“In certain emergency situations, the cables must be cut” • Suspected of crimes in the Baltic Sea
Chinese ships are suspected of having hijacked underwater cables around the world, including in the Baltic Sea.
Now the country is seeking patents for inventions to cut this type of cables – quickly and cheaply.
Several underwater cables in the Baltic Sea have been exposed to suspected sabotage recently. An area between Finland and the Baltics appears to be particularly vulnerable, but also in other places in the Baltic Sea, similar cable breaks have occurred.
No one has yet claimed responsibility, but at the top of the list of suspects we find the Russian shadow fleet – and China.
Now a recent review from Newsweek that China apparently values innovations to cut submarine cables highly. So high that patents have even been applied for similar inventions.
While the patent application does not prove that China is actually behind the many cable breaches, it does indicate an interest in hijacking them, marine experts say.
China: Necessary
In 2020, a team of engineers at Lishui University in China’s Zhejiang province developed a so-called “anchor cutter”, a kind of towing device for cutting cables.
“In line with technological development, more and more underwater cables and communication cables are laid on the seabed in all parts of the world and in some emergency situations the cables have to be cut,” write the authors at Lishui University in the patent application.
As early as 2009, a patent was applied for a similar device. The justification for patenting it at the time was the existence of illegal cables outside of China, but the application was rejected.
A Norwegian expert on underwater cables believes that the reasoning that the “anchor cutter” is necessary to cut illegal cables is “absurd” because the method is far too random and can lead to damage to important cables.
“The fact that there are several patents that Chinese engineers applied for to conduct underwater cable hijacking raises the suspicion that Beijing not only has the interest, but is actively developing technological options to conduct this type of underwater warfare for future operations,” says Benjamin. L. Schmitt, top of the board at the University of Pennsylvania to Newsweek.