Summary
- Sen. Risch (R-ID) advanced five State Department nominees including John Breslow for Cyprus ambassador despite Democratic opposition on most votes.
- Benjamin L. Schmitt (Senior Fellow, University of Pennsylvania) assessed Russia likely sabotaged Nord Stream and Baltic cables and China-linked ships cut Taiwan cables.
- Sen. Risch (R-ID) pressed Schmitt on Finland dropping charges, and Schmitt urged adopting Taiwan's results principle for prosecution outside territorial waters.
- Sen. Risch (R-ID) and Jeanne Shaheen agreed undersea sabotage demands action, though Shaheen condemned administration oil licenses as Russian windfall.
- James C. O'Brien (Distinguished Visiting Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations) urged passing cable security bills and sanctioning Russia's 400-900 vessel shadow fleet.
Morning digest
Get hearings like this in your inbox
Transcript
And uh we've got uh we're waiting for one more to get critical mass so we can uh we can vote on uh a business meeting for uh five nominees. And it will take us just a moment to do that and then we'll proceed to the hearing. Thank thanks so much for your patience. Committee will come to order.
Yep.
Uh, we have, uh, two matters today, one is a business meeting where we are going to consider six nominees. And f- after that we will, uh, go to a hearing which we'll talk about when we get there. Uh S- Senator Shaheen, how do you how do you wanna do this? Can we uh we're gonna have to do them one at a time?
Well, I'm afraid we do, Mister Chairman, because since we don't have everyone here, um and people are all over the map on some of these nominees, I think it's better to do it.
Uh we will do it uh as requested. So we'll start uh and we'll do it as quickly as we can. Uh, Mister uh John Breslow to be of Arizona to be ambassador. Uh two, Cypress, is there a motion we send them to the it's been moved?
So moved.
Is there a second,
Second.
it's been moved and seconded that we send them a floor with a recommendation, he be confirmed, is there debate? There be no debate, uh clerk will call the roll.
Is there reckon
Aye.
and recorded? Today?
Aye.
Saturday?
Aye.
The Brossel meeting?
Aye. Aye.
The Ball um the cruise, the Scott, the Curtis
Aye.
recording?
aye
mr. cheney
aye
mr. coon
no by proxy
mr. barkley
no
mckay
aye by proxy
mr. barkley
no by proxy
mr. booker
no by proxy
the shots
no by proxy
is that hollis
no by proxy
is that work
no by proxy
that's rozen
aye by proxy
mr. chairman
aye clerk report
mr. chairman the names are fourteen for those who have said
okay Motions passed. We'll now consider Mister Fleet White of Virginia to be uh Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs. Is there a motion?
So moved.
Been moved? Second?
Third.
Been moved second, and that we send Mister White to the floor with a recommendation that he be confirmed to the debate. There being none, click or call the roll.
Mister Ricketts,
Aye.
McCormick,
Aye.
and Daines,
Aye.
Mr. Haggard, Mr. Barraza,
Aye.
the lead,
Aye.
for Paul, for Cruz, for Scott, um mr. curtis
aye
mr. cornish
aye
christine
aye
mr. coos
aye by proxy
mr. merkley
no
mr. kane
aye by proxy
mr. merkley
no by proxy
mr. booker
no by proxy
the shots
no by proxy
mr. van home
no by proxy
ms. duffer
no by proxy
miss rosen
aye by proxy
mrs. shandryn
aye clerk report
The chair of the As are sixteen and the No's are sixteen.
Motion is passed. We'll now consider Mr. Todd uh Stagerda of Virginia to be the uh representative of the United States to the office of United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva with rank of ambassador. Is there a motion?
So moved.
And move and seconded that uh he be sent to the floor with a do confirm recommendation is their debate. There being none, clerk could call the roll.
So, recognize
Aye.
the coroner, aye.
Aye. Aye.
super rossi super lee super paul
aye aye aye
super cruise super scott
aye
super purpose
aye
super cornish super cheney
aye
super cruise
aye by proxy
super murphy
no
super k
no by proxy
super berkeley
no by proxy
super booker
no by proxy
super shaw
no by proxy
super net holland
no by proxy
super zuckerberg
no by proxy
super bergen
no by proxy
super chairman
Aye. Clerk report?
Chairman Diaz, we're thirteen and the note is eight.
Motion's passed, uh, Mister Stagerdar will be referred to the floor with the recommendation that he be confirmed. We have Mister, uh, Wells Griffith of Virginia to be, uh, the, uh, Ambassador, uh, Ambassador rank, uh, to the United Nations at the Vienna office. Sir, motion.
So moved.
So, so, so we can
I'm sorry.
both together, so.
Uh, I'm sorry. And to be representative of the United States of America to the International Atomic Energy Agency with the rank of Ambassador. So is there a motion for those both those?
Okay, good. Move for both.
Um, Mr. Chairman.
Is there a second? Is there a just is there a second? Been moved and seconded that we send him to the floor with a do confirm recommendation. Is there debate?
Um, Mr. Chairman, I'm gonna support Mr. Griffith today, but I'm doing that because I think this is a really critical position for the United States and for global security. I think the IAEA is critical to the success or failure of any agreement that's reached on Iran's nuclear activities. But if he's confirmed, I intend to watch his tenure very closely and I expect him to keep an open line to this committee on his work representing the United States.
Um, thank you, Senator, and I I agree. He we need to be kept uh in uh uh in touch on this. Uh I've vir- I've visited the uh AECAEE in uh Vienna and uh I came away with a distinct feeling that we need to look at that very closely and uh I I think uh I'm I'm with you on that, I think we need to re- uh we do need to keep a a handle on this. Uh uh uh having said that, I think Mister Br- Griff brings to the position a wealth of knowledge on the issues. He has the knowledge, he knows how to do the job. We need to oversee that and make sure that it's done right. Thank you for those comments. There further debate. There be no further debate, clerk O'connell.
Mister Ricketts, Mister McCormick, Aye. Aye. Daines, Mr. Haggin,
Aye.
Barroso, Aye. Aye. Mr. Lee, Aye. Aye. Duvall, the crews, the staff, the service, Aye. Gordon, Mr. Healy,
Aye.
Mr. Coons,
No by proxy.
Mr. Merkley, No. Mr. Payne,
No by proxy.
Mr. Merkley,
No by proxy.
Mr. Booker,
No by proxy.
Your shots.
No by proxy.
Mr. Dan Holland.
No by proxy.
Is that for
No by proxy.
Ms. Rosen?
No by proxy.
Mr. Chairman.
Aye. Senator Cruz, do you wish to be recorded as aye on this? Mr. Cruz will be rec- Senator Cruz will be recorded as aye. Click a report.
Mr. Chairman, the days of thirteen, no, they're not.
Uh, motion is passed, uh, Mr. Chris, w- will be referred to the floor as recommended. Uh, the last one we have is, uh, Adam Cassidy of Virginia to be ambassador at large, uh, for cyberspace and digital policy. Is there a motion?
So moved.
Second?
Second.
There's been a motion and a second that Mister Cassidy before referred to the floor with the recommendation that he be confirmed. Is there debate? There be no debate? Clerk will call the roll.
