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Grey-zone warfare to Chinese spy ships—India’s undersea cables need a security doctrine

India must treat undersea cables as critical national infrastructure, with resilience built through a layered security approach.

Undersea cables have long been at the heart of geopolitical competition. Even before the digital age, they carried communications that sustained empires. Today, cables form the backbone of the global digital economy and have re-emerged as points of vulnerability, particularly in the context of what is often described as grey-zone conflict.

Unlike conventional warfare, these operations remain below the threshold of open confrontation, making them harder to attribute and respond to. Incidents involving cable disruptions, whether in the Mediterranean in 2008 or more recently in the Red Sea, have shown how fragile global connectivity can be.

For India too, its rise as a digital power rests on cable infrastructure. The Indian Ocean is home to a dense network of undersea cables that carry over 95 per cent of global data traffic and the overwhelming majority of India’s international connectivity. Finance, governance, defence communications, and the everyday digital economy depend on these cables. Sitting between Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, India is both a major consumer and a critical transit hub. Cable systems such as the SEA-ME-WE series and India-Middle East-Western Europe routes pass through or terminate in Indian territory, linking major economic centres across continents. This places India at the centre of a wider network that supports global data flows, making its infrastructure important not only nationally but globally.

But Indias significance as the centre of a wider network also comes with vulnerabilities.

Also Read: The world’s in a flux. India must reform, consolidate & build a strong economy

How cable wars evolved  

During World War I, Britain targeted Germany’s global submarine telegraph cable network, effectively isolating Germany from its overseas communications.........

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