Roundtable on Subsea Cables as Critical Infrastructure

Ladies and gentlemen, if I can please ask you to take a seat, we are about to start. Thank you.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We are ready to start this roundtable on subsea cables as critical infrastructure. My name is Giacomo Ferzifaoli. I'm the head of the Security and Technology program at unider, the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. And it is my pleasure to welcome you to this roundtable organized together with Ireland.

And we're extremely grateful for your support in organizing this event. It's also a great opportunity to see so many familiar faces and new faces coming here to New York on occasion of the organizational session of the Global Mechanism that started today. We are really looking forward to continue supporting all of you with our work. We have a very packed agenda for this roundtable and a hard cutoff at 2:30. So without further ado, I would like now to invite Ambassador Maithen, here on my left, the permanent representative of Ireland to the United nations, to share with us some opening remarks.

Ambassador, over to you.

Thank you very much, Jack. And I'm also delighted to welcome you all here today to our discussion on the security of subsea cables as critical infrastructure, chaired by unidir, with Ireland support. I would also like to acknowledge in particular our high level participant, George Kriyangsa Kitachasari, a member of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. And it's a privilege to have you here contributing to our discussion today and bringing your unique expertise.

I'd also like to thank UNIDIR and in particular Dr. Camino Cavanagh, along with our other participants for giving us the benefit of their knowledge and expertise in this area. Our discussion today is very opportune given the increasing importance of the security and resilience of subsea telecommunication cables and our growing reliance on them in day to day life. Glad to see the sandwiches have been eaten out there and people are are coming in a bit late. Yeah, there's plenty of. Plenty of chairs around.

Yeah, Yeah, no, we'll wait for people are are ready.

There's some chairs up over here as well if you want to come over. Yep,.

Very good. Okay. So as I said, today is a highly relevant and pertinent discussion. Very opportune. While we know that subsea cables are largely owned and operated by private companies, a growing number of states now qualify or designate these systems as critical infrastructure.

As many of you will know, Unider has published an in depth report entitled Achieving Depth Subsea Cables as Critical Infrastructure. The findings of this report highlight over 97% of international data, including critical financial transactions travel by undersea fibre optic cables, making them essential, strategic and in some instances vulnerable assets. The Unity Report also recognises that the security and resilience of subsea cables are vital to economic and societal well being as well as national and international security. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea sets out the legal framework through which all activities in the oceans and seas must be carried out and is of strategic importance as the basis for national, regional and global action and cooperation in the marine sector. I'm conscious that Judge Kuyangsek will wish to say more on this particular topic.

For our part, we in Ireland are acutely conscious of the significance of the data cables that pass through our own maritime zones. In a hyper connected digital world, what happens in one part of the ocean now has a profound effect the world over. We recognize the potential vulnerability of our critical maritime infrastructure, particularly critical undersea infrastructure. For this reason, our Minister for Defence last month published Ireland's first national maritime security strategy with a focus on emerging threats and protecting subsea infrastructure. Our strategy also focuses on enhancing maritime domain awareness, including through strengthening international cooperation frameworks.

The vision for our strategy is that it will support the protection of a secure and sovereign Ireland where our people and interests are protected and where our European and international partners can rely on us to uphold the rule of law in the maritime domain. Ireland will also increase cooperation with regional and international partners and international institutions. This will include cooperating close to our near neighbours on new initiatives and exploring the opportunity for Ireland to host or partner in a regional cable monitoring hub for the European Union in the North Atlantic. Our discussion today will further serve to further consideration of this very important issue for us in the context of the new global mechanism on cyber security at the un. It's also welcome that our knowledgeable panel will explore various national and international implications of this issue and in a domain of increasing importance to international peace and security.

And with that, I now hand over the floor to Giacomo to moderate this discussion. Thank you, Giacomo.

Thank you, Ambassador, for your opening remarks and to give the right context to this event. Just in terms of how we're planning to structure the next hour or so, we will have three different segments. First, we will give you the opportunity to Camino to introduce even further this topic by running through some of the main findings of the study that the Ambassador just mentioned in his remarks.

We will then have a structured discussion with a great selection of speakers that I will introduce in a moment where we go a little bit deeper into some of these topics. And then the last segment we would like. This is a roundtable, not only in shape, but also conceptually. So we would like really to open the floor and give you the opportunity to make contributions from the floor if there is anything you would like to add from your perspective. So I would like now to invite Camino.

Camino Kavanagh is. She's a research fellow with us at unidear, also our principal investigator or lead researcher on anything cables over the last couple of years. So Camino, over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ambassador.

And thank you Unider, for organizing the roundtable to the Government of Ireland and to ICP for supporting the event and the project. And thank you also to my super smart colleagues, co authors Jonas Franking and HE Wenting, with whom it's always a pleasure to work with, and of course to all the people we interviewed from industry, government and academia across the globe to inform this project. Now, the current geopolitical context is driving a lot of the current attention to subsea cables, including concerns that states might deliberately sabotage or interfere with the systems through physical or cyber means. Conflict and unrest in certain strategic maritime areas is impacting subsea cable installation and repair operations that even the most seasoned negotiators and mediators are finding difficult to resolve. But our massive digital transformation objectives and our massive dependencies on subsea cable systems and other digital infrastructure, including new AI related infrastructure, are also important drivers of the current attention to subsea cables, as are the growing number of extreme weather or geological events that too can impact the infrastructure.

While largely owned and operated by private companies, a growing number of states, as mentioned by the Ambassador now qualify or designate the systems as critical, if not strategic infrastructure. And as evident in the title of our report, our report is concerned with what that actually means in policy and practice. So, drawing from the critical infrastructure literature, we considered how government actions actually contribute to the absorptive, restorative and adaptive capacities of cable systems. So, in other words, those capacities a system requires to anticipate, resist, absorb, respond to and recover from negative impacts and adapt in response to lessons learned from incidents or changed circumstances. So while industry generally designs and deploys the systems with these capacities in mind, government actions on security and resilience can also contribute to strengthening them.

