Daily Archives: July 11, 2023

Australias Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles landed in Honiara, the capital of Solomon Islands, last week for talks on the future of Australias defence and policing presence in the country. The day before Marles arrived in Honiara he suggested that the Australian-led Solomon Islands International Assistance Force (SIAF) could remain in Solomon Islands beyond the missions expiration date of December this year.

This was a miscalculation. Marles signalling that Australia is interested in an enduring security presence in Solomon Islands would likely have been viewed in Honiara as pre-empting the outcome of their discussions.

Under pressure since the signing of the security agreement with China in 2022, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare responded during Marles visit by calling for a review of the Australia-Solomon Islands bilateral security treaty under which the SIAF is deployed. The treaty provides the legal basis for the rapid deployment of Australian police, defence and other personnel in the event of a major security challenge or humanitarian emergency and at the request of Solomon Islands. It also provides for third countries to contribute to the deployment with the consent of Solomon Islands. Under this provision New Zealand and Fiji deployed with the SIAF Sogavare has not stipulated what aspects of the bilateral security treaty with Australia he wishes to be reviewed.

Competition is most visibly playing out in the countrys security sector as Solomon Islands hedges its two competing security partners.

The SIAF comprising of Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji first deployed to Solomon Islands following the riots in November 2021. Papua New Guinea provided security personnel under a separate bilateral agreement with Solomon Islands. In March the following year the SIAF deployment was extended to assist Solomon Islands with operational readiness and security planning in the lead up to the Pacific Games, which will run from 19 November to 2 December 2023. At the time the SIAF was extended, then prime minister Scott Morrison insisted it was a short-term deployment, dismissing comparisons to the 14-year Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands.

Geopolitical competition has intensified in Solomon Islands since it switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019. This competition is most visibly playing out in the countrys security sector as Solomon Islands hedges its two competing security partners, and Australia and China in turn jostle for advantage, influence and presence.

Solomon Islands has successfully leveraged geopolitical competition to meet its security interests. Australia has long dominated the security sector in Solomon Islands. However, the Solomon Islands 2020 National Security Strategy provided early indications that it would seek partnerships with friendly foreign governments to address security gaps. In 2022 Sogavare referred to Australia as the security partner of choice but went on to say that for Solomon Islands to meet its security needs, the diversification of security partners was necessary.

Enter China.

In 2022, China announced that it was not seeking a sphere of influence in the Pacific but that it is a direct stakeholder in the security of the South Pacific. This was the first time China had publicly stated this and it can be seen most visibly in its security cooperation with Solomon Islands. That year Solomon Islands and China signed a succession of highly scrutinised security agreements, a policing agreement which formalised the presence of the China Police Liaison Team to Solomon Islands (CPLT) following the November 2021 riots, and the Framework Agreement on Security Cooperation which provides for Chinese military and other security personnel to be deployed in response to a crisis and at the request of Solomon Islands.

Countries should heed the concerns raised within the region about the impact of geopolitical competition on Pacific security sectors.

Competition in the security sector has since escalated as have concerns about the ways in which geopolitical competition is intersecting with and exacerbating local security dynamics. These concerns include distrust of the local police. Concern was raised first about the Chinese Embassys importation of 95 replica rifles and 95 replica pistols into Solomon Islands in February which bypassed port authorities, and later about Australias donation of 60 semi-automatic rifles (with specialist training included). Opposition leader Mathew Wale warned against the militarisation of Solomon Islands and accused Australia of making the donation purely to stop China building up its influence in the police force.

These concerns also include Solomon Islands Chinese communities who have been targeted during riots. In 2016 when I was researching private security companies in Solomon Islands as part of a Pacific Islands Forum-UNDP project on private security sector governance in the Pacific, Fijian private security personnel were highly visible patrolling Chinatown. Shop owners said it increased their sense of security as most of the private security personnel were former Fijian military. Fast forward to 2022 and a contact centre between the CPLT and the Solomon Islands Chinese Association has been established, its secretary telling the Global Times that Now we, the Chinese here, have gained a greater sense of security.

