The subsea war

海底之战

The Documentary Podcast

社会与文化

2025-04-03

26 分钟

单集简介 ...

The 'accidental' severing of undersea cables or pipelines seem an almost daily occurrence these days but how reliant are we on this infrastructure, how much of it is there, and what steps are being taken to protect it? Business and economics editor Douglas Fraser investigates who might be behind these thinly veiled acts of sabotage and what their motivation might be. With much of the activity happening in the North and Baltic seas Douglas travels to Norway to see how the Navy there have long anticipated this risk and have partnered with the oil and gas industry to create a 'total defence' concept that extends deep beneath the waves.
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单集文稿 ...

  • Three explosions were detonated on major gas lines between Russia and Europe earlier this autumn.

  • NATO says it will enhance its military presence in the Baltic Sea after Russia was accused of sabotaging Estonia's main power link.

  • And some experts say this could be the Kremlin showing it can attack critical infrastructure.

  • Putin's aggression does not stop in Ukraine.

  • Russian spy ships menace our waters.

  • And communications to Shetland have been severely disrupted after a subsea cable was damaged.

  • It's like somebody has flipped a switch and taken us back 20 or 30 years.

  • It's vast, deep, dark, cold, seemingly silent.

  • But the seabed hosts the arteries of the modern economy.

  • Telecom cables carrying terabytes of data, electricity grid connections and cables linking wind turbines.

  • Pipelines bringing oil and gas ashore or pumping it between countries to keep our home fires burning.

  • This huge network sits on the ocean floor quietly working away with the majority of the population unaware of just how much is happening under the waves.

  • These assets are so valuable and strategically important to modern life.

  • The seabed has become the battleground for a new type of warfare.

  • I'm Douglas Fraser and for the documentary from the BBC World Service, this is The Subsea War.

  • There is an estimated 10 trillion on financial transactions going through these cables each single day.

  • Katarzyna Zisk is a professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies in Oslo.

  • She highlights, among many other targets, the potential for cutting transatlantic telecom cables,

  • many of them linking North America through Irish waters and the Western approaches to the rest of Europe.

  • Again, we are talking about 99% of the world's data traveling transmitted through to this global network.