New CSIS Report shows that Chinese research vessels spend significantly more time near subsea cables on the high seas than other countries

[u/Icy-Advantage5709]

TLDR: 1) The Chinese got caught surveying a Russian subsea cable that I couldn’t find anything public about. 2) the stats say China research vessels spent more time in the high seas where no one is looking and there’s fancy stars for significance 3) Russians spent less time mapping critical infrastructure in the high seas than the Chinese and US. 4) Chinese vessels map near sub sea cables.

Something I don’t get though is why Russia isn’t showing a positive association? I thought with all the shenanigans happing in Western Europe with cables they would for sure be messing around.

A lot of math

https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-weaponization-dual-use-research-vessels-undersea-data-dominance

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[u/roionsteroids]

In 4/6 years, the chart is topped by "other states", and once by the US.

Most new subsea cables are built by the same few companies that also build cloud infrastructure worldwide, mostly US hyperscalers (google, meta, amazon etc.) to connect their data hubs. They've grown large enough to dominate global bandwidth and have their own, dedicated cables (cables are rather inexpensive, the whole market is just a few billions a year, a drop in the ocean compared to all the compute hardware and what not).

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Something I don’t get though is why Russia isn’t showing a positive association? I thought with all the shenanigans happing in Western Europe with cables they would for sure be messing around.

About that, from the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service:

Cable damages have been a common occurrence in the Baltic Sea for decades

The cases of damage to undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea have gained a lot of publicity recently, but it is not a very rare phenomenon. Ship anchors have been regularly damaging cables in the Baltic Sea throughout the 21st century, even though the incidents have not made the news. The damage has mainly occurred during the autumn and winter months. Statistically, the number of cases of cable damage in recent years is quite typical for the Baltic Sea. However, the increase in undersea infrastructure has created a situation in which it is easy for more cables to be damaged in individual cases.

Based on the recurrence of infrastructure damage, it is not possible to draw any conclusions of the intentionality of the incidents or possible state influencing, but each incident must be investigated separately. State influencing activities always have a goal and a motive, and they must somehow benefit the perpetrator. Just causing confusion is not a sufficient reason to engage in risky actions that have had negative consequences even for Russia. The incidents of ships dragging their anchors in recent years have damaged not only Western undersea infrastructure but also Russia’s own infrastructure.

https://supo.fi/en/growing-tensions-in-the-baltic-sea

There're no international standards on the cables, older ones in the Baltic are likely not properly secured into the seabed.

Cables between Ireland and Britain are frequently damaged by fishing dredge vessels too, with court cases like these:

There was also an alleged failure to protect its cables in an “area of fishing ground established centuries past”. The defendants say they were doing nothing more than the lawful exploitation of fishing rights and Virgin has no entitlement to expect or demand that fishing be modified, or stopped by reason of the laying of its cable.

The court heard the cable was installed in 1998 by Virgin’s predecessor NTL.

It is one of two cables, the Sirius South and the Sirius North, running between Ireland and Britain and if one is damaged, Virgin can switch to the other. There have been 18 instances of damage involving trawlers since it was installed.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/business/fishing-trawler-allegedly-caused-e800000-damage-to-virgin-medias-undersea-cable-1633694.html

In a conflict, wouldn't it make much more sense to attack the most critical point anyway? The land connection of the cables. No high seas shenanigans required.

[u/Icy-Advantage5709 → u/roionsteroids]

You’re saying there’s other states also above the 80th percentile but we don’t know which ones.

Actually I think that there’s less high seas near the baltics so probably that also explains why Russia wouldn’t be captured with stronger or at least a positive association.

[u/mrblackpandaa]

I haven't looked at the article in question yet, but from what I know about Russian undersea cable stuff they have an entire secretive unit dedicated to doing stuff like that with their GUGI, the directorate for deep-sea research. Its a split between a half dozen surface vessels (that conveniently all have the same paint scheme) and a token collection of custom made very deep diving submarines and presumably drones. So they're definitely out there doing stuff.

My immediate guess is that China is doing more simply because it can, while Russia really cant. China has been ramping up all sorts of oceanographic research for military application for years now, so its not really a surprise that the pattern would follow for undersea cable related stuff. Compared to Russia who has now been tied up in Ukraine for years at this point, where theres only so much funding to go around.

Also im not sure how reliably I would call any sort of open source metric on something as specific as deep sea research vessels and undersea cable related stuff. Im assuming that the primary method used was AIS tracking with maybe some other methods here or there, which is fine when ships are emitting. But most of those Russian ships (and most of the US ones too) don't openly transmit on AIS when at sea for exactly this reason. Both Russia and the US go to v-e-r-y great lengths to conceal their seabed operations for exactly this reason.

Ill read the article later and see what I find, but just reading your post those are my thoughts.

[u/Veqq]

What, concretely, is done by these ships? Are they sniffing all packets or?

Are such vessels shooed away / are the cables defended?

[u/Icy-Advantage5709 → u/Veqq]

The argument goes that they are using the excuse of scientific activity to collect data for submarine warfare and for future sabotage.

The scenario could be like what happen in the high north where Russians were caught practicing operations over subsea cables.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nato-allies-foil-russian-subsea-cable-sabotage-plot-2026-09-10/

The authors suggest tracking these dual use vessels in the high seas when they are near critical infrastructure to what end perhaps similar to what’s happening with the Philippines or other is up to the policymakers to decide.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/philippines-sends-largest-ship-aircraft-drive-away-chinese-vessel-waters-near-2026-10-01/