Mister Ricketts, Mister McCormick,
Aye.
Aye.
Shandain, Hattie,
Aye.
Barossa, Lou, Mike, Paul,
Aye.
and the crew,
Aye.
Don,
Aye.
Mr. Curtis,
Aye.
Gordon, Miss Chiminey.
Aye.
The coon.
Aye, by proxy.
The murphy. No. Mister Kane.
Aye, by proxy.
The murphy.
No, by proxy.
The booker.
No, by proxy.
The bookshop.
No, by proxy.
The bookshop.
No, by proxy.
Mr. Buckworth.
Aye, by proxy.
Mr. Burberry.
Aye, by proxy.
Mr. Chairman. Aye.
Aye. Click report.
Mr. Chairman, the meeting is at seventeen and thirty five.
Motion's passed. Mister Castell will be referred to the floor with recommendation he be confirmed That completes our business agenda. Thank you all for getting here as you
Mis- Mister Chairman, before before we end this business meeting, I I just want to register again my concern at the failure of the State Department and this administration to forward career ambassadors to this committee I think we have approved fewer than ten career ambassadors. And we have half of our embassy posts around the world that are unfilled. China has filled has by far a larger footprint in terms of diplomats than the United States does. And yet the State Department and the administration continue to sit on career nominees and not forward them to us. So I hope we will register this committee's concern about that.
Uh, I have done so and uh intend to continue to do so.
Thank you.
I appreciate your thoughts in that regard. Uh so with that uh we will close that part of this meeting and proceed to a hearing uh that we have set today regarding sabotage in the Baltic Sea and the implications for European security and lessons for the Indo-Pacific. So I'm gonna make a few opening remarks, I'm gonna give it to Senator Shaheen to do likewise, uh we'll then hear from uh our witnesses And we'll then open it uh to a uh round of questioning from members of the committee. So as we sit here today, uh thousands of miles of cables and pipelines running under the sea uh under the sea, power the global economy. Sub-sea cables carry more than ninety-five percent of the world's telecommunications traffic and transmit more than ten trillion dollars in financial transactions every day. Let me say that again. Ten trillion dollars in financial transactions. The uh these more than twenty thousand miles of underwater oil and gas pipelines and electric transmission cables are vulnerable to attack by our adversaries. That's become obvious in recent years. Since twenty twenty-two there have been at least eight undersea sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea, and likely they are the responsibility of Russia. Russia has developed high-end undersea warfare warfare capabilities, as well as low-tech op options. that mimic the effects of an anchor dragging on the sea floor to hide its behavior. It maintains a specialized fleet of so-called research vessels, run by a Russian military unit masquerading as a research agency, known by its Russian acronym of GUGI. Uh, just two weeks ago the UK revealed it found Russian military submarines working together to map out sub-sea infrastructure in the North Atlantic, likely to prepare for a future sabotage operation. And in twenty twenty four, a Russian Shadow Fleet tanker attempting to evade oil sanctions was seized by the Finnish Coast Guard, after it cut four sub-sea internet cables and a power cable. In response to these incidents, NATO and the EU have stepped up their efforts, particularly through the NATO shipping center, the Maritime Center for Critical Undersea Infrastructure, and military patrols in the Baltic. But as always, more needs to be done. Russia is not the only bad actor. China's military has conducted research into cable cutting technologies, and Taiwan has reported five incidents of likely sabotage in only the last two years. That's not just bad luck. Like Russia, China has als- also used commercial v- uh vessels to hide its sabotage. Additionally, Chinese companies like HMN Technologies leveraged state subsidies to dominate the subsea cable market, allowing one of our foremost avat- adversaries to operate in such a manner creates significant risks. We can't allow this. To end su- sub- undersea sabotage, we need to call it out when it happens and say publicly who did it, if possible. We also need to concert an international effort to improve the resiliency of undersea infrastructure and prevent or mitigate the impact of these, uh, uh, attacks when they happen. I look forward to hearing more from our witnesses about how we can address the growing threat. of undersea sabotage. Sergei.
Well, thank you, Mister Chairman, and welcome to our witnesses. Thank you both for being here today. Um, last winter, damage to a telecommunications cable between Finland and Estonia was detected, and Finnish authorities looked at maritime traffic in the area and found one ship that stood out was a cargo ship dragging its anchor and it was from Saint Petersburg, Russia. I'm sure that comes as no surprise to either of you. They seized the boat, they gathered evidence, and they opened a criminal investigation. But as we know, it wasn't an isolated incident. As the chairman has said, multiple undersea cables in the Baltic were cut this year, each time involving civilian vessels. This is a strategy that I fear is being carried out by Russia's shadow fleet and by other of our adversaries of the United States, and ext extends beyond the Baltic to undersea cables near the United Kingdom, to oil and gas installations in the North Sea North Sea. Putin is testing a model of conflict, and the question is, are US sanctions keeping pace with how Russia is operating? In my view, they're not keeping pace, and Russia is exploiting the gap. Russia continues to generate billions through its shadow fleet, exploiting gaps between US, European and UK enforcement. And at a moment when pressure should be increasing, the signal from the US has been mixed. Ships keep moving, revenue keeps flowing, and Russia keeps pushing the boundaries. This allows Russia to sustain its war in Ukraine and these kinds of activities in the Bal- Baltic. The infrastructure targeted in the Baltic is not unique to Europe. Similar vulnerabilities exist in the Indo-Pacific, including around Taiwan, as we saw from our visit there, uh, bipartisan delegation, including three members of this committee, visited there in April. So, Mister Chairman, I would like to enter a statement into the record, excuse me, from Subcom, which is a US company that's based in New Hampshire, that builds and maintains undersea cables, as well as a report from the International Connectivity Coalition for the record. Um, if that's okay.
Yes, uh, it it will be admitted into the record. Thank you.
Thank you. Um, As we know, much of the infrastructure for undersea cables is privately owned and is unevenly protected. Repair capacity is limited and it takes time to fix breaks. So, attribution for a tax still takes weeks, and even then, intent is hard to prove. So, we need to recognize that that infrastructure is national security. I'm sure we are going to hear lots of good recommendations from our witnesses this morning about how We can impose costs when attribution is slow and intent is hard to prove, and what we should be doing in terms of ensuring the security of these undersea cables. So again, thank you both for being here. I look forward to your testimony.
Um, thank you so much, uh, Senator Sheen. We now are gonna hear from our witnesses. First we have Doctor Benjamin Schmidt, who is a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds a joint academic appointment with the Department of Physics and Astronomy. and the Kleinman Center of Energy Policy. He also serves as the director of the Perry World House graduate program at Penn. Mister Schmidt recently completed a two-year investigation into suspected sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea and is currently researching sabotage activity near Taiwan. Uh, Doctor Schmidt, the floor is yours.
