NATO-backed Project HEIST to protect subsea internet by diverting it to space

To protect critical underwater infrastructure from potential attacks or natural disasters, NATO is backing a project that aims to reroute internet from subsea cables to satellites in space.

The Alliance wants to safeguard critical underwater infrastructure from sabotage To protect critical underwater infrastructure from potential attacks or natural disasters, NATO is backing a project that aims to reroute internet from subsea cables to satellites in space .

The Alliance will reportedly support the project with a grant of €400mn through its Science for Peace and Security Programme (SPS).

While the initiative hasn’t been publicly announced yet, Eyup Kuntay Turmus — adviser and programme manager of the SPS — confirmed the project’s recent approval and imminent start to Bloomberg.

Invisible but vital, subsea cables enable over 95% of the global internet traffic.

They also transmit about $10tn worth of financial transactions everyday.

These cables face risks from natural phenomena such as erosion and the rising sea level.

Amid an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape, they’re also subject to sabotage.

Fears over deliberate attacks to underwater infrastructure intensified in September 2022, following the (still) unexplained explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, shipping gas from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea.

A year later, NATO expressed concerns over Russia’s potential tampering with undersea cables as a means of retaliation against the West’s support to Ukraine.

In October 2023, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson characterised the damage to a Baltic sea telecoms cable between Sweden and Estonia as “purposeful.” Most recently, a damage to cables in the Red Sea — attributed to the Houthi ship attack — temporarily affected a quarter of all data traffic flow between Europe and Asia.

In response to rising geopolitical threats, NATO has been betting on technologies and initiatives that can safeguard subsea networks.

“The increasing dependency of our societies on undersea infrastructure means we need to do more to enhance their security,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during an Alliance meeting in May.

Now, with its investment in the new project, NATO seeks to explore an additional layer of protection.