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Undersea War: The Battle to Control the Cables and Pipelines That Connect Our World

by Elisabeth Braw

The infrastructure beneath global connection

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Awards & Recognition

  • Critical praise

    Praise from the Financial Times

    Attributed praise for the book: “Excellent... Braw's writing sparkles.”

AlbakiReads Editorial

The infrastructure beneath global connection

Undersea cables carry data across oceans, while pipelines transport oil and gas—an unseen infrastructure on which everyday communication and economic activity depend. Elisabeth Braw examines how damage to links in the Baltic Sea and near Taiwan’s Matsu Islands has brought their vulnerability into view. The book combines the history of these networks with strategic analysis of efforts to protect them, framing the seabed as an emerging arena of geopolitical competition. Its subject connects physical infrastructure to questions of security and global power, making the ocean floor more than a remote setting: it is part of the system that keeps the modern world connected.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in geopolitics and international security.
  • Readers seeking nonfiction about undersea cables, pipelines, and critical infrastructure.
  • Readers interested in the strategic significance of incidents in the Baltic Sea and near Taiwan’s Matsu Islands.

Themes

Undersea infrastructureGeopolitical competitionSecurity and sabotageGlobal connectivity

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

How sabotage and disorder threaten the fragile network of undersea cables and pipelines that makes modern life possible--and how it may already be drawing the world into an all-out underwater war.

"Excellent... Braw's writing sparkles." --Financial Times

The world depends on a tangle of underwater tubes on the ocean floor. Every day undersea cables transmit nearly all the world's data, while intercontinental pipelines convey two-thirds of the world's oil and gas. They do their jobs so reliably that few would guess that "the cloud" is actually underwater, or that global economic stability relies on pipelines on the seafloor. But as award-winning security expert Elisabeth Braw reveals, an invisible battle over those cables and pipelines is ramping up.

Undersea War tells the story of the underwater infrastructure that supports everyday life. In 2022, after decades of seeming undersea harmony, two pipelines in the Baltic Sea mysteriously exploded. Within months, the cutting of the data links between Taiwan's Matsu Islands' and the world along with the the subsequent destruction of additional Baltic cables and a pipeline signaled that the harmony in the ocean depths was over. Superpowers are now racing to protect themselves as the seabed itself becomes a battlefield.

Blending engrossing historical narrative with acute strategic analysis, Undersea War shows that the next battle for global supremacy may unfold on the ocean floor.
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