Well, thank you, Chairman Risch, Ranking Member Shaheen, and distinguished members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Uh, my name is Doctor Benjamin L. Schmidt, previously served as European Energy Security Advisor at the US Department of State, and I'm currently a senior fellow at both the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for European Policy Analysis and I'm honored to speak with you all today. The world is at war. We meet one thousand five hundred and twenty-five days since the Putin regime unleashed its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and now this year, Iranian the Iranian regime has learned from Russia's air war in Ukraine and launched kinetic drone and missile strikes against the energy infrastructure of many of the USA partners and allies across the Middle East. And for the first time in decades, these ground and air wars have spread across the global maritime domain, and all with dire costs. The IRGC has fomented a global energy crisis by recklessly blockading the streets of Hormuz, while its proxies in Yemen threaten to multiply the damage by resuming attacks on the Bab al-Munadab Strait. For its part, the Kremlin continues to work overtime on the high seas, standing up a tanker shadow fleet to evade trans-Atlantic oil sanctions. Besides dodging Western trade restrictions, some of these very tankers may be dual-use platforms for espionage, sabotage and drone launches. Meanwhile, there's another war being waged. A shadow war in Europe against energy and critical infrastructure, undermining the security of neighbor member states, not only on land but offshore, roiling the depths of the Barents and Baltic seas. European partners have confidently attributed to Russia attacks on such onshore facilities as rail and telecoms installations. The Kremlin's strategy includes recruitment of non-Russian nationals including Ukrainians, to damage critical infrastructure to sow panic and undermine support for Ukrainian victory across the West. While attribution for onshore attacks has been common, technical and political challenges have remained for offshore sabotage attribution despite data-driven evidence suggesting the Kremlin's role. Unfortunately, our partners across the Indo-Pacific now face similar seabed subterfuge. There have been several incidents incidents instances of Taiwan's sub-sea cables being severed, suggesting sabotage carried out at the behest of the People's Republic of China. The Senate needs to use today's hearing to catalyze further action that makes it clear both to Moscow and Beijing that their subsea sabotage sprees end here. And while the Senate must drive the policy conversation, I believe academia has a role to play as well. For three years I have led the University of Pennsylvania's underwater mayhem research project, focusing on analyzing how Russia and the PRC now brazenly conduct physical sabotage attacks against seabed, energy and critical infrastructure across the NATO alliance and beyond. Four case case studies from our research include the following. Number one, Svalbard. My travel to the Norwegian island of Svalbard, just four hundred miles from the North Pole, supported our assessment that it is highly probable that in January twenty twenty-two, a Russian fishing trawler was responsible for severing a vital sub-sea fiber optic case with cable transmitting commercial data from the Svalsat ground station to the European mainland. Such commercial data would prove vital in Ukraine's defense just weeks later, leading to our conclusion that this was likely a shaping operation before the full-scale invasion. Number two, Nord Stream. Official attribution of the September twenty twenty-two Nord Stream-one and two sabotage remains absent. And despite continued public debate, our research team assesses as probable that the Russian Federation was involved in this high-profile sabotage incident, and assesses as improbable the media narrative that a so-called launched from a marina next to a Nord Stream logistics hub was to blame. We arrived at this assessment after exhaustive open source AS and satellite data analysis interviews with first responders uh across Europe and experts, and technical counter-analysis of competing theories of the case. I also chartered a vessel from Denmark's island of Bornholm to travel to the blast site itself and gather seabed sonar data in twenty twenty four. Number three, the Baltic Sea. We've heard a little bit about this already. I sailed on vessels offshore. in the Gulf of Finland and the Central Baltic near the sites of several extended anchor drag incidents by Russia and China connected vessels which crippled seabed installations including the twenty twenty-three Baltic connector gas pipeline break the twenty twenty-four Cline-one and BCS telecoms cables cuts, and the twenty twenty-four Sling-two electricity cable cut. The circumstances of these incidents suggest sabotage, not accidents. And fourth and finally, Taiwan. This month I traveled to Taiwan near the site of the twenty of the Trans-Pacific Express telecoms cable which links Taiwan with the United States. I also visited locations close to the sites of the twenty twenty-three and twenty twenty-five cuts of telecoms cables linking Taiwan's Mazu and Pongu islands to the main island of Taiwan. All of these incidents involve PRC- PRC-linked vessels, and thanks to Taiwan's actions, a PRC Chinese captain is now sitting in a jail cell for sabotage. I also conducted research near the center of the Taiwan Strait itself, going in the Strait, donning a wet suit to view sub-sea cables running through a coral reef between the southern Punggol Islands. Senators, it's time to turn the tables on the Putin and Xi regimes and restore deterrence against maritime sabotage. And to this end, I leave you with three very brief recommendations. Number one, the Senate should support the invocation of NATO's Article Four consultative mechanisms by concerned members, uh, member states wherever there is a sabotage incidence attributed to Russia or its agents which is essential to solidify potent- uh, political and operational support to counter the threat. Number two, this committee should revive the statutory sanctions against Nord Stream one and Nord Stream two that were allowed to sunset in twenty twenty four, key steps to ensure that no investor, American or otherwise, can work to resurrect these symbols of Russia's energy weaponization and strategic corruption. And finally, Congress should pass S three two four nine, the comprehensive Strategic Subsea Cables Act of twenty twenty six, and S two two two two, the critical undersea infrastructure resilience act, both that have been prudently passed already by this committee. Through these actions, we can deter further Russian and Chinese sabotage, support our partners and allies worldwide, and make it clear to those that would think otherwise, there can never again be a return to so-called business as usual, with regimes that continue to attack the physical foundations of our economy, prosperity and freedom. Thank you so much, and I look forward to your questions.
