bring modern telemedicine and economic access to the isolated sections of Western Alaska; although it is not as strategically critical as the insulation of the main circuit. Additional redundancies have been established, including subsea cables established through Prince William Sound and slated to open in 2027, to connect the terrestrial grid to the subsea grid, granting highly secure, redundant lines to the US military and civilian populations. Reduce chokepoints, increase options; that is the game.

The implications of the world’s expansion in the Arctic and its seafloor are critical for national security, world communication and coordination of allies, particularly in the case of NATO. While the Arctic Council and NATO frameworks are not as capable in terms of categorical designation, they must be developed to ensure greater security and reduction of risk. The High North seabed infrastructure serves as a response to the subsea sabotage in the Baltic, only a few years prior. US and allied Nordic states hold a vested interest in ensuring Greenlandic and Faroese connectivity is provided by trusted, allied partners, despite Beijing’s persistent attempts to hold influence over Greenlandic infrastructure. Such domineering by the United States has in turn only darkened Greenland’s interest in working solely with the United States, and so it shares cables for its sovereignty, rather than alliances with the US alone. Nonetheless, the options for Polar cable expansion are limited largely to the only certified Arctic provider in SubCom, which in turn limits development due to a lack of competition in the market, not unlike the US’s problem with icebreakers. While Russia strives to expand, Norway seeks to defend, and the United States attempts to balance both, China is stuck outside the market. The FCC’s July 2025 Report and Order bans certain Chinese technologically linked firms from building cables that connect to the US, establishing a precedent outside the Arctic which will be applied within it, should China attempt to establish Arctic lines- as it had in the Arctic Connector.^{39 40} This precedent, however, must be reinforced to continue to limit Chinese expansion in a region it holds no claim.

The world runs on wires; it is a modern truth, and perhaps a strange one. Nonetheless, it is a truth; more concerning than Russian explosives or anchors dragged across these wires and their sensors is the role of chokepoints in the Arctic as a whole. The world is dependent upon these deep and murky submarine cables; as the ice in the Arctic melts, and the world seeks to replace the Suez route with the Northern Sea Route, as finances such as SWIFT travel through cables running alongside continental shelves, risk is only increased. If the world is only held together like a ball of yarn, wherein one cable being cut severs all the connections, then protecting that cable is truly vital. It is this same logic that has caused Nordic nations to establish their own cable routes, which they protect and defend, and which are being built even now. It is a different logic; one of ambition, which drives Russia and pushes it to string such cables across the entirety of the NSR; it is an attempt to control a region of the world which may become highly critical for trade in the coming years, as the ice thaws more and more. Digital connection is just as, if not more, imperative than trade routes themselves. They serve as a different kind of chokepoint, a novel one, but one nonetheless, in their nature of limitation, if not their nature of geographic power, such as the Bosphorus. Different nations grapple with varying strategies: to expand or defend, or, as Greenland diversify? China sits on the sidelines, striking at any opening to enter, all the while the United States works in conjunction with allies both to its East and West, but most imperatively nations with Arctic interests, to connect the world securely and effectively. The world adjusts to changing landscapes and novel technologies; nations do in their unique ways, but despite that, the competition between great powers, between Russia, the EU, China, and the US, all hold a stake in the ever-thawing Arctic Ocean.

Sunlight cannot pierce the ground on which the cables rest; and yet Russian anchors can- all the same, US sensors can detect and respond to such threats. Likewise, ice cannot form on the Arctic floor, only on coastlines; and as such, despite the complications and danger of the surface, which requires icebreakers to cut through and protect against icebergs, progress can be made. Each kilometer of connection ensures a more intertwined world, and one that cannot come apart at the seams with only one cut- but the world must retain that interconnectivity; it must defend and expand it, as the US seeks to. It must build an empire of connection built not on negotiations and with nations as shadowy and murky as the water where those cables sit; but instead with nations transparent and allied, with trusted interests. Sovereignty has entered a new era, a digital one, and the heartbeat of that era sits not simply under the sea, but on top of the world, where the Far North Fiber seeks to connect great nations, across great distances.

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