For now, most observable state practice falls under absorptive capacities that anticipate, resist and absorb. This makes sense since it's actually the stage in the resilience cycle that involves putting in place the structures and mechanisms, what we call kind of the scaffolding that play a preventive role or that enable action in the event that something happens to the infrastructure. So such actions can include, and we've observed, they include updating, streamlining or realigning regulatory frameworks not just to ensure greater predictability for licensing or for installation and repair, but also to reflect a heightened security context, while also attempting to ensure greater coordination with other policy and regulatory areas. But also other actions include releasing budgetary resources to cover the costs of the personnel and the procurement, testing and deployment of new equipment and capabilities for maritime domain awareness and for informing defence and deterrence strategies. Government action also includes integrating subsea cable security, international preparedness and emergency response plans.

So that's establishing coordination arrangements at different levels, designating points of contact at policy and operational levels, and reviewing mechanisms for engaging industry to share information. Many countries are also establishing new mechanisms to enhance situational awareness of threats to the systems at sea, on land and in cyberspace. So, going to a restorative capacity perspective, what we identified several states and regional bodies doing is increasing redundancy through new and diverse cable routes. They're considering how to ease permitting requirements and enhance cooperation with industry to ensure more timely repairs. A growing number of states have also launched public consultations or tenders to identify where government investment may be needed to strengthen the repair ecosystem.

And in some regions and countries, new funding resources are being established to cover potential gaps in this regard. Recent incidents, as well as exercises are also testing how governments respond to incidents and helping to determine where certain actions are best left for industry. So, as in if it's not broken, don't fix it, and under which circumstances, for example, government intervention may be needed where adaptive capacities are concerned, that Learning from incidents and so forth Recent incidents and events are providing important insights to governments as they review their national security and resilience frameworks, maritime and security strategies and naval doctrine and operations. This in turn is leading to more targeted cooperation at policy and operational levels. And in many instances, learning from incidents has prodded increased government investing, investment in fostering relations with industry, knowledge development and awareness raising in greater consideration of the workforce challenges that industry is facing, as well as identifying gaps in in international law and how they may be addressed.

Also notable in the work that we did is awareness of the increasing number of exchanges within and across regions on policy, regulation, national preparedness and crisis response, marking what we refer to in the report as a new era of cable diplomacy. So the work of the EU and ASEAN on subsea cable resilience, for example, is a case is a case in point, as is the work of the different subsea cable associations. And in some instances, greater public private interaction has led to collaborations such as that of the International Advisory Body and Subsea Cable Resilience, jointly led by the ITU and the icpc, which has resulted in two declarations and a range of important recommendations on good subsea cable resilience practices. As we note, however, in the report, despite such positive developments, these and other efforts do vary significantly across states in terms of their implementation and maturity. Indeed, as rightly noted by several of our interviewees, the practical differences that actually occur as a result of critical infrastructure designation vary significantly from country to country and region to region.

And while national policy and legislation can appropriately reflect the criticality of the infrastructure, subsequent actions do not always do the same. I'll go very quickly through some challenges that we identified in the report. These include, for example, limited conceptual clarity around subsea cable security and resilience objectives, driven in part, I guess, by how the topic is considered by different policy communities and operational actors, some which emphasize security more than resilience and vice versa, this can be quite a challenge. This lack of conceptual clarity can also be complicated in no small part by the that fact that a cable system is not just the submerged maritime element of the system, the so called wet plant, but everything from cable landing stations to the network management systems to storage depots to supply chains to the fleet of maintenance and repair vessels and the highly skilled yet dwindling workforce. There's also the challenge of under reaction or overreaction to cases of cable damage.

And here I think it's very useful to highlight that in some instances there is a often, sometimes a discrepancy between the effects of cable damage incidents and on actual service, which has often been minimal, and the government. So that difference between the actual impact on service and the government response. There are strategic locations of where some of these incidents have occurred and the broader geopolitical context has meant evidently a higher categorization of the incidents and greater involvement of national defence and security entities. Very understandable. But there still is a significant need for greater alignment between security and resilience in national policy and response frameworks and for greater engagement between governments and industry to better understand cause and effects.

There's also the complexity of the regulatory environment, including for the additional costs and burdens that new security related regulatory measures can imply for both industry and government governments. And there's a pressing need for greater alignment between regulators and other government departments and agencies within and across the different jurisdictions where cable systems land. So finally we did present a series of recommendations, some of which many of those chime with those that are stemming from different regional bodies as well as the international advisory group and industry associations and I'll highlight very quickly just a few. So one core recommendation is for governments to work with industry to promote better understanding of cable damage, including how redundancy actually works to keep traffic flowing. And this can really help identify thresholds and modalities for outage reporting.

It can help categorize relevant incidents in terms of their scale, scale and severity confirms roles and responsibilities across government and industry for incident response and inform investment decisions in relation to detection, but also in relation to maintenance and repair. And as in other areas and as are many people familiar with the cyber portfolio, are familiar with transparency and cooperative measures can also play an important role, including in the current difficult and complex international context. For instance, states can avail of different fora to exchange national views and practices involving industry as much as possible and for example on streamlining, licensing and permitting for installation and repair, exchanging practices in relation to understanding existing maintenance arrangements and supporting industry in this regard. They can exchange exchange views on physical and cybersecurity threats to the systems, bearing in mind their consideration as critical in infrastructure or critical information infrastructure and on integrating subsea cable security and resilience, international preparedness and crisis response planning. Finally, also on addressing identified gaps and emerging issues in international law.