Great remarks and recommendations. Uh, we'll uh Now here from Mister O'Brien and um uh let me uh turn to the introduction here. Mister O'Brien is a distinguished visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, where the f- he focuses on efforts to strengthen the trans-Atlantic relationship. Previously uh Mister O'Brien served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in the Biden administration and as head of the Office of Sanctions Coordination. Mister O'Brien, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Mister Chairman, uh, Ranking Member and Senator Ricketts from my home state. Um, your statements made the case. Undersea infrastructure is critical for America's prosperity and security. Russia and China are attacking it. We at least have to plan as though they will attack it in a a time of greater um tension. Now, I can't compete with with Doctor Schmidt's field activities, especially the wetsuit. So I'm gonna focus on the policy implications of of this. Um, what's the first? The first is we can deter now or pay later. It's just a simple timeless lesson. Russia and China are testing. They're testing where they can. They're doing it undersea, they're doing it on the surface, they're doing it on land in a wider sabotage campaign. And if we don't call them out and respond, we are going to face increased pressure. And I note how that cuts against basic ob uh objectives of this administration. Diplomats are now out trying to get European companies, countries, to sign up to long-term American LNG contracts. That has to be delivered through terminals that are large, have a large undersea exposure. Why are they gonna sign up to that if we are not acting robustly to protect the infrastructure? So that's an important point. There's a real risk of escalation with our current posture because all the tinder is laid. You have European countries facing pressures at home to answer Russian threats. You have uh um Russia and China seeking if they can push things further. And I think you need to have a strong US hand to demonstrate that there's no escalation h edge to Russia and China if they continue down this path. So this is the way of getting more peace by by moving now. And that's especially because the group of countries most affected in the Baltic are the fighting flank of NATO. They are gonna be the ones who spend enough, who stand with us, who go with us, who protect the Arctic. If we don't help defend them, Russia and China will believe we will not help defend anyone. It's very simple. Now, what is it we should do? One of them, uh one lesson is that solidarity works. Mister Chairman, you laid out many of the steps that have been taken by NATO um and the European Union and others with really strong bipartisan support from this committee, and members of other committees. It's been a great effort. When I speak to colleagues in the uh Baltic States or across the nine countries that are on those waterways, they say that these NATO missions, air and sea, have made a tremendous difference. The transparency of where the infrastructure is, and how to track the ships is very helpful. The second, the and this carries to the Indo-Pacific, so we had built very strong, across administrations, built very strong ties between European countries and y um the Asian countries, the who are most dependent on under undersea infrastructure. And that has to continue so that the lessons can be learned. Secondly, we need to name and sanction the ships, individuals and institutions responsible. And I strongly support the two bills this committee is putting forward, that include sanctions authority. It helps a great deal to have authority that's tied to disruption of undersea infrastructure. We could use maybe some of the sanctions authorities pertaining to Russia, but there will be those, particularly in this administration, who say that we don't want to name and shame particular Russians. We can do this with a sanctions authority that's targeted to um undersea infrastructure, and I think we can do it in a way that avoids rai- raising gas and oil prices. The third thing is we have to confront the Russian shadow fleet. This is between four and nine hundred vessels. Two hundred of them were designated by January twenty twenty five, none since by the United States. This is the deniable weapon that Russia and China use to attack undersea infrastructure. The the third thing is uh now let me talk about a second lesson. We need stability in our partnerships. I believe the future of the United States, our prosperity depends on innovative sectors like life sciences, technology, um uh energy and defense. Operating in a marketplace of more than a billion rich consumers, they will provide us, these are our traditional partners, and they will provide us with the materials, the supply chains, the markets, and yeah the competitors, but ones who operate under rules that we all share. That's the future for us. It will work only if undersea infrastructure is protected. And the problem we have is that it's like any shopping center. Somebody has to provide basic security, has to make sure it's cleaned up, has to make sure that the place is reasonably attractive. That's always been the United States. Middle powers cannot provide these public goods against predatory superpowers like Russia and China. The US has to organize and sometimes has to be the one to provide them. And you don't do that on a pay-as-you-go basis by saying, s- this country uses this waterway more and this country uses that waterway less, so we pay differently. You have to do that with a certain amount of stability and an understanding that America will benefit with the stability of having a relationship that extends from Australia up across Northeast Asia across North America into Europe that set of friends and partners
Well, uh, thanks, uh, to both of you. Uh, one of the most important things you said is this is bipartisan. We don't hold a lot that are uh hearings that are absolutely,
Mm.
totally, one hundred percent but this is uh certainly uh uh one of them. Uh one of the uh one of the questions I have is I think both you made a reference to the fact that that um countries are te- well the two obvious uh violators are Russia and China that they're still testing why would they be testing? I uh maybe they're testing us but I mean this isn't uh rocket science, you know you don't need engineers and you need a salty old who's a lousy boat driver it seems to me and you can you can uh disrupt these cables and find where they're in relatively shallow water. Why do these continue to happen? I i is it a uh i is it a test of our our uh response? Is that what they're looking for? What why why are they continuing to test? Cuz this this really riles people up. I mean uh it get gets people fired up, there's no question about it. Uh why don't you start uh Doctor Schmidt.
So I would say, you know, you've you've referenced and we've we've heard already the uh incidents that have taken place in the Gulf of Finland. First, I want to make it clear, the Baltic Sea is a center of these sort of uh incidents, in part because it's strategic for the Russian Federation and for NATO, but also because it's a relatively shallow body of water that has a high density of sub-sea infrastructure to begin with. So that's that's why I think statistically we're seeing more in the Baltic Sea than other other locations. But one of the things I want to say is that in in twenty twenty four, on Christmas Day, the Eagle S, a Russian Shadow Fleet vessel, dragged its anchor through uh both telecoms, cables, and the S-link-two electricity interconnector, connecting Finland and Estonia. Um and and when it broke those, the Finnish authorities came out in helicopters and their special uh police forces descended dramatically on the deck and seized the vessel and brought it into port. Part of the reason I believe that the this this uh specific infrastructure was targeted was because the Baltic States were trying to re-synchronize or synchronize with uh the uh the EU grid, their electricity infrastructure, and finally get off the yoke, you know, throw off the yoke of the Russian and Belarusian electricity grid. And so by severing that electricity interconnector, it increased the risk of that operation just planned for about four or five weeks later. But the other thing is the response. And and that's uh to your point, Senator Risch, I think the biggest thing here. The Finns put the uh put the captain on trial, put part of the crew on trial, and and at the end of the day, They let them go because they said they didn't have the jurisdiction because they were in the exclusive economic zone and not the territorial waters of Finland. So that's a problem, but we saw a solution in Taiwan. I visited the prosecutor in Tainan, Taiwan just two weeks ago and had a long interview with him who put this PRC captain of the Hong-Tai-fifty-eight in jail after sabotaging the Pongu island cable cut. And the reason for that was something called the results principle, basically saying that no matter where these cables go, outside of the territorial waters, exclusive to the economic zone or beyond, that the Taiwanese government can prosecute and put away these folks for doing this, because it has impact on their society. And that's a lesson I think, uh, Finland can take from here and you can.
Yeah, you know, um, you you brought up something that's, uh, uh, been really important to me and that is I was really disappointed when I heard what happened, uh, in Finland. And, um, i- d- you know, this jurisdictional question is just nonsense. I mean, we we prosecute people all the time. who send drugs into the United States but have never set foot in the United States. Uh, a good example of that's a guy sitting in jail right now in uh in New York.
Yeah.
Um, so the the I don't know what Finland has to do to change its laws to uh to uh grab jurisdiction but the like you say, the causation factor seems to me to be very easy. I I hope they'll do it, I hope everybody'll do it. Uh, so uh I appreciate you, I appreciate you underscoring that and it was, like I said, it was incredibly disappointing. How many other countries do you think are in that same boat? I mean, I can't imagine we would uh, we'd have that problem if uh, if somebody did that to us, we'd reach easily under the causation uh, uh, doctrine.
Yeah, I, I mean, I, I think that this is a, a great point. You mentioned Maduro, right? Being in jail in New York. Obviously, that's uh, a precedent that the Taiwanese pointed out to me, like if there was a uh, a scam artist in Cambodia that was preying on citizens in Taiwan, they would indict that person. They might not be able to extradite him, but they could at least indict him. And so we certainly do the same thing against corrupt actors around the world, and sanctions on Russian uh uh oligarchs and all these sort of things. Um,
And let me, let me interrupt you for a second.
yeah.
I- extradition's an entirely different issue than jurisdiction. I mean, extradition is simply a way of putting the habeas gravis on the guy and getting, getting a hold of him. Uh, the jurisdiction is a legal uh principle that's entirely different than that. And uh, again, I, I think the causation issue's been resolved uh, decades ago if not, uh, centuries ago, so go ahead and finish up.
