Russia is signaling it could take out the West’s internet and GPS. There’s no good backup plan.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-could-take-out-west-internet-gps-back-up-plan-2024-8
by SunEater888
Russia is signaling it could take out the West’s internet and GPS. There’s no good backup plan.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-could-take-out-west-internet-gps-back-up-plan-2024-8
by SunEater888
48 comments
Russia is likely mapping underwater internet cables, a NATO official said.
The country is also believed to be behind flight GPS interference.
It’s signaling it could wreak havoc with the West’s electronic infrastructure, experts say.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, issued a stark warning in June.
The undersea cables that enable global communications had become a legitimate target for Russia, he said.
Medvedev’s warning came after Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that transfers gas from Russia to Germany, was blown up. Russian officials believed the West had been involved in the attack. (Recent reports suggest Ukraine was actually behind the attack.)
“If we proceed from the proven complicity of Western countries in blowing up the Nord Streams, then we have no constraints – even moral – left to prevent us from destroying the ocean floor cable communications of our enemies,” Medvedev posted on Telegram.
Medvedev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has a long history of making incendiary claims.
But some analysts say this wasn’t just another idle threat.
A serious warning
The vast network of undersea fiber-optic cables that transfer data between continents is indeed vulnerable to hostile powers, including Russia, the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned in a report this month.
In May, NATO’s intelligence chief David Cattler warned that Russia may be planning to target the cables in retribution for the West’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
It’s a scenario that has NATO’s planners increasingly worried.
If the cables are seriously damaged or disabled, swaths of the internet services we take for granted and that our economies rely on, including calls, financial transactions, and streaming, would be wiped out.
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Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden’s minister for civil defense, said damage to a telecommunications cable running under the Baltic Sea in 2023 was the result of “external force or tampering,” though he did not provide details.
And in June, NATO stepped up aircraft patrols off the coast of Ireland amid concerns about Russian submarine activity, The Sunday Times reported.
The threat to GPS
Security analysts say that the internet is not the only network that Russia is probing for vulnerabilities.
In recent months, Russia has been accused of interfering with GPS navigation systems, causing havoc on commercial airline routes. As a result, flights from Helsinki to Tartu, Estonia, ground to a halt for a month in April.
Melanie Garson, an international security expert at University College London, said it was part of Russia’s “gray zone” campaign against the West, which involves covert actions that fall below the threshold of open warfare.
“Russia has long been developing this capability and it is currently a cheap and effective way of malicious gray-zone interference,” said Garson.
“As we increase our reliance on connectivity and space data in everything from agriculture to food delivery, disrupting national and economic security through interfering with subsea cables and GPS becomes increasingly effective,” she added.
Russia puts the West ‘on notice’
For decades, the world has depended on data carried by underwater cables that run for thousands of miles. In the early 20th century, the cables carried telegraph signals and later telephone calls.
Robert Dover, a professor of international security at Hull University in the UK, said the cables have long been seen as potential military targets, and both the US and USSR surveilled them during the height of the Cold War.
As the world has become more dependent on the internet, the cables have become increasingly vital. The cables now span around 745,000 miles and are responsible for transmitting 95% of international data.
“The growth in electronic communications has made the undersea cables — vital for international communications, the internet, finance, and so on — a point of vulnerability for nations who use them extensively and for those who don’t publicly have an obvious fallback position,” Dover said.
Similarly, GPS signals are increasingly vital to the airline industry. They are used to safely guide planes to their destinations and land them.
Planes do have backup navigation systems in the event that GPS fails, but Baltic officials are warning that disrupted GPS signals can still put planes in danger.
During its war with Ukraine, Russia has enhanced its already sophisticated electronic-warfare capabilities, enabling it to remotely scramble the GPS coordinates used to guide missiles and drones.
That’s already affected commercial-aviation GPS in Eastern and Northern Europe. Some analysts believe that Russia is sending a signal to the West.
“The targeting of civil-aviation GPS is a means by which to undermine the surety of Western publics in aviation, in particular, and shows the reliance on satellite platforms for ordinary citizens to navigate around,” Dover said.
“It also puts governments on notice about the political risks of mass transit accidents that have a plausibly deniable cause.”
A backup plan is urgently needed, says expert
Foreign Policy reported in June that NATO has begun taking more action to safeguard undersea cables, setting up a system that would automatically warn of attempted interference.
But Garson said it’s not enough, and more government fallback plans are needed in case the systems fail entirely.
“Countries need to not only take measures to protect but also to make sure that the communications system is resilient, e.g., with robust alternatives,” Garson said.
She said satellites transmitting GPS data often lack safeguards against attempted interference, while the task of protecting undersea cables often falls on the private companies that own and maintain them.
“It’s key to visualize these strategic futures and have a clear resilience plan that accounts for potential systemic risk and to keep countries operational if key comms infrastructure is compromised,” Garson said.
In its report this month, the CSIS called for the US to increase international cooperation to coordinate a response to a potential attack on cables.
It said that the current legal and international framework for undersea-cable sabotage was “complex and fragmented, with different international legal regimes determining responsibility and punishment.”
“When cables are sabotaged in international waters, there is no regime to hold the perpetrator accountable,” it said.
I am already getting sick of these 4th world peasants.
r/russiawarns
They do love to bark a whole fucking lot.