So exchanging views and positions on the different issues I think would be very, very useful. It's one of the these are some of the issues that were recommended to us by the different actors that we interviewed for the report. Giacomo, I'll end there. Thank you very much.

Again, thank you Camino for this Sprint, basically.

But the report is available on our website, so I do encourage you to go and download it. And there's a lot of very interesting information in it that you may want to consult beyond the very good but brief summary that Camino had to deliver in this condensed period of time. I'd like now to transition to the next kind of segment of this event where I mentioned we will be hearing perspectives from a number of speakers that will now move to introduce. And then after this we will be opening the floor for a more interactive discussion. Since we don't have name tags, I would just invite speakers to kind of at least raise your hand so people can understand who you are.

Starting with Ambassador Ellen Popp, here on my right, Ambassador at Large for Cyber Diplomacy, Minister of Foreign affairs of Estonia here my immediate right, John Judge Gransack Kitty Chaseri from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. On my far left, Ms. Larisa Schneider Kalsa, the Head of Cyber Defense and Security Division, the Ministry of Foreign affairs of Brazil. Back on my right, Mr. Kenneth Wong, Senior Director of the Attorney General's Chambers of Singapore. And back to my left, I'm doing a little bit of Left and right, Mr. Kent Bressey, legal Advisor for International Cable Protection Committee. So a very distinguished set of speakers that will help us unpack a little bit more some of the themes that Camino introduced in her brief.

And I would like to start with a question to all of you that really focuses on the theme of security and resilience. We know that most cable faults arise from either accidental human activity like fishing or anchoring, or natural events such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Although in some regions of the world we're starting to see an increased level of activities involving both states and non state actors that are posing more direct threats to this infrastructure. So I would like to ask to all of you what types of vulnerabilities or threats to this type of infrastructure is, you know, is keeping you awake at night is more relevant to you, depending on your country, on the organization you're representing? What are some of the potential implications of considering or designating subsea cable systems as critical infrastructure and how can such a designation contribute to the resilience of the system?

You're free to take whichever angle you like to to take on this question, where it's really that the core is about threats that you perceived and designation of the infrastructure as critical infrastructure. And would that help in a way. So perhaps. Alan, would you like to start?

Thank you very much. Well, Estonia has been at the very epicenter of submarine gable damaging issues for the past three plus years now, which has been a period of intense learning and rapid development. Just to point out that Baltic Sea is a semi enclosed and relatively shallow sea that also has heavy traffic. There are geopolitical bottlenecks where cables are bunched together. Single disruption can really affect multiple countries simultaneously.

There are strategic dependencies and cross infrastructure interdependencies. Smaller EU states may depend on only a few connections as well. Subsea cables often run alongside gas pipelines, offshore wind infrastructure and etcetera, etcetera. Also making it vulnerable to cyber attacks, for example, basically a coordinated disruption of pipelines, cables, energy and energy grids. Our biggest systemic risk, however, as Gamino also pointed out, remains our fragmented regulatory landscape which often prevents a rapid unified response to incidents that cross national maritime zones.

In the past few years several important steps have been taken both by the EU and NATO. There is an EU action plan on cable security and the EU cable security toolbox. And also NATO has launched a new maritime center for the security of critical undersea integrity infrastructure. So we are very pleased to see the speed that both the EU and NATO has been adopted to this situation. But it has also led to some of the fundamental questions regarding for example the broader legal toolbox, including is the current United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea framework still fit for purpose in this new security reality?

Or has the time come to modernize international maritime law to better protect critical subsea infrastructure against modern hybrid threats? I note that we have some lawyers here in the room, so I will leave that to them. When it comes to subsea cables altogether then in Estonia it's of course a critical infrastructure, but in our experience it's a bit of a limited combination in the sense that when it comes to norms of course it includes cyber attacks against critical infrastructure, but not physical attacks such as intentional damage to cables. So I think this is still something that as an international community we also need to figure out, but maybe leaving it here at that time point.

Thank you. Jaska and Sak, would you like to go next?

I have left the government for a long time now so have to rely on public domain information to answer to your questions. I think in my country, Thailand's approach to submarine cable security is currently trans transitioning from a focus on sector specific cyber security to a more comprehensive critical infrastructure with the new laws and regulations in place. So what it means is that now we have the so called diversification of the routes in order to ensure that our infrastructure in terms of cyber is impact whatever will happen elsewhere. So what it means we also endorse the enhanced ASEAN guidelines for strengthening resilience and repair of submarine cables to expedite the repair system instead of facing delays in the past. And interestingly, the implications for the so called critical infrastructure designation are many.

The first thing is that the legal and criminal weight now harming the cable has become a national security offense. Secondly, mandatory compliance not only for public sector, but also for the private sectors. Private operators have to comply with the instruction and safeguard introduced by the government. And of importance is budgetary prioritization. Now it has become national infrastructure, which is critical to survival and communication states.

So the budget is much easier to get. And as international lawyer, I would add something which is not easy in the explanation by the Thai government. That is the scale and effect under. The rule of the use of force. So the harm, destruction or damage of critical infrastructure like submarine cables that have.

The scale, effect, impact on situation in the country economic of some other damage similar to an arm attack would somehow entitle Thailand to the right to self defense and use proportional force. Thank you.

Thank you Judge Kensack for your remarks and we'll come back to, by the way to both of you, because we have additional questions to unpack even further. Larissa, would you like to give perspective from Brazil? Thank you.

Thank you very much. Giacomo. Thank you once again for the invitation to be here. Thanks in particular to Camino for presenting her report. I know that a few of my colleagues contributed to it and they have been following very closely all UNID years and US publications.