I just wanna, I wanna say the, um, the problem that you mentioned for Finland, so the first thing I had, my reaction in November last year when that was dismissed because of jurisdiction, I said this is going to happen again and sure enough on New Year's Eve, just six weeks later last year, the Fitberg, another Russia-connected vessel, did another sabotage run through that same water, so we're gonna have to find out what the Finns do this time to get that right.
Clearly.
Just that,
Mister R go ahead, if you wanna comment on it.
Mister Chairman, if I may, it it would help to have some US assertion of jurisdiction. If we were using our sanctions authority, then you would be able to maybe apply some material support, um criminal investigative capacity to this, and not get into arguments with I used to be a Law of the Sea lawyer briefly at the State Department and it gave me a headache. And uh but I think you could avoid this not by just calling out others but by asserting US jurisdiction.
Uh, we have something in common, the Lost City Treaty has given me many, many, many headaches. Uh, Senator Shahin.
Um, well, yeah, I was just gonna try and follow up on that a little bit, because if Taiwan was able to do that, and was it under existing law that Taiwan has, and why do we think I guess this is for both of you, why do we think that that would be an issue in Europe.
We're gonna shorten it here.
Um.
So, yeah, uh, yes, uh, Senator Shahin, it was article four, I understand, article four of the, uh, Taiwanese criminal code that says that they basically wherever these crimes happen, if they impact, uh, Taiwanese citizens or the government, they have jurisdiction.
And do either of you have any insights into why this would not a- apply to Finland or to other European
I I think I'd be happy to do a little research and find it.
Countries?
The the key is we're seeing this now in the Straits of Hormuz. You know, there are a lot of these waterways that were sources of warfare for a long time. So the European states had reached agreement to say, say the Straits off Copenhagen, um the international waterways through these narrow areas like the Baltic Sea, nobody's gonna put their hands on them. And And that sort of hands-off thing has been a basis of peace in the region, but it's fraying and they need to take a look at it. But the exact sort of rule that they should adopt, I don't have a quick recommendation.
Um, so you were talking about sanctions and the the idea that we should be thinking about sanctioning more vessels, which I totally agree with. Senator Rish and I have a shuttle fleet bill that would sanction a number of would virtually sanction the Sa- shadow fleet wherever it exists. But um can you can you talk about one of one of the things that I'm concerned about right now is the decision by this administration to lift the sanctions on Russia's um shadow fleet, basically, um so that they can continue to um gain revenue from oil. in the war in Iran. So can you talk about what that means, may mean for Russia and their ability to continue to operate, um both in Ukraine and with respect to other nefarious activities that they're engaged in?
Yeah, it's a windfall for Russia in a couple of, and then I'll talk about the rationale for what the administration did. I- it is a windfall, just factually. Um Russia's making in the first few weeks it was making a hundred and fifty million dollars a day in tax revenue off the the extra sales um off the general license. Oil prices have gone up since then. We've extended the general license so more ships have loaded and are heading to sea. Um so they'll be selling at whatever the price is when they land. So it's going to produce, I don't know, you know, multiple billions of dollars by the time we work our way through this. assuming that the Iran conflict ends soon. Um, Russia spends between a hundred and fifty and two hundred billion a year on the war in Ukraine. And if they make, say, forty billion, fifty billion as a result of this, that goes right to the bottom line. It's not a good thing. There's a long-term benefit to Russia. They've had some difficulty locking in long-term supply arrangements with China 'cause the Chinese don't really want to be tied down. But now with difficulties in the Straits uh of Hormuz, um and the the difficulties elsewhere, there's a possibility that Russia and China will tie up with a great d- uh infrastructure including a gas pipeline and an oil pipeline. That will mean US sanctions will be even less effective next time we wanna use them. So both of those things are a real cost. Now the administration was doing it to alleviate the concerns of specific partners about a rapid increase in oil prices. Um I think the cost-benefit analysis is difficult to make, For the oil that was already at sea at the time the straits were closed, I think you could see something. But then allowing the ships to reload and emerge again is a real problem. And this gets to the nature of the Shadow Fleet. It is outside our normal tools for stopping shipping. Because of the initial sanctions and the six hundred ships that the EU and UK have designated, more than half of the Sh- Russian Shadow Fleet really wasn't operating. But now with a general license from the United States, more of those ships can set, so the numbers I gave earlier are going to to underestimate the benefit that they're gonna get. There were ways to provide relief to the global oil market that wouldn't have involved just allowing Russia to load up and sell. And and I think there's a a real cost that ought to be examined.
Well, I couldn't agree more. And I think that cost also, um, goes to benefit Iran. Because if we look at the the drones that Iran is using in this war, and the number of those drones that they're still getting from Russia, and Russia's ability to produce those drones, um they're getting a huge benefit that we're basically providing to a country that's targeting not just our service members in the Middle East with, um, intelligence information, but our allies in the Middle East. I mean, it makes absolutely no sense. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Senator Shaheen. Senator Ricketts.
All right, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Doctor Schmidt, you've been tracking the uh disturbing pattern in the Baltic. Um, Russian research vessels and tankers coincidentally stop over uh critical infrastructure right as it fails. The Indo-Pacific is a, has this problem only it's magnified. Uh, you're what, not just seeing the actions of few rogue ships, but you've got the Chinese maritime militia, which has a fleet of thousands of civilian fishing vessels, which are just CCP proxies. Uh, these dual-use vessels provide Beijing with, um, a perfect screen for their ICAT activities, illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive operations that, uh, target these sub-sea cables and threaten the digital lifeblood of the regional countries like Taiwan, which we've already talked about, but also Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore. Uh, and you also talked about the core problem being attribution. uh, " when a fishing boat snags a cable, Beijing calls it an accent." What, given the difficulty in attribution, how can the US and our partners move from this posture of, you know, reactive concern to one of rapid attribution?
Well, that's a, uh, a big focus of our underwater mayhem project, Senator Ricketts, and and I'll just say, uh, give a few examples maybe of of a couple of the case studies that we've done. Number one, you mentioned, uh, fishing vessels that just kind of snag a a cable. Uh, the ca- the cable in the case of the Svalbard cable cut was the Russian fishing uh vessel the Melkart-five. And we saw on AIS that it traced its its line and and basically dragged its fishing equipment, a hundred and twenty-six some odd times, maybe a few more, a few less, but a hundred and twenty-six some odd times were one of the two cables. Other is other unless there's incredibly good fishing in that very specific spot in the middle of the Barents Sea, that's a sabotage operation. In terms of Nord Stream, we know that there were Russian seabed warfare vessels over the Nord Stream one blast site three days before the blast three months before the blast. And in addition to that, the Nord Stream two blast site south of Bornholm had Russian construction vessels where they were Russian vessels sitting directly at the eventual blast site for almost you know, eighteen months ahead of that. You also had situation in which uh one of the so-called pro-Ukrainian sailboat uh operatives uh the uh the person that actually helped rent this so-called sailboat um was uh a a person that had a passport uh that showed that they lived in kirch and that they were uh posting live uh tweets and uh and social media uh messages from the russian federation after the incident took place and what's more, this sailboat went from a marina that was physically adjacent to a nordstrom two logistics center. All of these together again need to be taken into account and use a data driven approach to looking at each of these c- these cases that's why we thought most probable in our uh in our uh study that the uh Russians were behind the Nord Stream case. The last thing I'll say is on all of these incidents, whether it be in Taiwan or in Russia, these two countries may or may not be officially cooperating in this case, but they definitely are learning from each other. And there's a few cases, including the Baltic connector pipeline uh that was broken in twenty twenty three, in which a Chinese uh flagged cargo ship, the Nunu polar bear, was being escorted a few meters away by the um russian nuclear class icebreaker sevmerput we've also seen these same vessels show up inside of the antarctic treaty system as russia breaks that treaty looking for oil and gas and they're stopping above cables as they go up and down so this is a global phenomenon both for china and for russia and we need to do more to be basically have a little more political courage to call out and call a spade a spade as quickly as possible
so there are there are technical or regulatory things we need to change or is it more just a matter of us trying to determine the attribution quickly and then just calling them out.