There are worrying points of potential friction such as the Pacific Games which begin in November. Australia and China will each retain a security presence mission in Solomon Islands throughout this year and potentially into 2024. Australia has voiced concerns about how effectively Australian and Chinese police forces currently on the ground would be able to cooperate, particularly with respect to unity of command. The protection of Chinese citizens and property, particularly major projects such as the Pacific Games infrastructure is a core tenet of Chinese security cooperation in the Solomon Islands.

And in that, countries should heed the concerns raised within the region about the impact of geopolitical competition on Pacific security sectors. The Pacific Islands Forum Pacific Security Outlook 2022-2023 highlighted the increased tempo of engagement by security partners. The competing and non-aligned security partners, it suggested, could overwhelm and undermine peace and security efforts.

*This article is based on research examining the geopolitical drivers of security assistance in Solomon Islands and which was first presented at the Pacific Islands Strategic Dialogue hosted by the National Bureau of Asian Research and University of the South Pacific in Fiji, 3-4 April, 2023. The research is funded by the New Zealand Multi Agency Research Network and Massey University.

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Geopolitical duel in the Pacific: Solomon Islands security at risk as ... - The Interpreter

The Champlain Bridge marks the way on a trip up Lake Champlain by kayak. Photo by Brian Nearing

A kayak, a car and two weeks on the water

By Brian Nearing

With the Adirondack Mountains to the west, New Yorks shoreline on Lake Champlain is branded recreationally as the Adirondack Coast. This 120-mile lake flows north, making this coasts unofficial starting point the lake headwaters in South Bay, just north of the historic village of Whitehall in northern Washington County.

Having kayaked several times in South Bays shallow, milky waters from a state boat launch off State Route 22, I often wondered about the lakes distant northern outlet, at the Richelieu River, which runs through Quebec to the St. Lawrence River and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean at the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Last summer offeredtwo weeksto make that trip, driving, camping, and kayaking along portions of a lake with a whopping 587 miles of shoreline in New York, Vermont and Quebec. It could at best be a snapshot, not a detailed portrait.

South Bay forms a southeastern portion of the Adirondack Parks Blue Line, which runs northward through the lake about 80 miles to the Valcour Island Primitive Area, near the town of Peru in Clinton County. From South Bay and its handful of private camps, the lakemoves slowly north past cliff-lined wetlands of the lower lake up to the beginning of the wider lake beyond Ticonderoga.

It takes up to three years for the bays water to drain north through the lake to the Richelieu, according to Lake Champlain Basin Commission, but I didnt have that kind of leisure time.

Starting from a camp just north of South Bay in late July, a short hop led to the Crown Point State Park Campground in the shadow of the graceful arch of Crown Point Bridge and a historic lighthouse. This Vermont connection opened in 2011 after the unstable old bridge, which dated to when Franklin D. Roosevelt was governor of New York, was closed and demolished.

The grassy, wooded campground offered 66 campsites that were fairly spaced out, as well as hot showers, a trailer dump station, a recycling center, a small picnic area, and firewood sales.

The parks boat launch provided easy and immediate access to paddle beneath and around the bridge, as well an opportunity to take out at a small museum on the Vermont side at the Chimney Point State Historic Site, where a steel pier from the old bridge remains on display outside. Tucked in along a retaining wall, I found a beautifully painted rock hidden by someone who is part of a Facebook group called VT Rocks. The group promotes the creation and scattering of such tiny artworks.

For the ambitious paddler, the lakefront town of Port Henry was more than a mile north across the neck of Bulwagga Bay, but I was content to meander along the Vermont shoreline at Chimney Point, before turning back to the New York side and a rocky take-out just above Coffin Point.

The next day, the bridge at Crown Point provided a route into Vermont and a dozen miles northward to Button Bay State Park, located on the lake about an hours drive south of Burlington.

