Beneath the oceans, out of sight and mostly out of mind, lies the infrastructure that keeps messages sending, videos streaming and AI tools answering in real time.
Fiber-optic cables carry nearly all the world’s data between continents. When one is damaged — by an anchor, an earthquake or something more deliberate — traffic must keep moving. That resilience is what keeps digital life — and AI — running smoothly.
Among the 17 strategic sectors in the Takaichi Cabinet’s growth strategy, “information and communications” includes measures to strengthen digital infrastructure, notably by promoting geographic diversification of international submarine cable landing points across Japan. Following a series of incidents that resulted in submarine cable damage in the Baltic Sea and near Taiwan, there is growing international recognition that submarine cables are not only foundational infrastructure for the digital economy but also critical assets for national security.
Against that backdrop, Japan launched a “Study Group on the Protection of International Submarine Cables” in November 2025. Ensuring cable security is now widely seen as a national priority, underpinning not only wartime resilience but also the stability of social and economic systems in peacetime.
Historically, the global submarine telegraph network was dominated by the United Kingdom, with cable deployment closely tied to colonial governance and military positioning under strong state leadership. Today’s fiber-optic cable networks, by contrast, have largely been developed through joint investment by private companies across multiple countries.
That balance is shifting. In recent years, hyperscale technology companies such as Google and Meta have increasingly financed, owned and operated submarine cables on their own. These firms have the capital to build infrastructure capable of supporting the massive data flows generated by global cloud services. Coordination between hyperscalers and the U.S. government to expand submarine cable networks has also become more visible.
As markets evolve and state involvement grows, policymakers face a new reality: Whether a country has its own hyperscalers may increasingly shape its strategic options.
In the system supplier market — responsible for designing and building submarine cables — Chinese firms have entered a sector long dominated by companies from Japan, the United States and Europe, steadily increasing their share of contracts. In response, Washington has supported hyperscaler-backed cable projects in cooperation with allies and partners. Since the Biden administration, such initiatives have frequently appeared in joint statements following bilateral summits.
One example is Google’s Pacific Connect initiative, which refers to a series of cable projects across the Pacific since 2023, supported by U.S. financial and diplomatic engagement with landing countries.
At the October 2023 U.S.-Australia summit, leaders highlighted investment in the South Pacific Connect. Similarly, the April 2024 U.S.-Japan summit referenced Google’s roughly $1 billion investment in the...