So from Brazil's perspective, I think one initial consideration that they should make is that for us it's not just about undersea cables. We actually have quite extensive underwater cables in the Amazon river, for instance, bringing Internet bringing connectivity to the Amazon region, which also presents its own set of peculiarities, given that even the world's largest river is much smaller than an ocean and therefore can be more prone for certain types of accidents involving cables. So when it comes to Brazil, I think the greatest threat still is accidental damage, usually by fishing with an F, to be very clear, given where we are. So the fishing industry is responsible for many of the incidents that we had in the past few years. So either boats that drop an anchor accidentally over a cable or net fishing that sometimes will drag a cable and damage it, for instance.

This does not mean that we are not concerned about potential malicious activity, either private or state led, of course, but concretely speaking, most of the damage has come from accidents by the fishing industry in particular. And I think when it comes then to some vulnerabilities, I think the main issue is that we still have a small number of cables connecting Brazil to other parts of the world. This has been mitigated in the past few years. Up until 2021, we only had one cable leaving Brazil to the US since then, we have a cable connecting Brazil to Europe to Portugal, and also three others to Africa, so to Cameroon, South Africa and Angola. So that has increased in the past few years, but it's still a small number of cables, if we think of the size of our territory.

And if you think of the fact that other South American countries bordering the Atlantic, they first connect to Brazil and then Brazil's cable to the other parts. So in a way, a lot of South American connectivity also hinges upon the cables that are coming from and to Brazil.

And so, of course, this means that while we have improved in terms of redundancies in the past few years, this still means that a failure at one of those cables can still bring a lot of damage. Given that there's still few of them, of course, and the fact that we have a very small number of companies that repair them. Two are based in the Atlantic Ocean, so to speak. None of them are Brazilian. And so I think in a best case scenario, it will take a week for one of those repair companies to make it to one of the cables.

And that's if you take into account that they're not currently engaged in other repairs, if you get the approval process to order the repair as soon as possible. So that is still a concern. We still have a very limited amount of companies that have the capabilities to provide that repair service. And that means that a disruption to that cable could disrupt coming communications for a really long time. In our case, of course, the fact that this infrastructure is privately owned, it creates always an additional layer of complexity in terms of integrating and coordinating the measures that needed to be taken to secure them, which in our case is compounded also by the fact that even though our telecommunications agencies is the focal point at the International Committee, we have actually quite a few government institutions that have some type of responsibility for that matter.

And so that also creates certain challenges in terms of ensuring an integrated response. But for US Undersea cables, they are considered critical infrastructure. Infrastructure, Sorry, our legislation does not designate specific sectors or places, but it has a very wide definition, which means for us, according to the decree that established our national policy, critical infrastructures are facilities, services, assets and systems whose interruption or destruction, whether total or partial, causes serious social, environmental, economic, political or international impact, or an impact on the security of the state and society. So from that point of view, undersea cables are very much critical infrastructure. They have been covered by the bodies that have been established in that regard.

We do have a national committee tasked with providing advice to the Presidents on how to strengthen that.

And I know that this is one of the issues that they have been very focused focused on. And so just last point is that last year at our edition of the Cyber Guardian exercise, which is the largest cyber tabletop exercise in the Southern Hemisphere, we had a subcommittee which is tasked with high level discussions on more strategic challenges that focused specifically on undersea cables. So this is an issue that is very much at the forefront, forefront of Brazilian policymakers. We have been keeping a lot of cooperation with the private sector that is responsible for those cables. And at least for us, having that designation as critical infrastructure has helped give it the attention that the issue deserves.

Thank you.

Thank you, Larissa, also for introducing a point that we will be picking up later on regarding responses and models, effective models for public private cooperation when it comes to responses. So thank you for that. I'd like now to give the floor to Kenneth Wong here on my right, please.

Thank you very much, Giacomo and the Institute for inviting Singapore to contribute to this discussion on the report so, so ably put together by Dr. Cabanaugh and Jonas and Wen Tin. Singapore truly welcomes this report. We think it provides a useful framework to conceptualise the current gaps in the industry, and it also highlights how governments should play a larger role in enhancing cable resiliency. For Singapore, subsea cables are truly a critical backbone of our digital economy. As the report notes, subsea cables carry 99% of international data traffic.

The vulnerabilities that we face also arise from our advantages as a regional connectivity hub, because we have many international submarine cable systems that land in Singapore, and these systems are run and operated by global telecommunication providers and hyperscalers, and these provide connectivity to key global markets. So the number of cable lendings in Singapore has grown from 10 lendings in 2007 to about 30 cables today. And we are planning for over 50 cables to land in Singapore by 2035. So, given the criticality of the subsea cables, we have always placed importance on cable diversity and resilience. So we welcome what the report has noted in this regard.

So to this end, Singapore seeks to not only attract new cable investments, but also to ensure that the resilience of our cable networks and infrastructure, especially with the increasing demand for use of maritime space in recent times. So while Singapore has not formally designated subsea cables, including subsea telecommunications cables, as critical infrastructure, I think what I will say next would certainly show that we treat them in a way that does reflect their criticality. And we do so through a suite of domestic and international efforts to enhance the resilience of our cable systems. So first, going through what we do domestically, as Brazil noted, it is possible that there are many agencies within a government that have a function or an interest or a mandate to do with subsea cables. For us in Singapore, we have channeled all these energies to designate one agency, the Info Communications Media Development Authority, or imda, as the One Stop Shop to interface between the industry and the agencies that give permits for actions to be taken with regard to subsea cables.

So this way we facilitate the regulatory processes for subsea cable operators by channeling them all through infocomma. In this way, we've also enhanced coordination across the various agencies to streamline the permits and to strengthen the ways in which we protect the subsea cables in our waters. So, in two ways we ensure protection of cables and we also enhance cable resilience. In terms of protection of cables, we have put in place requirements to protect submarine cables within Singapore port limits. And these include we have cable armoring and burial requirements.