Located in Ferrisburgh on a bluff overlooking the lake, this 253-acre park has 53 tent/RV sites, 12 lean-tos, and four cabins.

Button Bay is so named for the button-like concretions formed by clay shoreline deposits. These geologic formations are created during several centuries as clays collected around plant stalks. When the plant stem dies and rots away, whats left behind resembles a rock with a hole drilled in its center.

Wind was light and the water calm on the bay, allowing a short and easy paddle from the parks boat launch to the bays namesake 1.5-acre limestone island. This natural area, with sweeping lake views, contains foundational ruins of a 19th century summer home of a wealthy New York City art dealer, and trails to explore.

In the car, my route backtracked into New York and Crown Point and then again northward on Route 9N, to Port Henry, a self-proclaimed home of Champ, the mythical Lake Champlain monster, and during the 19thand mid-20thcenturies, the actual home of a thriving port to service the areas many small iron furnaces and canal traffic. The village has a beach and picnic area named for its famous aquatic denizen. Each summer, a Champ festival is held, featuring cardboard boat races, movies on the beach, and other family events.

A boat launch offered easy lake access and another view of the Crown Point Bridge, but I had a schedule to keep.

An hours drive north at Cumberland Bay State Park in Plattsburgh, I camped a short walk from the shoreline. The 350-acre park has more than 150 tent/RV sites, a broad, sandy swimming beach, and a new bathhouse and family-friendly playground. The wind here was too brisk for safe kayaking, but a swim was possible.

After a comfortable night tenting, I continued northward to Rouses Point, the gateway to the Canadian border crossing as well as to a bridge to the Champlain Islands, including the Alburgh Tongue, a small peninsula extending from Canada into Lake Champlain, and thus surrounded by water.

Alburgh contained numerous boat launches, including one directly across the bridge on Route 2, but high northerly winds made that part of the lake unsafe to kayak. I headed south down the peninsulas southern tip andAlburgh Dunes State Park, which features one of the lakes largest natural sand swimming beaches.

Alburgh Dunes is for day use only and a single trail runs parallel to the beach, but the dunes themselves are fenced off to protect the delicate beach grasses and other stabilizing plants. There is no public drinking water supply.

The beach also was a great place to launch a kayak, as the area was somewhat protected from the northern winds. With Isle La Motte just to the west, winds coming from that direction could also be mitigated.

Given the potentially long outings on this massive lake, wind speed and direction must always be considered before setting out in a kayak or canoe. Conditions can change quickly.

Alburgh is also a bit of a geographical oddity for trivia buffs. A welcome sign identified it as being located on the 45thParallel. This geographic line was to have been the border between the U.S. and Canada, but a long-ago cartographic error placed the border about a mile north of the 45th in many places, which gave Alburgh several square miles of land that should have been in Canada rather than the U.S.

Rouses Point presented no nearby camping options and a hardscrabble downtown with some echoes of its tourist past, but with only one lodging accommodation a large motel with its tourist heyday long behind it, now occupied primarily by long-term residents. It proved comfortable and provided the chance to sort through coolers and dirty clothing to take to a local laundromat.

At the time, due to the pandemic, crossing the Canadian border required use of a mobile phone app to relay basic passport information and vaccination/health status to customs authorities prior to arrival at a border station. That app requirement has subsequently been discontinued.

Crossing the border put me along the western shoreline of the Richelieu River, a 77-mile tributary of the St. Lawrence. The trip north on Route 223 was along the flat broad plains of Quebec, passing through agricultural fields and little towns that led to the small city of Chambly, a favorite recreation spot for residents of Montreal about 30 miles away.

Water recreation centers on the Chambly Basin, formed by an enlargement of the Richelieu that creates a small lake extending from the foot of the rivers rapids. Kayaks, paddleboards, and recreational boats filled the basin as I joined in on a perfect summer day. The lakeshore at Chambly is all privately owned, so there were no places to take out for a break.

