The West has a plan to keep China, Russia out of subsea data pipes

BRUSSELS — The United States, European Union governments and other allied capitals are cooking up a plan to beef up the security of submarine cable networks — and that includes pushing out Chinese vendors from rollout projects.
The U.S. is drafting a “New York Joint Statement,” obtained by POLITICO, that is set to be signed later this month in the margins of the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 22-25. EU member countries are giving their approval to join the pledge.
Communication cables are running massive data streams across the world and are essential to the functioning of the world economy. But they’re also vulnerable to the threat of tapping data straight from the pipes — though this is difficult and expensive — sabotage, where cables are cut or otherwise damaged, and supply chain shocks.
Russia is known to have been involved in disrupting and sabotaging these networks since as early as 2014, researchers have flagged and U.S. officials recently told CNN they’d observed more worrying activity by Russia.
Countries signing the statement would demand network operators to have supply chain security and data security measures in place, and share information in case of incidents, the draft said.
The text was first reported on by MLex.
The New York declaration is an attempt to procure submarine cable networks from companies in allied countries — echoing the West’s efforts in past years to kick out Chinese companies from 5G infrastructure. 
The concerns with Chinese equipment centers on the fear that booming Chinese suppliers are taking the market in a stranglehold. 
While the list of competitors for submarine cable projects is long, the big fight is often between U.S. provider SubCom, Europe’s Alcatel Submarine Networks (owned by Nokia) and HMN Tech in China, as well as others like Prysmian (Italy) and Nexans (France), Japan’s NEC and China’s ZTT. HMN Tech is one of the fastest-growing companies in the market. It was known as Huawei Marine Networks until 2020, when it was taken over by Hengtong Group and changed its brand name.
Control over the supply chain means the West would be reliant on tech that China could at any moment stop supplying, or the suppliers could be ordered by the Chinese government to disrupt the cables’ operation. 
The draft said countries will promote “reliable and trusted cable components and services.” 
They also want to “encourage undersea cable network service providers and operations and maintenance providers to have transparent ownership, partnerships, and corporate governance structures” — a complaint that’s often linked to Chinese technology firms with opaque structures or ties to government-affiliated organizations.
The EU is going through an internal process to get permission from the national governments of its member countries to sign on the dotted line at the U.N. meeting. The European Commission should get permission from those representatives to sign on their behalf at a meeting next week.
Submarine infrastructure is a vulnerability that the industry is “very keen to address,” Christian von Stamm Jonasson, a consultant at Hanbury Strategy, said. The details will need “careful work … so they don’t create unnecessary trade barriers,” he added.