I think the biggest thing that we can do is increase our level of satellite geospatial imagery from commercial actors, because the time that it takes to declassify military and intelligent satellite data is simply too long. And even though, even though we eventually may get there, um, uh, if you have commercial data, that can be declassified. I mean, it's never classified, so it's ready to go right away, um, and investigators can can use this. I saw a case in which the OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department, was able to uh basically quickly sanction Russian uh vessels that offtook LNG from uh a uh a facility near Murmansk that was under sanctions, because that was out in the press, because there was commercial satellite data. So supporting these and supporting the sort of regulatory uh oversight and um and and NATO operations that it needs to take in in Europe's case, to uh to get attribution.
So would you say that Russia and China are relatively less dependent on undersea cables than our allies in the United States? Is this is this some is it an asymmetric advantage they have?
Uh, no, there is no asymmetric advantage that I'm aware of. Ninety-nine percent of the global internet runs through those cables, and it impacts Russia and China just as it does with us.
So i- so if somebody was cutting the cables to Russia and China, that would also potentially impact them as well.
Absolutely.
Yeah. So, okay. Well, hey, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I time is
Uh, thank you. Let me, let's go back for a minute to that uh jurisdictional It seems to me uh my my impression is we don't have a statute that is directly in point as far as a causation statute that gives us jurisdiction. Am I right on that? Uh I I suppose that, you know, uh some US attorney would have to stick his nose in the books and maybe find some way to do that it would be easier if we had a direct statute that uh prohibited this kind of conduct Uh, because again, you get in front of a judge and they get uh uh goosey too on stuff that isn't direct. Uh, do you have a, do you have a
I I I don't know about a direct criminal statute. I do know that if we use a sanctions authority, that then that does provide for criminal investigation subsequent to that. And and that's why I think both using the authorities we currently have, which tend to be Russia-based, as they apply here, but the new authorities you're proposing would help address some of this gap.
I um, I I guess uh Criminal investigation's a long ways away from a criminal prosecution, and uh it seems to me we probably need a direct statute here, that uh that that would make it a lot easier for uh um i- i- it it nothing else, it would allow an indictment even if you couldn't get your hands on the person, and uh and underscore it that uh there wa- this was going on.
If if I may, just as a policy maker, what I would hate to see is um these cases disappearing into a legal process that takes years and years.
And I and I agr- and I And I agree with that. I agree a hundred percent, uh, that, um, uh, disappearing is a problem, but as long as that warrant is standing out there, it ain't gonna disappear. Um.
I just wanna, wanna point out that I, I totally agree on the sanctions point. Um, the UN law of the sea can only go so far. So we saw in the case of, uh, a Russian Shadow Fleet vessel, the Kivala, it was in, uh, interdicted and brought into Muga Bay, Estonia. I actually went and saw this vessel as it was being interdicted last, uh, I believe it was April in, um, in twenty twenty five. They couldn't keep that vessel there even though it was under EU sanctions because of the authorities that they had. And guess what? Just six months later or so in September, that same vessel who had been re-flagged and renamed the Boracay or the Pushpa or a number of these other names, was the one that was uh suspected of launching drones, military drones, from the Russian Federation that uh as it was passing Denmark, shut down the Copenhagen airport. And I flew from the Warsaw security forum directly to Copenhagen to work with investigative journalists to look at the satellite data and we found that vessel, right? And so, uh, ultimately the the French, uh, Navy was able to in- uh, interdict that vessel. And during the, uh, the proceedings that have taken place legally, they have admitted that there are Russian security personnel, unaccountable to the captain or the crew that are on those vessels. And so that is something we need to really, really be concerned about.
Thank you.
Sergei.
Well, so that's That's a really frightening point. Um and um as you, as we think about how do how do we do that, obviously sanctions are one option that we have, but what else should we be thinking about? I I was in Copenhagen and I met with the person in their government who is working on this issue they're head of the infrastructure. And one of the things that she said to me, I was asking her about this whole issue of you know, how are you all dealing with this because this is more of an issue for you than it is for us. And she said, well, the EU is working on the idea of um having ships that can do the repairs in a timely manner, because the options, as I understand, are Kodal that went to the Indo-Pacific met with a Japanese company that does sub-C cables, and we were talking to them about you know, how do you deal with cable breaks? And they said, well, we track those, but we don't repair them. Um, that has to be done by whoever owns the cables. And in order to do that, and they said, you know, there are basically two options. One is you need a bunch of ships that can do the repairs, and you need to have duplicate cables so that if one goes out, you've got another one that can replace it. But it seems to me, based on your testimony and sort of the conversations that I've had, that that's not the answer to the problem. The answer to the problem is to figure out how we can um put in place ways to go after the vessels and the countries that are doing um the trying to disrupt these sub-C cables. And Now, clearly to date, the U. S. government has not been willing to sanction the vessels that we seem to to be aware of, and in fact, as we discussed earlier, um, Mr. O'Brien, we're actually giving a windfall to Russia so they can do more of this in the future. So what what should we be thinking about if if we're really gonna address this? Doctor Schmidt, is the data that you have made public?
Uh, yes, Senator, it is. It's, we have a first volume in Underwater Mayhem, volume one, that's already out. We'll have in the next few months, and it's like, don't ask when a PHD dissertation is gonna be submitted, but we'll say in a few months volume two is coming out as well. Uh, there's two points I wanna make, uh, uh, Senator. First of all, in the case of repair vessels, there has to be more redundancy. There has to be more, uh, put on the water. Two years ago when I was in Taipei, the uh the inter interlocutors that I talked to asked me specifically, um, should we have a domestic repair capability in Taiwan, and I said yes. Two years later, just a few weeks ago, they asked me the same question, I said absolutely yes. The Matsu island cables that were cut, these islands of Taiwan that are near the PRC coastline, those had a Tineret outage of weeks and weeks, which could have been much shorter if they weren't waiting for consortia vessels to come in.
Right.
