Finland seized a ship suspected of sabotaging a telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea, the latest maneuver in a quiet battle over underwater infrastructure.
Cables and pipelines carry vital data and fuel, and apparent sabotage is on the rise. Several cables to Taiwan are broken each year, allegedly by China, and Beijing also uses regulatory pressure to deny or delay installations and bolster its influence in the South China Sea; Russia has been linked to a series of incidents in the Baltic, usually involving ships dragging their anchors.
International law is murky over whether cable sabotage is “piracy, terrorism, or even… an armed attack,” and legal loopholes hinder international efforts to prevent it, an expert wrote for Foreign Affairs.