Within the next week, a former Ukrainian military officer will go on trial in German court. The Associated Press identifies the accused as Serhii Kuznetsov. German prosecutors charge Kuznetsov with “causing an explosion” and “being an ‘accomplice to war crimes’ by attacking civilian infrastructure.”
That’s legalese for the September 2022 attack on the Baltic Sea’s Nord Stream natural gas pipelines. The seabed pipelines connect Russian gas fields to Germany and western Europe.
In 2023, after U.S. media alleged Ukrainian special forces troops conducted the attack, I wrote a column reviewing the Nord Stream incident’s significance.
Motive was a secondary interest. Kyiv didn’t have to demonstrate an obvious fact — Russian gas gives Moscow economic and political leverage over Ukraine’s energy-hungry Europeans allies. Anyway, Ukraine denied the allegation.
Now AP reports German prosecutors believe Kuznetsov and his accomplices aimed “to permanently disrupt” (stop?) pipeline gas delivery. Implied motive: Destroying the pipelines would dramatically reduce the energy revenues that fund Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
Reducing energy revenues is a legitimate war aim, though one that risked it in 2022 and in 2026 still risks alienating Germany, a key Ukrainian ally.
But here’s the attack’s real global significance. Nord Stream remains the most politically prominent and media-conspicuous example of a global strategic economic, political and military problem: the vulnerability of offshore and transoceanic infrastructure of all types.
Pipelines and undersea communication cables are vulnerable to relatively simple types of disruptive and destructive sabotage. Unfortunately, most seaports face similar threats.
Let’s take the seaports first. In July 2026, the Pentagon released video showing U.S. Corsair unmanned surface vessels (sea drones in common lingo) destroying an Iranian ship maintenance facility in the Persian Gulf port of Bandar Abbas The U.S. attack replicated numerous Ukrainian sea drone attacks that struck and destroyed Russian Black Sea naval facilities.
These were presumably well-defended naval (military) targets, not civilian maritime facilities which are even more at risk. Yes, “dumb” naval mines sown by aircraft or submarines can close a seaport. Now smart naval mines have computer brains that can select their targets — a tanker, a tramp freighter, an aircraft carrier.
Pipelines and cables are very fragile. Both can be cut using dragged anchors. Unless the target is deep, the attacker doesn’t need a sub torpedo or an expensive autonomous robot. Special operations personnel or high-tech criminals in scuba gear can sever pipelines and cables with simple explosives.
The general public does not appreciate the economic and military importance of underwater fiber optic cables.
Deep below the waves runs the undersea cable spine of the global internet — digital information pipelines carrying everything from bank transactions to personal email. Currently between 95% and 99% of all transoceanic data traffic transits undersea cables.
In January 2008, the world got a glimpse of the threat when ships’ anchors cut two fiber optic cables off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. The two cables, each owned by a competing company, carried most of the Internet traffic between Europe and the Middle East and India. Middle Eastern users immediately confronted slowdowns and service loss.
In February 2008, StrategyPage.com reported U.S. soldiers in the Middle East barely noticed the cut — they relied on satellites for internet service. Users in India, however, faced major problems. Before the Egyptian cables could be repaired another fiber optic cable in the Indian Ocean failed. Indian software development firms faced millions in losses. They relied on cable connections to send and receive large data files to customers in Europe and North America.
StrategyPage warned: “Increasingly, moving large data and video files long distances is part of normal military operations.” What happened to India’s software mavens could hinder military operations.
In 2026, Communist Chinese trawlers implicitly threaten to cut hi-tech Taiwan’s cable connections.
Cutting sea cables is as real an economic threat as severing a pipeline.
Cables have “landing sites” where they connect to the landlubber internet. The landing sites (aka cable landing stations) are internet seaports — and that makes them military and economic targets.
In some ways, cable vulnerability is old news. The late 19th century’s international telegraph undersea cable system was the first global internet. As the 20th century dawned, the cables became more important. When World War I erupted, British sailors “hacked” German international seabed cables using axes — the original hackers.
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