The contest over Pacific cable networks is not merely about connectivity or security, but about sovereignty, agency, and control over critical digital infrastructure
The latest battleground for geopolitical contestation is undersea cables. A ship owned by a Chinese company and operating under a third-country flag anchored in a restricted maritime zone off Taiwan in early 2025 in a deliberate attempt to cut a cable linking the main island to outlying areas. Later, a Taiwanese court convicted the ship's captain of “deliberately damaging telecommunications equipment”. Five weeks later, another transoceanic cable was cut by a ship owned by China, which then fled undetected. There were no immediate repercussions for either vessel. Neither incident was reported in the international media. But these incidents, taken together, are not aberrations but data points in a pattern of grey-zone interference targeting Taiwan's critical digital infrastructure that requires far greater analysis and policy attention than it has received to date.
From Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, and the Marshall Islands, there is no place in the world with greater undersea cable competition and vulnerability.
Over the past three years, there have been at least eleven instances of sabotage targeting the subsea cable network surrounding Taiwan. According to security experts and testimony before the United States (US) Congress, this constitutes a pattern of systematic grey-zone coercion in which an aggressor deliberately targets vital digital infrastructure in a way that falls below the level of armed conflict. However, the region with the greatest geographical vulnerability is far from Taiwan, in the South Pacific Ocean. From Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, and the Marshall Islands, there is no place in the world with greater undersea cable competition and vulnerability.
Initially, connectivity in the Pacific Islands has been primarily digital. The lack of capital, population density, and resources has hindered these countries from self-funding and self-operating a regional cable network. Today, submarine cables are the backbone of most international Internet traffic, and what was once a politically neutral infrastructure gap has become an urgent strategic concern. There are only four producers of such technology: SubCom in the United States, France's Alcatel Submarine Networks, NEC in Japan, and HMN Technologies in China, formerly known as Huawei Marine Networks. Huawei’s technology costs 20–30 percent less than that produced by the other three companies. This cost factor has become a decisive consideration for the governments of cash-strapped island nations. For example, the domestic cable installed in Papua New Guinea was built by Huawei Marine in 2018 using loans provided by the Export-Import Bank of China. Likewise, the contract for the Coral Sea Cable System intended for the Solomon Islands was initially awarded to Huawei Marine until 2018, when the Australian government intervened.
After that intervention in the Solomon Islands, cable connectivity investments by Western-aligned companies in the Pacific region have increased significantly. Several announcements over the past six months have clearly signalled this strategic intent.
In October 2025, Australia and Papua New Guinea signed the Pukpuk Treaty, which permits Australian defence personnel to access PNG’s communication systems, including satellite stations and submarine cables. Alongside the agreement, Australia announced a US$ 120 million investment in three Google-owned cables across PNG, linking PNG to Australian data centres, including facilities on Christmas Island, which hosts important military facilities for US forces. In November 2025, the Adamasia Cable System project was launched in the Solomon Islands, a 1,015-km cable system backed by AUD 104 million in financing from the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific.
In February 2026, the United States pledged US$ 132 million to bring the Marshall Islands and American Samoa into Google’s Pacific Connect plan, which the Honolulu Investment Summit characterised as vital for providing ‘trusted infrastructure’ in an area where competing Chinese options remain available. This reflects a straightforward strategy in which the United States and Australia are investing in and managing Pacific cable projects, particularly through Google.
Submarine cable infrastructure is not an afterthought for Western powers; it's their lifeline for economic, military, and diplomatic communication. However, it’s not simply a race to get it built or financed. The Pacific cable network's structural weaknesses are deeper than any one great power can construct or invest its way around. A more basic issue is the maintenance layer: the Chinese state-backed cable repair company operates much of the cable network across the Pacific, including cables built by Western technology companies. Notably, repair vessels belonging to this company have frequently disabled their maritime tracking systems without explanation during operations in strategically sensitive waters, as documented by CSIS. Such action could help intercept data and facilitate seabed surveillance or the covert mapping of cable locations, which could enable the precise and rapid severing of cables during a future contingency.
The Pacific cable network's structural weaknesses are deeper than any one great power can construct or invest its way around.
A cable landing station, an onshore facility where a submarine cable links to the national network, constitutes another vulnerable node that remains largely unexplored. This type of target can be attacked either via cyber means or physically to achieve the same purpose as sabotaging the cable itself, but in an even more clandestine manner. In addition, there is a legal angle to this issue. Under Chinese law, firms have no choice but to provide the state with access to their data upon request. This exacerbates US fears vis-à-vis HMN Technologies and SBSS, regardless of whether a specific cable has been hacked.
The infrastructure competition is more than just a technical security challenge for the governments of the Pacific Islands. For economic reasons, as well as for telemedicine and education, connectivity is essential for these countries, and the question they face is less about rejecting external investment altogether than about selecting a particular investor under the right conditions.
Both Western and Chinese investors come with strings attached. Australian and US investments in cables involve security access conditions, as illustrated by the Pukpuk Treaty, which grants Australia access to PNG's communication networks for defence purposes. Similarly, the cable security concept embedded in the Partnership for Cable Connectivity and Resilience, promoted by Australia, India, Japan, and the United States under the auspices of the Quad in 2023, does not necessarily align with the priorities of all the Pacific Islands. Nevertheless, China remains an investor through its Digital Silk Road financing of infrastructure in the region.
The one thing that seems to be completely missing from the ongoing contest is any real attempt to develop the ability of the Pacific Island nations themselves to make informed decisions regarding their own digital infrastructure.
For India, it’s more than connectivity. As one of the four Quad countries responsible for promoting the Partnership for Cable Connectivity and Resilience, India would be contributing to a security regime that needs to work effectively and to give Pacific Island countries a real say, rather than making them digitally dependent on others. With its experience of dealing with Chinese infrastructure investments in its neighbourhood, India can offer a unique perspective on how sustainable infrastructure should function. But it is largely absent from the Pacific cable conversation. India needs to be heard as more than a Quad partner.
The one thing that seems to be completely missing from the ongoing contest is any real attempt to develop the ability of the Pacific Island nations themselves to make informed decisions regarding their own digital infrastructure, including the technical knowledge needed to evaluate vendors, the legal ability to control data traffic, and the diplomatic strength to negotiate.
A real security architecture for the Pacific cable network would necessarily be radically different from the present one, in which external funding and control of connectivity, coupled with security access provisions, suffice.
The question is whether the Pacific Islands will be empowered to monitor and regulate this network or whether ‘trusted infrastructure’ actually reflects whose trust counts and whose does not.
At a bare minimum, a regional system for security monitoring of cables, equivalent to a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) for cybersecurity incidents, involving the Pacific Island nations as stakeholders rather than observers, would be needed. Further, security standards for vendors should not be limited to the ‘trusted vendor’ designation by the United States, a purely American decision made on behalf of other countries' infrastructure. Lastly, there should be continued investment in enhancing Pacific Island technical capacities, including the capability to assess risk, the means to control access, and the ability to bargain on an equal footing.
Australia and the United States have demonstrated that they are ready to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars toward laying cables across the Pacific. The question is whether the Pacific Islands will be empowered to monitor and regulate this network or whether ‘trusted infrastructure’ actually reflects whose trust counts and whose does not.
Under the Pacific Ocean, the number of cables continues to grow. The ships that could sever, intercept, and fix them continue to sail. And the island nations whose ocean lanes they span continue to be pressed into choosing among competing offers.
Er. Kritika is an independent researcher specialising in neuro-cybersecurity, AI governance, and cyber diplomacy.
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