The cable-laying vessel CS Dependable is shown docked at Taiwan’s Port of Taichung on April 18, 2023. The individuals asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the operations. military, laying a web of internet and surveillance cables across the ocean floor, according to the four people with knowledge of the matter: two SubCom employees and two U.S. Publicly, it is one of the world’s biggest developers of undersea fiber-optic cables for telecom firms and tech giants like Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta Platforms.īehind the scenes, SubCom is the exclusive undersea cable contractor to the U.S. Cold War project to spy on Soviet submarines, is living a double life. The CS Dependable is owned by SubCom, a small-town New Jersey cable manufacturer that’s 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 world’s preeminent superpower. military readiness in the Indian Ocean, a region where China has expanded its naval influence over the last decade.

The new super-fast internet link to Diego Garcia, which has not previously been reported, will boost U.S. Over the next month, the ship’s 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. 10 last year, the cable ship CS Dependable appeared off the coast of the island of Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean atoll that’s home to a discreet U.S.

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