And I told them in a case of an quarantine or an invasion of Taiwan, it's going to be very difficult, we saw this in the Straits of Hormuz situation, uh with commercial vessels. They won't take that risk, maybe governments will, but they will not take that risk in a time of war. So that's number one. We need obviously as you said consistent sanctions policy, having sanctions, your shadow uh shadow fleet Bill, if you and Mister uh uh and um Senator Risch, we had uh Senator Whitehouse at the University of Pennsylvania a few weeks ago that I hosted talking about this, those are essential, that will deprive the Putin regime of these oil windfalls. Uh, and we need consistent sanctions policy, whether it be no waivers in the previous administration for Nord Stream two, and no waivers for Russian oil today. It's gotta be consistent to keep the Putin regime in check.
I agree, and um, I'm sure,
Please.
Mister O'Brien, you're gonna add to this, but it not only would it have an impact on Putin, but it would have an impact on Xi in China and what they're doing, because obviously they are benefiting from the oil that's being delivered by the shadow fleet below market prices. Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, I think two things. One is the information that's available now, I think, increases the responsibility of US policymakers. I if I'd had access to the kind of information Doctor Schmidt's providing, we we would have designated everybody he just listed in this Fall Bart incident. And so that and the fact that it's public makes it easier to bring other countries on board. And that's the main point. We need the US to organize a very active coalition. So I've focused on sanctions. But I think it also means some physical presence, you know, at sea. Um, the Copen the Straits of Copenhagen are a particular uh point of concern. Um, and there are examples of the US doing this based on the kind of authorities we already have. As long ago as the W Bush administration, they organized a really effective voluntary coalition to to address North Korea's activities. And I think that kind of thing's available in this area, if we put our effort.
Um, well, I couldn't agree more. And thank you both. I'm I am actually headed down to an armed services hearing where I will raise the same question. So thank you both.
Thank you, Senator Sheen. Senator Brasso.
Uh, thanks so much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks very much for your attention in this very critical matter. We're seeing undersea infrastructure has uh is central to the functioning of our economies our militaries our alliances all around the world. And uh, I mean, there's a there's a very interesting book called The The Web Beneath the Waves that outlines all the damages that's been been done and you You look at some of the the undersea cables, uh, in terms of where they are, we intentionally wanted to map them when they were laid, so there wouldn't be accidental injury to that met into that method. So people know where they are, but it does seem that there's ongoing sabotage and, you know, you t- you discussed the situation of where, you know, cables are cut and w- I wanna know what, if there are backups that exist within, uh, the networks to ensure communications can continue if, uh, if cable is cut.
Senator Brasso, thank you. That's an incredibly important point. I'll just say, number one, just to to remind everyone, since this is for the record, there is no satellite-based uh panacea for all of the global internet that is going uh beneath the sea I think everyone hears of Starlink and says, oh, if the cable's cut, well I'll just use that. Well, in the ca- case of Taiwan, they've built seven hundred some odd satellite uplink stations as backups, but that's not for the all of society, that's for their government emergency use. They have uh uh uh uh microwave uh links from their outlying islands of Pangu and Matsu, to the the the main island of Taiwan. So that's important. I think, Senator Brasso, what you p raised is, yes, there are there are um uh maps, that's on purpose, so you'd so these actors don't cut it. We need to make sure that some of these c- uh cables in the future are buried, deliberately buried below the seabed, to make sure the anchor drags can't uh, you know, can be mitigated to some extent. So um these are the sort of technical measures and uh and monitoring. Of course we need sub-sea drones and underwater uh unmanned vehicles as well.
Yeah, well what which leads to the the the next question is you what's accidental and and what's not and I don't know you have an assessment yet of how much of these so-called accidental patterns is truly accidental and what's a deliberate gray you know gray zone testing
so I will give you a a preview of Underwater Mayhem volume two which is coming soon but just to uh let you know we will uh uh look and have talk to ship captains technical experts subsea divers all sorts of the technical people that actually work in this industry not just think tank experts uh you know and what we've found is that there is uh no no chance in a lot of these cases that these are just, quote unquote, just accidents. Dragging an anchor for one nautical mile because you've lost steerage, that's possible. Dragging it at full speed through the Gulf of Finland for two hundred nautical miles severing cables and pipelines along the way, that is not normal action and that is uh is not what we should be uh accepting. I will say one last thing. We b are conflating the issue of the shadow fleet with some of these vessels and people are saying, oh well the Shadow Fleet is really in low repair, you know, low rate of repair, they have bad captains. Of course they're accidentally cutting these. The truth is only one or two have been cut by Shadow Fleet vessels. Most of these are are vessels that are in good repair.
So when I think of our two newest uh NATO allies, Sweden and Finland, what's happening i in that area, there've been discussions about NATO members and possibly coming together and invoking Article Four to force a formal consultation on these emerging shadow of war, if you will. You know, how much of the this is. What are your thoughts on this in terms of the Article-four?
So I have I have uh briefed uh the North Atlantic Council's energy security version. I do this once a year. And I called on member states to invoke Article-four. My understanding is that one or two member states have pushed back on this. Look, Senator, we have seen Article-four used this year when uh uh drones flew from the Russian Federation into Polish, We've seen it in Estonia last year, when uh when Russian fighter jets went into their airspace. Why haven't we seen it for sub-sea cables? And I think part of the reason is this is something that some uh political actors in Europe and possibly in the United States don't wanna, quote unquote, escalate. And so we need to say, look, we need to raise this to the political level because what that does, it also unlocks uh operational support to build out things like Operation Baltic Century which has I think been quite successful. to deter some of these actions.
You know, a couple of years ago, the United States established a cable security fleet that subsidized some commercial cable repair ships to help address the risk. In your opinion, are the current capabilities for repair sufficient for the level of sabotage that we're seeing?
No, absolutely not. We have uh very limited uh capabilities in the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan does not have a domestic capability. They have a domestic deployment capability, but not repair capability. And in a time of war, that is insufficient. Um, and we also see that there are consortia of cable repair vessels in Europe, but not enough. You, so you need more redundancy of the cables, more redundancy of the repair capabilities, and that can start to make bad actors think, well, maybe it's not so, so useful to do this because, guess what, uh, we're not going to get away with it.
Yeah, are there important steps we ought to be taking now to reduce the leverage that Russia is gaining from these attacks?
Yeah, I think that we need to be absolutely increasing sanctions, especially through the shadow fleet bill that is uh has come up uh through this committee, and and make sure that we're holding the Putin regime to account for these sort of of activities. And also name and shame. I know that's not the biggest and flashiest thing, but that's important, right? Sanctioning all of the shadow fleet vessels. I know that the uh sub-seag uh uh act that has b- uh been passed out of this committee also says that the US intelligence community and the State Department need to send a list publicly and list out all of the googie vessels this sub-seam mission director
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you. Senator Curtis.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, thank you, witnesses. Uh, thank you, witnesses. Uh, Uh, this committee recently passed a bill that I have with Senator Rosen this committee recently passed a bill that I have with Senator Rosen the critical undersea infrastructure resiliency act and the bill contains an initiative to harden and monitor taiwan's undersea cables and proposes new sanctions um i'm gonna jump into a few questions but i wanna uh pick up where my colleague left off i was in taiwan with a ranking member just a couple of weeks ago we visited uh one of the factories that actually produces the cable we were all very curious about what they were doing uh to prevent breaks um whether it's uh undersea monitoring or cameras and what we found is zero motivation because they produce cables. Uh their answer was just lay more cables. And uh I I'm curious what your experience is. Do we have a do we have a motivation problem here and and and it just feels like there was very little effort to to put in the equipment that could monitor um and and see a problem coming before it got there. What what's your experience?
