As undersea cables break off Europe and Taiwan, proving sabotage is hard

Officials have pointed to China and Russia as likely culprits, but legal challenges make prosecutions difficult.

Taipei, Taiwan – When Taiwan seized a Chinese-crewed cargo ship suspected of deliberately severing one of its undersea telecom cables last month, authorities pledged to “make every effort to clarify the truth” of what happened.

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said it could not rule out the possibility that China had deployed the Togo-flagged Hong Tai 58 as part of a “grey area intrusion”.

Recent cases of damage to submarine cables around the island and in Europe suggest that proving sabotage, much less holding anyone accountable, may be no easy task.

Since 2023, there have been at least 11 cases of undersea cable damage around Taiwan and at least 11 such incidents in the Baltic Sea, according to Taiwanese and European authorities.

Taiwanese and European authorities have identified China or Russia – allies that share increasingly strained relations with the West and its partners – as the likely culprits in a number of incidents, though they have attributed several others to natural causes.