So within Singapore territorial waters, we require cables to be hardened or armored. So this would mean that they are wrapped in layers of steel, steel wire or steel tape, and they are required to be buried to a depth that can withstand an anchor drop. We've also set up cable protection zones with a separation distance, especially from anchorage zones for vessels. And third, we also subject all submarine cable operators in Singapore to very strict physical security and resilience requirements. So we require these operators to implement proper access control into submarine cable facilities.

And we also require them to show us that they have business continuity plans and they've carried out business continuity exercises to put those plans into action. In terms of enhancing cable resilience, as noted in the report, we feel it's also important to have a strong incident management system. So Singapore has worked closely with the industry to mitigate the impact of cable damage in the event of a cable cut, we require operators to quickly divert traffic data traffic across Singapore's diverse cable connectivity or to activate backup capacity. Operators are also required to promptly report the incident and the location of the cut to IMDA that One Stop Shop. We've also committed ourselves to shortening the repair permit processing timelines to within one week.

And this has been possible due to our reduced permitting requirements. For example, we do not impose cabotage requirements for cable ships, cable laying ships or crew members entering our waters. And we also do not require operators to submit flagship or crew information for prior approval before they enter our waters to do the cable repair and maintenance jobs. So in order to do that, in terms of managing the shipping traffic into our port limits, our Maritime and Port Authority also monitors shipping traffic and safety of navigation, especially in the Singapore Strait. And our Port Authority also constantly sends reminders to vessels to anchor only in designated anchorages.

So, apart from the domestic efforts, we've also made certain international efforts to bring home the message that cable protection and cable resilience is crucial because cable disruptions in one country could of course affect connectivity to other connected countries. So in this spirit, Singapore has been chair of the ASEAN Working Group for Submarine Cables, where this working group has advocated strongly for robust cable management and repair practices. And this working group focuses on enhancing the resilience of our regional submarine cable network through the implementation of internationally aligned best practices, capacity building initiatives and information exchange. Singapore is also a member of the ITU and ICPC's International Advisory Board on Submarine Cable Resilience and we've contributed to the discussions on the development of policy recommendations for cable resilience. And so with that, I think I will end my comments here.

Thank you. Thank you, Kenneth, for sharing Singapore's perspective again a key player in Southeast Asia. So your. Your contribution is very well taken. Kent, thank you so much for your patience.

I would like to give you the floor now. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Giacomo. Thank you to Unadir and in particular to Camino, for whose report the ICPC provided support during its research and drafting in its best practices for submarine cable protection and resilience. The icpc, which as the world's leading NGO devoted to submarine cable protection and resilience, has advocated that governments take a holistic approach to risk.

As industry does so, cable damage, whether accidental or intentional, effectively has the same impact in terms of a loss of connectivity. Moreover, the causes of damage are not always known at the time that damage is first discovered and may reflect hybrid threats, as we've seen in the Arctic Ocean, near Svalbard and in the Baltic Sea. What looks like accidental fishing or anchor damage could in fact be intentional. So the ICPC maintains the world's leading statistics on cable damage globally each year. And we think that it's important for governments as well as industry to be familiar with those statistics and their significance.

As a number of speakers have mentioned, it's principally anchors and commercial fishing activities that contribute to cable damage. Approximately 70% of cable damage incidents globally each year. The oceans are crowded places though, so those aren't the only activities that we're worried about, even from an accidental perspective. So we focus on energy resource development, oil, gas, renewables, mining, seabed minerals, sand and gravel, particularly with an intense focus by many governments on supply chain for critical minerals right now, dredging and dumping and unexploded ordnance. Also another particular challenge in the Baltic Sea, given what was dumped there after World War II.

We're concerned about damage from the natural environment, including earthquakes, typhoons and tsunamis, underwater landslides, turbidity currents and onshore flooding, seafloor geology and volcanic events, as we've seen in the case of Tonga and its loss of connectivity with the recent volcanic eruption there. And we're concerned about climate change, which contribute to more unpredictable and extreme weather and to sea level rise. And of course, what's in the news all the time these days is intentional infrastructure damage, targeting of infrastructure by state and non state actors. It's equipment theft, cyber attacks on network management systems and equipment, and collateral damage from marine incidents, which we saw in the Red Sea. There was speculation that certain cables had been targeted, but what had happened was that certain ships were targeted and then dragged anchor and sank, damaging cables.

So there's a lot to be concerned about and it's all magnified. If you look at a map of the world's submarine cables, there's clustering on particular routes and at particular landings, which creates single points of failure globally. And a lot of that has to do with government policies and regulations that have not encouraged or that have impeded actively that kind of diversity. So as we look at critical infrastructure designations and it's so valuable to have this report and to understand how different governments think about this, the terminology they use, how they might operationalize such designations. But I think from the ICPC's perspective, Camino had touched on these points as well.

It's really useful for us in three key respects. First, these designations highlight the criticality of submarine cables and the need for better policy making and streamlined regulation to protect them and to expedite licensing and permitting for new cable builds and for repairs of existing cables, which I'll touch on a little later with our next question round. Second, these designations can facilitate access to resources for protection and security activities. And depending on the particular government regime, that can be a lot of resources, depending on how a particular government is setting up those activities. And third, the designations can assign Principal protection responsibility to a single ministry or department or agency, recognizing that it still needs to coordinate with others.

But as a number of speakers have mentioned, there can be a multiplicity of agencies with responsibility for things relating to cables. As a consequence, no one's in charge, which is a major shortcoming with many of the world's governments that we'd like to work to address.