Later, I strolled along the shops and restaurant of the compact town and to Fort Chambly National Historic Site, an imposing stone structure with parts dating to the early 17thcentury French colonial period. Nearby was a lock for the historic Chambly Canal, which connects the river to the St. Lawrence andLake Champlain and ultimately, to New York City through the Champlain Canal starting in Whitehall and running to the Hudson River at Fort Edward.

After kayaking the basin and finding a small motel for the night, I again headed north, pitching my tent at a well-equipped private campground, Domaine Des Erables, located east of the river about an hours drive north in the village of St. Roch-De-Richelieu

Nearby, the town boat launch was home to a small cable ferry that takes cars back and forth across the river. The Richelieu remains flat and placid, with negligible current and periodic river traffic confined to occasional recreational boats. A gentle paddle from the launch at St. Roch-De-Richelieu led south to the historic Chambly Canal lock on the island of St. Ours National Historic Site. The lock was built between 1830-1833, and the lockkeepers house is now a small museum that describes the canals commercial heyday. Parks Canada also has placed six large rental tents on the island for campers equipped with electric heat and cooking supplies. These rentals a cross between a tent and a cedar cabin are a leisurely, comfortable way to experience the flow of the river and of the lock as boats pass through.

Now the beginning of August, my push was to reach the mouth of the Richlieu at the St. Lawrence port city of Sorel-Tracy, about 20 miles north. The area at the mouth is industrialized in this city of about 35,000 people, and the St. Lawrence is broad, powerful, and occupied by large ocean-going freighters, making it an imprudent place to kayak.

But only a 20-minute drive downriver, the atmosphere was completely different. There, the western edge of the Archipelago of Lake Saint Pierre is dotted with 103 islands and wetlands that are important habitat for migratory waterfowl. The area, including Lake Saint Pierre just to the east, was recognized as an ecologically important Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations in 2000.

A boat launch immediately across from the private campground where I had set up (Camping Chenal-du-Moine) offered a tantalizing glimpse into this sprawling maze of islands and channels, as well as a guarantee of being outside the main shipping channel and the massive freighters cruising through.

The launch was still several miles from the lake itself, a widening of the river about 20 miles long and up to nine miles wide. For those who want to tour the area, several private tour businesses are available.

During my paddle along the channel between the shoreline and Lle-du-Moine, I was joined by small recreational boats and saw many small seasonal cottages along both sides. The land was all privately owned, so there was no place to legally take out. But it was a quiet refuge close to the busy shipping lanes.

Sadly, I was behind my schedule, and so had to turn south the next day and make a run along the east bank of the Richelieu for the U.S. border, with a long drive taking me past sundown and thus, requiring a stay in a Vermont motel. That led to a detour Burlington, which also offers fantastic views of the Adirdondacks across the lake, and then, on to a campsite in a return visit to Button Bay State Park.

My two weeks were coming to an end, and I again crossed the Crown Point Bridge to return to the Washington County camp where I had started. I had added 700 additional miles on my odometer, and some great memories of two rivers and a beautiful lake region that could take several lifetimes to fully explore.

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Lake Champlain trip highlights paddling and campground amenities - Adirondack Explorer

On Feb. 10 last year, the cable ship CS Dependable appeared off the coast of the island of Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean atoll thats home to a discreet U.S. naval base.

Over the next month, the ships crew covertly laid an underwater fiber-optic cable to the military base, an operation code-named Big Wave, according to four people with direct knowledge of the mission, as well as a Reuters analysis of satellite imagery and ship tracking data.

The new super-fast internet link to Diego Garcia, which has not previously been reported, will boost U.S. military readiness in the Indian Ocean, a region where China has expanded its naval influence over the last decade.

The CS Dependable is owned by SubCom, a small-town New Jersey cable manufacturer thats playing an outsized role in a race between the United States and China to control advanced military and digital technologies that could decide which country emerges as the worlds preeminent superpower.

SubCom, a company born out of a U.S. Cold War project to spy on Soviet submarines, is living a double life.

