U.S. lawmakers ask tech giants to respond to subsea cable concerns amid risk from China, Russia

U.S. lawmakers have sent a letter to tech giants Meta (NASDAQ:META), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) questioning them if they have safety checks in place for the subsea cables they use to avoid national security threats coming from China and Russia.

The notice from the U.S. House of Representatives was sent to Silicon Valley bosses Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and AWS CEO Matt Garman on Washington’s growing concerns that the two countries have been deploying tactics to sabotage underwater cables, while China also ramps up its efforts in legitimate subsea cable infrastructure construction.

“We are particularly concerned by the possibility that entities affiliated with the PRC, such as SBSS, Huawei Marine, China Telecom (OTCPK:CHJHF), and China Unicom (OTCPK:CHUFF), have continued to provide maintenance or servicing to cable systems in which your companies maintain direct or indirect operational involvement or ownership,” the letter signed by Republican lawmakers John Moolenaar, Carlos Gimenez, and Keith Self said.

“This dual-pronged strategy, combining grey-zone interference with lawful integration into the subsea cable supply chain, poses a long-term risk to the integrity and resilience of global communications, financial networks, and the operation of cloud-based government and commercial services,” the letter said.

The lawmakers said they wanted to ensure that foreign access to subsea cable infrastructure does not become a backdoor for espionage, disruption, or exploitation of U.S. data and communications assets.

The congressional oversight committee on the matter has asked the companies to get back to their series of questions and information requests by August 4.