Well look, for I I actually visited the uh Falsenliwa factory in uh Gaosheng. I didn't go in because it's the back half of the building still under construction. But that's for electricity cables, right? So this is an energy security question for Taiwan as well, as these cables connect to their offshore wind and can interconnect to uh their outlying islands. Um, one of the things that is, this is more from a a physics standpoint, if you put a fiber optic cable on the seabed, you can start to monitor the um the the the i the vibro-acoustic environment, the vibrations of of sub-sea vessels, seabed uh, or sorry, uh uh sea surface vessels and things like this around it. And so this is actually what happened in the case of the Chunghwa Telecoms line when last year the Hong-Tai-fifty-eight, uh this this vessel from uh from from China uh cut the cable. The Taiwanese Coast Guard was alerted by Chunghwa Telecom right before that cable cut took place cuz they knew this vessel was sitting there. And then they acted just a few hours later when they got their kind of armada together, to seize this vessel and what they found, this was an empty Chinese vessel that was a bulk carrier that had no bulk on it.
Mm-hmm.
Its its cargo doors were actually uh uh s- rusted shut so that it couldn't be used for that. So it was only used as a sabotage vessel and the prosecutor that I talked to likened it to a quote " pawn sacrifice" from the PRC in other words, Chi sending out a vessel that he doesn't care if he loses.
Fine, yeah.
I wanted to see that vessel but it's already been deconstructed and scrapped. So I asked for a piece of it and I don't know where they're, if I'm gonna ever find one.
That'd be a good paperweight. It it, now I'm I I know I'm late to this hearing, have you already, if you've already discussed this, uh please indulge me, but give me a sense of if if there's major disruption to Taiwan uh with multiple cables the the impact militarily and economically that that's potentially, uh uh could happen.
So there is often a discussion of, okay, Taiwan does have redundancy, it has something like fourteen cables connecting out to uh the global internet, there's also cables to the Pangu Islands, uh, oth- others like this. Um, I've often been asked, you know, well, we have this redundancy, so, uh, China couldn't possibly cut all fourteen cables. I said, you got another thing coming because guess what, if they can cut one or two cables by dragging an anchor pretty easily in a, in a fallout military assault or invasion or even a, uh, a blockade or a quarantine, those can be cut pretty quickly. What that will have is a immediate impact on the global economy, it's kind of like the streets before Mu's closure by the IRGC for the internet.
The technology.
And it means that all of our our our economic trade with Taiwan, which is significant, will be cut off, not just for us but for our partners and allies. And and I'll I'll tell you, it will make military coordination uh more difficult. It won't stop it because there is satellite backup, but it is something that we really need to think of. And I I've talked with uh folks in Taiwan uh that are in the military. I think that it needs to be part of the military's doctrine in Taiwan, that cable repair rapid cable repair under under fire is important as well to uh deter this.
Yeah, so another question, we've learned a lot uh from Taiwan, what's happening in there, what lessons can be applied to the Baltic and what what should we be doing in the Baltic that we've learned from from the Indo-Pacific?
Sure, yeah, um I think that one of the biggest things is again repair capabilities. We need we need more repair capabilities in Europe. We need uh a legal system uh that allows for attribution and jurisdictional uh uh questions, we've mentioned already in this hearing. Um and um and again, just like in Taiwan uh where they're they're aware of this, we need European democracies to be ready to act and and have that capability through NATO to do so.
Yeah, Mr. O'Brien.
I'd just add um Senator, and thank you for your bill. The motivation problem I think is with the US government. All of the undersea infrastructure separate companies, others, they're all doing their work. It's unrealistic to expect them to monitor the activities of a predatory superpower. Same thing with middle powers, they don't have the ability to stand up. So this is for the US government to say the future of our economy depends on this infrastructure. We have to make sure that we have enough of it, and that we can repair it, but that we can protect it. And that involves both a m more robust sanctions program, I think more physical presence, and coordinating with others who are affected so that they're able to operate effectively.
Yeah.
It it feels to me like um the technology is not that difficult, it's the will, right, uh to put it in and and then along these lines and then oh let me defer to you but um you mentioned the one incident in Taiwan where they were able to find the actor. How prepared are we to find the bad actors, just generally speaking?
I mean, we're prepared. I think the US uh um, you know, uh geospatial intelligence uh is is strong, I think we need more commercial data to make sure that satellite data can be released quickly so that that this these sort of uh uh indictments can happen, happen rapidly. But the other thing I wanna point out, and we're gonna go I'm gonna bring it back to the Nord Stream case really briefly and say we need to listen not only to policy makers, no offense, but technical experts like those that work in the industry, people that build the tables,
I'm so offended.
people that people that are captains of these ships, people that actually dive to the bottom of this, We we talked with many of these experts and they said that the idea that using a a rental sailboat to blow up Nord Stream um is not l- technically impossible, but it that it would never be used in this way. And they they said that, you know, it's a it's it's a insufficient platform, it would have a large radar profile to begin with because of the sail, obviously. Um and um and that you would use a drone, a cheap drone, and and I'll tell you what, there's a lot of media that have gone out there and and put a drone on the seabed and looked at the damage site and they've proven you can put a a drone down there, you can put one down there with a camera, you can put it down there with explosives. I went out and actually got seabed sonar data at the Nord Stream two blast site, and you can just go out there. So again, listening to the experts in a way that is integrated not only into our policy, but our media and discussions of these, because it takes so long for attribution that disinformation can can be sowed. And obviously in the case of uh of Nord Stream, Russia pointed the finger at the UK, Poland, the United States of course. Uh, and and um and all these different directions to sow uh, sow chaos right after this this happened. Again, a disinformation campaign that seems kind of precooked to me.
Yeah.
I'd just add, we know much more today than even two and three years ago. The NATO efforts, the EU efforts provide information very quickly. And having the access to the work that the the perf- Doctor Schmidt and others are doing, in the public sphere, it increases the responsibility of policymakers to act quickly, 'cause we can no longer say we don't know or we can't share.
Yeah, thank you both, Mister Chairman.
Th-
I yield.
Thank you, Senator Kurz. Thank you gentlemen for being here, uh incredibly interesting and uh and important, uh and has really spurred some ideas I think uh amongst the committee here, which Jeanne and I are already talking about. So uh with that uh I will leave the uh record open uh until close of business tomorrow for further submissions again. Thank you so much for being here. With that, the committee is adjourned.
Morning digest
Start every morning briefed on yesterday’s hearings
A free weekday email covering yesterday’s hearings and transcripts newly unlocked in the archive.