Publicly, it is one of the worlds biggest developers of undersea fiber-optic cables for telecom firms and tech giants like Alphabets Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta Platforms.

Behind the scenes, SubCom is the exclusive undersea cable contractor to the U.S. military, laying a web of internet and surveillance cables across the ocean floor, according to the fourpeople with knowledge of the matter: two SubCom employees and two U.S. Navy staffers. The individuals asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the operations.

This dual role has made SubCom increasingly valuable to Washington as global internet infrastructure from undersea cables to data centers and 5G mobile networks risks fracturing into two systems, one backed by the United States, the other controlled by China.

SubCom is owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a New York-based private equity firm that has invested in defense contractors and national security assets.Last year, Cerberus paid $300 million for a Philippine shipyard on a former U.S. Navy base close to the South China Sea, beating out Chinese competitors for control of a strategic site in a region where Beijing has been flexing its military muscle.

Cerberus is headed by Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire political donor whom former President Donald Trump drafted onto the Presidents Intelligence Advisory Board, which counsels the commander-in-chief on U.S. foreign intelligence matters.

SubCom, Cerberus and Feinberg did not respond to requests for comment.

Presented with Reuters findings, a spokesperson for the U.S. Navys Pacific Fleet confirmed the existence of a new high-speed undersea internet cable to Diego Garcia. It was the first official acknowledgement of that cable.

The resiliency, redundancy, and security of our communication infrastructure represents a top priority for U.S. Pacific Fleet, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The statement said the Navy could not discuss specifics for operational security reasons. The Navy did not respond to Reuters questions about SubCom or name the company in its statement.

SubComs journey from Cold War experiment to global cable constructor and now a shadowy player in the U.S.-China tech war is detailed in this story for the first time.

Reuters is revealing details of the Diego Garcia project and SubComs deepening ties with the Pentagon. The news agency is also the first to report on a confidential contract the company secured from tech giant Google to build the worlds largest private undersea internet network.

That partnership is the kind of America Inc project that President Joe Biden has been calling for in his drive to promote U.S. advanced technologies.

Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Undersea cables transmit 99% of all transcontinental internet traffic, including instant messenger chats, stock market transactions and military secrets. This underwater network has become one of the key weapons in the U.S.-China tech war, as detailed in a Reuters investigation published in March. Subsea cables are vulnerable to sabotage and espionage, and Beijing and Washington have accused each other of tapping cables to spy on data or carry out cyberattacks.

SubComs increasing importance to the United States can be split into two categories, one military and one economic, according to two subsea cable industry officials who have worked on U.S. government projects.

First, Washington needs SubCom to expand the Navys undersea cable network so that it can better coordinate military operations and enhance surveillance on Chinas expanding fleet of submarines and warships, the people said. Second, the Biden administration wants SubCom to build more commercial subsea internet cables controlled by U.S. companies, a strategy aimed at ensuring that America remains the primary custodian of the internet, according to the two industry officials.

SubCom operates six cable-laying ships: bespoke deep-sea vessels fitted with vast storage drums to hold sheaves of fiber-optic cable. The Navy has only one such ship the 40-year-old USNS Zeus a vessel so old that it is limited to carrying out repairs, according to Eckhard Bruckschen, director of the UK-based Undersea Cable Consultancy.

SubCom is indispensable to America if it wants to control subsea cables. Theyve got no one else, Bruckschentold Reuters.

There are only four major companies in the world that manufacture and lay subsea cables: Americas SubCom, Japans NEC Corporation, Frances Alcatel Submarine Networks and Chinas HMN Tech.

For sensitive U.S. projects, Washington only works with SubCom, according to five industry sources who have worked on projects with the cable company.

The U.S. Department of Defense and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Picking sides

Until a U.S. crackdown on Chinese tech companies ramped up five years ago, SubCom laid cables for telecom and tech companies worldwide, including the big state-owned Chinese carriers.

Not anymore. The cable firm now works almost exclusively for the U.S. military and big U.S. tech firms, two SubCom employees told Reuters.