Thank you, Kent. I actually would like to stay with you to start on kind of the second brief round of interventions before we open the floor. And you know, I would like to get your take on the issue of responses and restorative capacities. So we've heard about how important it is for subsea cable systems to be able to recover quickly from any type of damage, whether it is accidental or intentional. What models of public private cooperation or engagement do you think can best support these efforts?

Thank you, Giacomo. I'm happy to address that. And just to put in context, there are a number of prerequisites for cable protection, security and resilience. Industry performs many of these tasks with designing systems to begin with both the routes and the materials and assessment of risks, and also with post installation protection and security activities. But there are many things that governments that industry cannot do on its own, as highlighted in ICPC's best practices for Cable Protection and Resilience.

And so there is work that can be done jointly by governments and industry and work to be done by governments based on a better understanding of what industry is already doing. So factors or things to consider are cooperation at national, regional and multilateral levels across industries. There's no intergovernmental organization that regulates or licenses cables globally. So very different from satellites. Regulatory certainty and predictability for installation, operation and repair and short permitting intervals.

We see everything from an average five day permitting time frame in South Africa to the worst case. I won't name the country last year 947 days. So there's a lot of work to do. There are a lot of things that factor into that. But we really need, and this is really a joint activity of industry and governments, a better understanding on the part of governments.

And it's on partly on industry to help facilitate this. To convey the importance of submarine cables, the technical and environmental characteristics of cables to inform both regulation and protection activities, existing industry practices with infrastructure, cyber security and supply chain security. The high degree of cooperation within the industry. There's even among competitors with particular natural disasters. For example, the Tohoku earthquake off the coast of Japan in 2011.

Competitors were working together ship owners to figure out how best to sequence the repairs that needed to be done on nearly a dozen submarine cable systems. And also the owners who were otherwise competing with each other, were cooperating on restoration capacity on other systems. And so it's a highly unusual experience, industry in that regard. And I think it's important that governments understand that. And then, of course, as I was talking about earlier, understanding those damage statistics and sources of risks and threats, there's a need to share information with other marine industries in addition to within governments, between governments and the submarine cable industry, and promoting the rule of law for the oceans, because having that fundamental regulatory stability is what has allowed this infrastructure to flourish.

Governments still have work to do in adopting policies that foster geographic diversity and also reduce permitting intervals. As I indicated before, there's quite a bit of variation with the permitting timeframes, particularly with repairs when it's really critical to have it done as quickly as possible. And looking at those maps, geographic diversity is improving a little bit, particularly in the Pacific, where we're seeing pioneering of a lot of new routes, but not elsewhere in the world. And so that single point of failure program problem has not gone away. The rate of faults globally has remained, essentially the number of faults has remained the same, even though the number of cable kilometers installed has doubled in the last 15 years.

So industry and governments are doing something right in terms of cable protection because damage per route kilometer is decreasing, but the permitting time frames have doubled during that time, which indicates that something is very wrong with the regulatory regime that needs to be addressed. And it's not just operational permits, but there are a lot of material and vessel protectionist measures, whether it's cabotage or certain customs and crewing restrictions, security clearances and the like, that still need to be addressed. So none of these issues is particularly new. They've been highlighted by the ICPC for years. I think what, what we're seeing now is opportunities to use sometimes the sensationalist media attention about security incidents, to use that as a basis for a further conversation about implementation of what we already see needs to be done.

This has been a subject of intense activity with the ICPC's work with the ITU and the International Advisory Body. But there's a lot that still to be done at the national and regional levels with capacity building, with workshops, with tabletop exercises. All of these things have been mentioned here so far. Finally, I would just note that the ICPC would like to see governments make better use of the legal tools that they have under the Law of the Sea Convention on customary international law right now. For addressing intentional damage.

We don't want to wait for a new convention which may never happen. This is a subject of work with the International Law Association's Committee on Submarine Cables and Pipelines on which I sit. And we're going to be issuing finally a set of guidelines after the Vienna meeting in August this year addressing what can governments do under existing instruments and law to better address intelligence damage and mitigation thereof.

Thank you, Kent. I'd like now to pivot and look more at the norms and diplomacy aspect related to this issue. There have been many calls for stronger international norms and agreements to address deliberate interference with subsea cable systems and for stronger international cooperation to ensure their security and resilience. Resilience. So I would like now to ask Kenneth and Kriyan Sac to please briefly elaborate from your perspective, how is State practice evolving with regard to international law and norms, including calls to address potential gaps in existing instruments such as UN clause where deliberate interference is concerned?

Thank you very much. This is very complex question requires very complex answer. So I'm speaking not as a judge of the Tribunal but as international law international lawyer who used to be a member of International Law Commission and he used to be one of the draftsmen of Tallinn Manual 2.0. With respect to the International Law Association's reports, I disagree. There's no gap, that's for sure.

There are two gaps in the ILA's report. The notion of customary international law. It overlooks the so called regional customary international law. It overlooks the crystallization of customary international law to the practice of specially affected states. For example states bordering the Baltic Seas if they are adversely affected by this one and their response to that one will be given extra weight than far away countries.

So in other words decrystallization, custom international, you cannot count 193 countries, you count the countries that respond to because they have to respond and these are especially effective state. And then the ILA's report also overlooks one crucial provision in unclosy Article 293 paragraph 1 which says that.

A court. Or tribunal having jurisdiction under the section that is compulsory dispute settlement entailing mining decision shall apply unclass and other rules of international law not incompatible with unclass. So that's why the tribunal, the ICJ can respond to the question about climate change which are not written under unclass. Now there is no gap because a lot of including the report with respect by ndp that is the unwillingness of the flag State to respond to the obligations under Article 113 of Unclosed so you rise so much on the willingness of the flag state to prosecute the breaking the damage of the infrastructure that is Submarine cables. But you all look one thing, if the flag state in questions does not comply with this application, it is entitled.

