Three Republican House members asked Alphabet, Facebook parent Meta and Amazon.com on Monday if they had adopted adequate safeguards in order to address the growing concerns about national security regarding submarine communication cables.

Washington has raised alarm over the network of 400 subsea cable systems that carry 99% of all international internet traffic, and also about threats posed by China and Russia.

The letter expressed concern that entities associated with China, "such as SBSS Marine, Huawei Marine and China Telecom" have continued to maintain or service cable systems where your companies retain direct or indirect involvement or ownership. The letter was written by John Moolenaar who chairs a House committee on China and by Republican Representatives Carlos Gimenez, Keith Self and Keith Self who are subcommittee chairmen.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington has not yet commented.

Requests for comments from the tech companies were not immediately responded to.

In the letter, the committees said they are "examining how foreign adversarial agents are positioning themselves both overtly or covertly to compromise subsea cables systems at key vulnerabilities."

The legislators want companies to reveal by 8 August if they have any knowledge of suspected hardware tampering or optical signal taping, or unexpected signal distortion.

The letter stated that "a growing body of evidence indicates a pattern of coordinated malicious activity linked to the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation, targeting subsea structures in the Baltic Sea and Indo-Pacific regions, as well as other strategic areas." Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr announced last week that his agency will adopt rules that prohibit companies from connecting submarine cables that use Chinese technology and equipment to the United States.

Since 2020, U.S. regulators were instrumental in canceling four cables that had been backed by those who wanted to connect the United States and Hong Kong. Two fiber-optic cables undersea in the Baltic Sea, cut in November 2024, prompted investigations into possible sabotage. Taiwan accused two Chinese ships of cutting two cables supporting internet access in the Matsu Islands. Three cables that provide internet service to Europe, Asia and Europe may have also been cut by Houthi attacks on the Red Sea. (Reporting and editing by Franklin Paul, Matthew Lewis, and David Shepardson)

(source: Reuters)