SubComs pivot reflects a sea change underway in the internet infrastructure industry, which has long seen choosing sides in great-power politics as bad for business. But U.S. sanctions on Chinese tech companies and an increase in trade-protectionist policies under Biden and his predecessor Trump have forced American tech firms to work mainly with companies and countries viewed as friendly to the United States.

The U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 blocked Google, Meta and Amazon from building fiber-optic cables from the United States to Hong Kong due to concerns about Chinese spying.

Microsoft whose President Brad Smith said in 2017 that the tech sector needed to be a neutral digital Switzerland announced in May that it had discovered Chinese state-sponsored hackers targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, a rare example of a big tech firm calling out Beijing for espionage. Chinas Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at the time that the accusations were part of a U.S. disinformation campaign, describing America as the empire of hacking.

In December of last year, the Pentagon awarded $9 billion worth of Cloud computing contracts to Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle, entrusting these companies to keep Americas most closely held secrets under digital lock and key.

Silicon Valley is waking up to the reality that it has to pick a side, said Jacob Helberg, former head of Googles news policy and a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a government agency.

Google did not respond to a request for comment. Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle declined to comment.

SubComs loyalty is especially important because it is the only major U.S. subsea cable company. Headquartered in the quiet borough of Eatontown, New Jersey, SubCom secured a $10 million-a-year contract in 2021 from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to run a two-vessel fleet to provide undersea cable security, according to one SubCom employee and one Navy staffer with knowledge of the deal. A 2020 DOT notice to prospective applicants said winners would be responsible for laying, maintaining and repairing subsea cables to support U.S. national security and economic interests, in partnership with the Department of Defense.

The SubCom ships CS Dependable and CS Decisive now make up the U.S. governments first Cable Security Fleet, the people said.

The DOT and SubCom did not respond to requests for comment.

Operation Big Wave

One of CS Dependables destinations was Diego Garcia, a horseshoe-shaped atoll which hosts U.S. aircraft carriers and submarines, and has an airfield capable of landing long-range bombers.

Located in the heart of the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia is a British overseas territory. Since the 1970s, Britain has allowed the United States to operate a naval base there. The island is currently home to around 3,000 people, including Navy sailors, family members and support staff, two people who have worked on the atoll told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Diego Garcia boasts shops, restaurants, bars and pristine beaches, the people said.

Prior to the laying of the new subsea cable, the island base accessed the internet via satellites, which are slower and less reliable than cables, the two people said.

The CS Dependables clandestine underwater operation on Diego Garcia was never mentioned publicly by participants in the business deal that made it happen. Rather, they carefully obscured the U.S. military component within a larger private-sector cable project, according to four subsea cable industry sources with knowledge of the arrangement.

In 2020, SubCom announced that it had been commissioned by an Australian tech mogul to lay a $300 million commercial internet cable from Australia to the Sultanate of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, a route that traverses the Indian Ocean.

That project, known as the Oman Australia Cable, was spearheaded by SUBCO, a Brisbane-based subsea cable investment company owned by Australian entrepreneur Bevan Slattery.

The industry was skeptical about the commercial viability of the route, given it would mostly serve a small pool of Australian telecom firms that already had access to multiple cables running through Southeast Asia to the Middle East, five industry sources told Reuters.

The Secret Splice

SubCom announced in 2020 that it was building a commercial subsea internet cable from Australia to Oman. The $300 million project included a clandestine link to a U.S. Navy base on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, which was funded by the Pentagon.

Sources: TeleGeography; Natural Earth

What many of them didnt know was that the Pentagon had paid for around a third of the entire cable on the condition that it include a splice connecting its commercial trunk to Diego Garcia, two of the people with knowledge of the project told Reuters.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet, in its statement to Reuters, said SUBCOs Oman Australia Cable offered a unique opportunity to connect the remote island with an undersea fiber-optic internet cable.

The statement said the U.S. Pacific Fleet partnered with companies laying the Oman Australia Cable to extend a branch to Diego Garcia, but did not disclose how much it paid for the spur.