Well it isn’t a secret who cut them if we suddenly lose either of them.
That’s basically a declaration of war in these times.
The only acceptable response would be a complete elimination of Russia’s entire current government and full demilitarization.
Yes! Beware west! Smartiest of russian scientists are working on a large catapult that will be able to throw largest and strongest russian men into orbit to attack your satellites. For reentry these heroes will be taught to flap their hands really fast to decelerate.
The Galileo GNSS has some functionality against spoofing, but AFAIK it is not available for public usage. Maybe open it up for everyone?
*Spoofing, i,e. the transmission of counterfeit GNSS signals that may force a receiver to compute an erroneous position and lead the user to believe they are in a different location from where they effectively are. PRS also ensures that in such cases such authorised users as emergency forces, police and other relevant authorities retain the ability to serve the public using GNSS positioning information provided by PRS.*
https://www.gsc-europa.eu/galileo/services/public-regulated-service
They are going to destroy the internet?
How much are they going to charge us for such a service? 🤔
Nice of them to help out too, seems they’ve turned a new leaf. 😜
This is silly. Yes, they can do a lot of damage. NATO, too, can do a lot of damage.
I believe the phrase is “we will respond at a time and in a manner of our choosing”.
So the sitting president of the USA will declare war status and economy, seize SpaceX and the starlink constellation to enable a bare but functional InterContinental data exchange?
I doubt Putin wants this kind of approach, especially since china is heavly reliant on global communications to do it’s business.
Look at them trying to be scary hahaha
They’re failing badly with just Ukraine but think they can attack NATO…. Someone needs to fall out of a window and have some sense knocked in to them.
Germany is Save, we all have faxes. 😂😎
Come, heavenly cyber-attacks, fall on twitter.
If they did this, NATO should just set out to eradicate them with their nuclear capability, even if it risks borderline human extinction.
As of 2024, four global systems are operational: the United States’s Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), and the European Union’s Galileo.
How’s this for a backup plan? This isn’t journalism, even lower than PR actually
The Internet was literally designed to be resilient in the face of nuclear war. If the cables are cut traffic will reroute. Very scary.
Russia did a lot of digitalization for big business and state governance. That means they will fall apart immediately themselves.
Will they do this before or after using their nukes?
*yawn*
So Putin promises Space Karen the monopoly for Starlink at what price?
Oh for fuck sakes, cut the damn lines and break our internet please. Only than the West will wake up and actually change!
Yeah no shit it could. They could nuke us all.
The country that can’t even hit military targets in a 3 day campaign that lasted 1100 days and counting (not counting the 8 years of illegal occupation in Donbas and Crimea) warns it can take out the Internet…
Do they know that if they block YT, Insta and the like in Russia the Internet still exist? Same with VPNs.
They do right? 🤭
Nato is signalling the world that it can take out any ship deemed to be a danger to its infrastructure.
NATO declares every pipeline or communicationscable a closed for shipping zone. Every ship in that zone will be destroyed.
Yea starlink would still be there. The military would just use that I guess after they now warned about it.
Russia could do a lot of things yes… maybe Russia could do some stuff in Kursk first…
Western long range weaponry is currently not available for attacks throughout all of Russia. I’m sure even Medvedev would prefer it to stay like that.
Want to completely unite the west? Cut off our Internet. I dare you.
No, they can’t. Western journalists spread Vlad’s propaganda. Again.
Just the european mainland seem to be more than what russia can handle. this dog can bark but not bite.
Medvedev is a drunken fool. Who still takes this clown seriously?
Lol did they run out of nuke-threat cards?
I’m getting exhausted of reading news like this. Either do something or shut the fuck up Russia.
But how can you meddle in our elections without the internet?
Obviously this is ridiculous, even if they could do it, they wouldn’t, that would be a declaration of war, not just to the west, but to the entire world. But /r/Russiawarns
Well. Saves us all the trouble of cleaning up all their fucking bots, unironically. Thanks asswipes.
1. Don’t fuck with peoples pets. Like dogs and cats.
2. Don’t fuck with peoples intertubes.
Those are the rules. Aint no nuke in the world to save you from that revenge blyat.
If they break my internet connection, I’ll enter the war myself.
If only russia wasn’t so reliant on those systems for it’s own sake (easy propaganda canals).
Almost believable.
As I think taking out internet would be now beneficial for the society, I really doubt that Russia would destroy its biggest asset in war with the west. It would mean no conspiracy groups, alt right propaganda, pro Russian propaganda…
WTF!?
Not able to fight Ukraine, but “disabling the West” is absolutely no problem for the Orcs?
They become dumber and dumber, and the despair is getting worse and worse.
This is a red line. If this happens we better be turning Moscow into glass
Gone just fuck off Russia.
Great! We all go back to normal life, how it was pre internet. Miss those days.
It says Russia is signalling. That is just panic selling. Medvedev japping about is not Russia. He is known for his crazy outings of empty threats.
Nothing he ever threatened, actually happened.
NATO signals back it could take out ruzza.
There has been some interesting incidents in Norway where the underwater cables have been sabotaged. Just saying, I think they may have already tested their methods.
Edit: adding the following source
https://www.newsinenglish.no/2021/11/07/surveillance-cables-mysteriously-cut/
Ha, I’ve just downloaded my favourite YouTube videos.
The backup plan is full scale war. That’s a good backup plan.