No, no, it is subject to be sued by the injured state. Because this provision does not give any excuse to the flag state is subject to compulsory dispute settlement mechanism. And now the issue of the so called development of international law. There is already existing international law, the so called the effects doctrine, the effects on the state because of the breaking of the cables.

The. Case law that is very relevant to this dates back to 1927, the Lotus case.

And it has been equal in the recent arbitration every galaxy between India and Italy. So let's say that we have two ships on high sea. One ship caused injury damage to the other ship on the high sea. Two fact states. Here we have the so called concurrent jurisdiction, the flag state that caused the damage, the flag state of the victims.

Right? So every galaxy say you can rely on territorial principle. Two flag states, two territories, two effects. So let's say that why the flag state has the so called absolute jurisdiction over the ship flight is flag because the ship is assimilated to the territory of the flag state. So let's say the victim state instead of flag state, it is the coastal state.

So the same rationale applies. So in other words, you're not talking about here, we're not talking about the pipe, the cables, we are talking about the effect on the coastal state. So if you frame the issue correctly, then this is covered. There is no gap. And then another one that is discussed in the IRA report, but has not been elaborated further necessity plea, which is part of customary international law.

It has been stated as such by the International Court of Justice in several cases, that is The Kafsia Kovo Takimaeros project. So sorry about my Hungarian pronunciation. The case between Hungary, Slovakia and also affirmed by the ICJ in the War Advisory opinion which says that.

State is entitled to undertake actions in violation of international obligations if this is the only way to safeguard an essential interest against a grave imminent period, provided that it only harms an interest of lesser waves or agencies in the context of submarine cables, it would justify interdicting vessels suspected of sabotage or malicious acts. And then also one overlooked provision of unclause Article 60, paragraph 2 unclause, the coastal state shall have exclusive jurisdiction in the ESAT EE set that is high C for the purpose navigation over such artificial islands, installations and structures. Let's say Separate cables, including jurisdiction with regard to custom, fiscal health, safety.

You see, and here this is an argument by some juries that here the coastal state have jurisdiction over individuals of any nationalities and by ship sailing under any flag, if it falls under this provision. So in other words, I would not go into detail about the law of war or something like that, because it's also very relevant. But my point is my experience writing the Italian manual as one of the five non NATO member citizens.

There is no gap in existing law. In cyber law, which is critical. You say there is a gap, we. Are in deep trouble. How would you think in 1945 when we wrote the UN charter, people would think of no, the mentality is that okay, as a lawyer, you cannot apply the law by analogy, but you have to look at the law from different angles to ensure that we survive.

So that's why Talinista, we call ourselves Talinista, decided that there is no cap. International law as it exists, apply online, apply. So that's why we have the Open End Working Group on cybers saying that, okay, international law applies. Otherwise, if you say there is no international law, we are in deep trouble. The same thing happened here.

Thank you,.

Thank you. I'm conscious of the time and I would like to give the floor to others as well. So Kenneth, is there anything briefly you would like to add to this from a legal perspective?

Thanks very much, Giacomo, and thank you for allowing me to go after Judge Kriang Sak, because Judge has already spoken very eloquently on the ways in which the coastal state could exercise enforcement jurisdiction against a vessel that is suspected of sabotage in the coastal states. Eez, sorry, I won't go into that. Instead, I want to share with you from the very pragmatic perspective that Singapore is very often known and associated with the ways in which we have sought to develop international law norms with regard to the mitigation of the risk of damage to submarine cables, as opposed to taking enforcement jurisdiction against the ships that have cost caused such damage. So very briefly, Singapore has signed digital economy agreements with various partners such as the eu, Australia and the uk and in these digital economy agreements, there are very important provisions which recognize the importance of submarine cable resilience via expeditious installation, maintenance and repair. So in the Singapore Australia Digital Economy Agreement, as well as the UK Singapore Digital Economy Agreement, there are obligations for a party to mitigate the risk of damage to submarine telecommunications cable systems that are operated, owned or controlled by a person of the other party.

And specifically in the Singapore Australia Agreement, such Ways of mitigating the risk of damage include use of geospatial alert systems, making information available on the location of submarine cable systems to inform mapping and charting public demarcation of areas within which the cable systems are present and where activities are banned within that area to protect these cable systems or activities to promote awareness of these cable systems. And also we have provisions that call for simplification or expediting of giving permits for a vessel to undertake installation, maintenance or repairs of submarine telecommunications cable systems of the other party and to make sure that such permit requirements are publicly available. So, in line with this spirit, the ASEAN Working Group for Submarine Cables developed the enhanced guidelines for strengthening resilience and repair of submarine cables. And the updates to these guidelines include language on cable protection and maritime spatial planning, and also updating the best practices for cable repairs, such as not imposing cabotage laws and to ease customs duties and tax requirements for the relevant submarine cable laying, maintenance and repair activities. So in all this, we have actually seen developments in terms of more transparent and streamlined permitting processes.

And we will continue to work and collaborate with our international partners to enhance the resilience of subsea cables, including by facilitating maintenance and repair operations. In other words, if in order to mitigate the risk of damage to the cables, these are the norms that we would like to contribute to developing. Thank you.

Thank you, Kenneth, for your contribution. In about 45 seconds each, before we open the floor, I just would like to hear from Ellen and Larissa your perspective around the potential role for diplomacy in this context.

We're here to inaugurate the global mechanism. So multilateral diplomacy, regional diplomacy, bilateral diplomacy, what is the role that you see that diplomacy could play in this context? Alan, would you like to go first? Thank you. 45 Seconds.