This partnership has increased the digital resiliency and security of our communication infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific, the statement said.

While the Navy had said nothing officially about the cable until now, sailors on Diego Garcia were tipped off last year. Captain Richard Payne, then-commander on Diego Garcia, mentioned the cable during a Feb. 9 guest appearance on the bases local radio station, 99.1 The Eagle, a recording of which was posted on the Navy radio stations Facebook page.

Payne, who was fielding questions submitted by listeners, volunteered that an unusual vessel could be sighted off the western shore of Diego Garcia.

We're going to have fiber optics here on the island very soon, Payne told the programs host, Alex Kerska or DJ Special K, during the segment in which he also addressed complaints about high beer prices on the atoll and called on island residents to attend a kickball tournament.

Starting today (or) tomorrow, we have the cable-laying ship that is out there off the coast now. Its a commercial company doing that Its a very interesting ship, Payne continued, without naming the company or the ship.

Payne, who now works in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, did not respond to a request for comment.

The ship Payne was referring to was the CS Dependable, according to the SubCom and Navy sources with knowledge of the operation.

SubComs CS Reliance vessel laid the first half of the commercial cable from Perth, Australia, to the middle of the Indian Ocean. From there, the CS Dependable took over, running the splice to Diego Garcia and laying the rest of the main trunk up to Oman, the people said.

Reuters analyzed satellite images and ship tracking data on Eikon, the financial analysis platform owned by the London Stock Exchange Group. That information showed the CS Dependable operating around Diego Garcia in February and March of 2022, then sailing on to Oman.

The delicate operation was made possible by a decades-long friendship between three veterans of the subsea cable industry, according to two people with knowledge of the dealings.

Coordinating the Pentagons end was Catherine Creese, a former U.S. Coast Guard officer who is now Director of the U.S. Naval Seafloor Cable Protection Office, the unit that oversees the Navys subsea cables.

Prior to joining the Navy in 2006, Creese worked at SubCom for 11 years, a time when it was known as Tyco Telecommunications. There she worked closely alongside the man who is now SubComs CEO, David Coughlan, according to two former SubCom employees who worked with Coughlan and Creese.

Coughlan and Creese planned and executed the Diego Garcia operation, according to one current SubCom employee and one Navy staffer.

Creese and Coughlan did not respond to requests for comment. The U.S. Navy did not respond to questions about Creeses involvement.

Dreams come true

Selling the cable to investors, meanwhile, was the purview of Slattery, the Australian entrepreneur, who has made a fortune building and selling private undersea cables. In a conservative industry, the businessman stands out as a gregarious and outspoken character who is willing to take on risky projects, according to three industry sources who have worked with Slattery.

Slattery did not respond to requests for comment.

SubComs Coughlan helped Slattery pull off his first major cable deal in the late 2000s, setting him on course to become one of Australias wealthiest tech moguls, according to two industry sources with knowledge of the matter.

That project, a SubCom-built cable running between Brisbane and Guam, a U.S. Pacific island territory thats also home to a naval base, almost bankrupted Slattery, the businessman told the Australian Financial Review in a 2016 interview.

Thanks to sympathetic suppliers, Slattery got that cable, known as PIPE,over the line, according to the Financial Review article. Crucially, SubCom, the main supplier on the project, extended Slattery credit to get the cable finished, the two industry sources said.

Slattery sold the company that owned the PIPE cable for A$373 million ($248 million) in 2010, the first of a string of successful tech infrastructure bets. Slattery has a personal net worth of A$564 million ($375 million), according to a 2020 Rich List published by the Financial Review.

The entrepreneur pitched the Oman Australia Cable in public statements as an alternative to the traditional route between Australia and the Middle East that passes through Southeast Asia. The spur to Diego Garcia was never mentioned.

