Nato backs effort to save internet by rerouting to space in event of subsea attacks

Academics eye developing a system to reroute data to satellites in the event of sabotage

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Nato headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:30am, 9 Jul 2024Updated: 12:55pm, 9 Jul 2024

Nato is helping finance a project aimed at finding ways to keep the internet running should subsea cables shuttling civilian and military communications across European waters come under attack.

Researchers, who include academics from the United States, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland, say they want to develop a way to seamlessly divert internet traffic from subsea cables to satellite systems in the event of sabotage, or a natural disaster.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s Science for Peace and Security Programme has approved a grant of as much as €400,000 (US$433,600) for the US$2.5 million project, and research institutions are providing in-kind contributions, documents seen by Bloomberg show.

Eyup Kuntay Turmus, adviser and programme manager at the Nato programme, confirmed the project was recently approved and said by email that implementation will start “very soon”.

The Nord Stream 2 gas leak near Bornholm, Denmark in 2022. Photo: Danish Defence Command / dpa

The initiative, which has not yet been publicly announced, comes amid intensifying fears that Russia or China could mine, sever or otherwise tamper with undersea cables in an attempt to disrupt communications during a military crisis.