Well, following the first incident with our cables, we learned a hard lesson. Detection without the coordinated response plan is pretty much useless. I can only agree that there is a need to build a permanent ecosystem of trust where sharing data is the norm and collective defense is the standard. And to large extent it comes down to ppp, the private public partnerships. Governments might have the threat level landscape or understand the threat landscape, but the industry knows the seabed and technology better than anyone.

And there is, in our view, a major opportunity also lies on joint the resilience exercises. It's quite frankly we shouldn't meet our private sector partners for the first time only when the cable is cut, which is often the case these days. And maybe my very last point, I want to emphasize and underline the importance of enforcement Firm action within the law is possible. I don't know whether we have someone here from Finland, but I think we can all learn from them. And also ship captains must understand that potential threats to our infrastructure will have consequences.

I know that I didn't touch diplomacy part in there, but I think the very same discussions we also have, we had in open and developing group and now with global mechanism is the PPP Multi Stakeholder Engagement and all of that. I think all of that is also relevant in this case. Thanks. Thank you.

Very much, Giacomo. Well, as a diplomat, I think it is no surprise, I will say that yes, there is an important role for diplomacy on this issue. I think it is important to avoid heightening of tensions in cases where, for instance, and it is an accidental damage, but that could be suspected as being deliberate or even sharing of to share information with other countries that are affected by a specific incident. For instance, as I mentioned, the cables that connect Brazil to other countries also serve, for instance, Argentina or Uruguay. So diplomacy is important in case damage to one of our countries, to one of our cables starts affecting other countries as well.

So I think that is important. And also, of course, to foster capacity to share good practices in terms of regulation. Given that there's still much to be improved on this approach. I think, as Helen mentioned, much of what we have been doing at the OAWG and will now do at a global mechanism has applicability. I think since we talk a lot about critical infrastructures and undersea cables with their particularities can be understood as such.

So I think a lot of what we have done and will continue to do can apply. But certainly we're now in the midst of trying to decide what should be the priority issues for the DTGs. Undersea cables, maybe could be one of them. So certainly there is a role for diplomacy to play in this area. Thank you.

Thank you. I know we're running out of time. I still would like to give a few minutes, if you indulge us a little longer, to give the opportunity for colleagues in the room if they would like to add anything to the discussion that we had so far. I can only ask you just press the button and then introduce yourself. When is the time, please.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Giacomo. And thank you to UNADIR and to Ireland for hosting this. This roundtable. It's been an excellent discussion and of course, congratulations to Dr. Camino Cavanaugh and her team on a great report since the ITU icpc.

Sorry, I should introduce myself. My name's Sarah. My name is Saadvi and I work with the International Telecommunication Union, which is the UN specialized agency for digital technologies. And since the ITU ICPC advisory body was mentioned a couple of times and one of our leaders is sitting here, Mr. Ken Pressy, I just thought it might be relevant at this point to give you some updates. Of course we have another member in the room as well in the form of Singapore.

But the body itself was established about two years ago, co co led by Nigeria and Portugal with the aim of promoting dialogue and collaboration on specifically improving the resilience of telecom cables, subsea cables. It has about 42 leaders and experts from public and private sectors, including representatives from submarine cable operators, telecom companies, government agencies, maritime authorities and of course international organizations, including relevant UN entities. We've adopted so far the body's adopted two summit declarations, one in Abuja and one in Porto and currently through the efforts and cooperation of about 175 experts worldwide, is in the process of issuing some very concrete and actionable recommendations on several aspects including timely deployment and repair, risk identification, monitoring and mitigation and fostering connectivity and geographic diversity. And the key challenge in our experience and the experience of the body so far and as I think we've heard today, is no longer so much in kind of recognizing or the awareness that submarine cables are critical infrastructure, but it is more in delivering coordinated real world resilience in practice. So we sort of know what needs to be done.

The question is how? So how do we move to implementation including on things like permitting coordination, collaboration across governments and industry mechanisms to support sids in low redundancy countries. And this is to address the gamut of risks that we've heard today, including physical, operational and emerging threats. There's an urgent need now to better identify, monitor and respond to all of these, including through strengthening situational awareness and information information sharing. Maybe I'll stop here.

I know we're running out of time, but I invite you all to visit our website for more information. We're also going to be having many conversations around these issues in June in Nassau at the ITU World Tech Policy Forum. And I welcome you all to also to join us in Nassau, but of course also listen in on those conversations. Associations online.

Thank you, thank you Salvi for sharing the perspective of the itu.

I see one hand here in the room and then I think we can, we can wrap it up please. Thank you very much.

Djibouti Delegation so thank you very much for organizing this meeting is important meeting located Djibouti is located at the strategic intersection of several submarine cable like in Africa, Asia, Middle east and Europe. Djibouti has 10 submarine cable and we invest a lot of and we are concerned by the security of those cables. We already invested too much and we have a major responsibility to protect this critical infrastructure and actually actively contribute the security.

Those cable enable Djibouti to connect landlocked countries of Africa, South Africa and enhance our strategic position also. However, these cable are vulnerable to the risk, a lot of risk that we have talked together of civil attack, for example, and other threats. So for those reasons we attach particular importance to protect the protection of this critical infrastructure regarding the risk of cyber attack in the geopolitical situation. As a diplomat, we have to raise our voice and that's what Djibouti do every time, when and where it's appropriate to protect and to have also protect globally this cable because it's important. It's not important only for Djibouti, but all of us.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I don't see any additional hands. So what is left to do is to thank all of you for taking the time to join us in this roundtable.

Of course, thank you, our great speakers for sharing their views and expertise with us today. Thank you, Camino, again for your excellent work and of course, thanks to Ireland for supporting and sponsoring this event. I wish you a great rest of the afternoon and see you back in the in the room. Thank you.