A blueprint for such a project already existed. Slatterys cable was essentially a revival and rerouting of a 2017 plan to build a cable between Australia and the Republic of Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, with a secret link to Diego Garcia funded by the Pentagon, according to a person directly involved in that deal. Djibouti is the site of Chinas first-ever overseas military base, which opened in 2017.

The earlier proposed cable known as the Australia West Express was never built because the U.S. company behind the project, GoTo Networks, couldnt secure the private investment needed to cover the portion not funded by the Pentagon, the person said.

SubComs cable ship tracked near remote U.S. Navy base

The CS Dependable spent weeks in the waters around Diego Garcia in February and March of 2022, ship tracking data shows. In this period, the ships crew laid a secret subsea fiber-optic internet cable to a U.S. Navy base on the atoll, according to SubCom and Navy sources.

Source: Refinitiv Eikon

John Mariano, who was the CEO of the now-defunct GoTo Networks, declined to comment. The U.S. Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment. An official from the presidents office in Djibouti declined to comment.

Cables are typically owned by a consortium of telecom and tech companies that spread the cost and risk. Occasionally, entrepreneurs or private equity firms build a cable on spec with the aim of selling bandwidth to carriers and tech companies before flipping the cable for a profit.

Slattery is a master of such deals, two people who worked with him told Reuters. He used his experience and contacts to attract enough investors to supplement the Pentagon funding to get the Oman Australia Cable built, the two people said.

The 10,000-kilometer cable was officially opened by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in October 2022. It includes a splice to the Cocos Islands, an Australian territory which comprises a cluster of tiny islands between Sri Lanka and Australia. Australias military has been seeking parliamentary approval for funds to upgrade an airfield there and make other improvements aimed at strengthening its maritime surveillance capabilities in the region.

Slattery on Nov. 19, 2022, tweeted a group photo that included himself and Albanese, both with broad grins, celebrating the cable and the team that made dreams come true.

Albaneses office did not respond to a request for comment about the project, its funding or potential military uses. In an Oct. 22, 2022, tweet sent from his Twitter account, he lauded the cables speed, security and reliability, and boasted that it could stream over 65 million Netflix shows simultaneously.

The government of Oman did not respond to a request for comment.

Levers of power

SubComs role in the project marked a return to its Cold War roots.

The company was founded in 1955, according to its website, the year the first subsea transatlantic telephone cable system was laid between Scotland and Newfoundland. That cable was deployed by AT&Ts submarine cable unit, which would eventually become SubCom.

The true origins of AT&Ts subsea cable business go back five years earlier, when the company was commissioned by the U.S. Navy to build a network of undersea surveillance cables to listen for Soviet submarines, according to three former employees with knowledge of the matter.

The project was known as the Sound Surveillance System, or Project Caesar, according to a declassified document about the program available on the U.S. Navys website. The document does not mention AT&Ts involvement.

Once the Navy project was complete, AT&Ts submarine cable projectmorphedinto a commercial business, the former employees said.

AT&T did not respond to a request for comment.

In 1997, AT&T sold its cable-laying operation, including a fleet of ships, to Tyco International, a security company based in New Jersey. In 2018, Tyco sold the cable unit, by this time dubbed TE SubCom, for $325 million to Cerberus, the New York private equity firm.

SubCom doesnt make public many details about its business. The company has more than 1,300 employees and an annual revenue of $344 million, according to data on Eikon.

Last year, SubCom signed a master service agreement with Google, one of the worlds biggest investors in subsea internet cables, according to two people with knowledge of the deal.

That contract, which the people said is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, could help Google build the worlds largest-ever private data network, connecting Cloud data centers around the world with a web of SubCom-manufactured undersea cables.

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

More undersea cables and data centers in the hands of U.S. companies like Google and SubCom is a win for Washington as it seeks to keep Chinese firms away from the internet hardware that will underpin global economic and military progress for decades to come, said Kellee Wicker, director of the Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based think tank.

Cables are an enormous lever of power, Wicker said. If you cant control these networks directly, you want a company you can trust to control them.

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Inside the subsea cable firm secretly helping American take on China - Reuters