Fibre optic cables – the gathering digital storm – Portugal Resident

The final beneficial owner of the Nuvem fibre optic cable system is Google LLC, but the segment which runs through the Portuguese EEZ is registered in the name of Sailfish Infrastructure Unipessoal Limitada which implies responsibility for the payment of tax in Portugal and the observance of EU regulations.

However, because Nuvem is a private system (i.e. it is not owned, as is usual, by a consortium of companies in the IT industry), Google will act as its own network manager and will determine exclusivity. Undoubtedly, traffic priorities will be given to its own digital products led by Cloud. Excess bandwidth capacity may be leased to third parties of its choosing, but these are unlikely to be the several Chinese corporations which have advanced so quickly in this field and now threaten its hegemony.

In a speech given at the inauguration ceremonies on July 21, American Ambassador John Arrigo predicted investment by U.S. technology to exceed US$40 billion by year 2031. This would make Portugal a major player in the U.S. concentration of AI infrastructure in the EU.

It was the same gentleman who declared only three months ago that the U.S. would consider reducing investment in Portugal if its decrepit naval forces were not rehabilitated so as to guard against sabotage to undersea American property.  

Thus, it is not by mere coincidence that a governmental announcement was made this week that Portugal has contracted to buy from Italy three FREMM EVO multi-purpose frigates at a projected cost of nearly €4 billion with delivery by 2029/30.

The fibre optic network of cables is calculated to carry 95% of worldwide internet traffic, including secret encrypted material. Therefore, it is unsurprising that both nation-states and super-corporations are seeking new strategies for the security of systems against sabotage and surveillance by unfriendly commercial and military entities.

Unfortunately, the sheer length of cables and pipelines and their sometimes difficult passage through inhospitable terrain at great ocean depths makes this an almost impossible task.

The BRICS (founders Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group of nations represents 49% of global population producing 39%GDP. With associates Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, the group is opposed to the U.S. and its allies with whom it is locked in a geopolitical struggle for supremacy in the new commercial and industrial economies of the 21^st century.   

Together, they have interconnectivity through IT and cable which probably exceeds that of the West. To protect this vital system, new defence strategies have been created.

Russia is adapting some of its large fleet of massive nuclear-powered submarines to carry miniature replicas which are capable of diving to the greatest depths. They carry powerful cutting equipment which enables damaged sections and sub-stations to be hoisted to surface vessels for repair. They also possess sonar and wireless equipment which enables the tapping into alien cables and sonar for spotting the mining and other undersea activity which is being started by the USA despite the moratorium of the UN International Seabed Authority.

China and the other member states have also modernized their submarines and surface vessels (including merchant shipping) to support maintenance and inspection of their cables and also to map or tap those of their opponents.

China has made remarkable progress in all aspects of commercial and military activity. On June 22, it announced severe restrictions in its export of rare earths to the USA and included an outright ban on sales to 12 corporations which are heavily engaged in the supply of war material to the Pentagon.   

A few weeks later, China revealed that it had built the LineShine super-computer which has removed the US rival El Capitan from the Nº1 position in the global TOP500 list. It uses domestically produced general purpose CPUs and the LX2 processor which has been co-designed by Huawei. At a stroke, dependence on Nvidia and AMD GPUs has been ended.

To cap this, the Chinese Moonshot start-up has just released its Kimi K3 powerful model, which is a direct challenge to the faltering Gemini of Google, and Alibaba has previewed Qwen3.8, which shows similar capabilities to that of Kimi K3. Both innovations will be entirely free for download and present direct competition to OpenAI.

The EU Commission is well aware of the Chinese challenge to U.S hegemony. It has introduced a range of regulations which insist on safety and security of its 450 million citizens, but these have been largely manipulated or even ignored by cyber-giant corporations which have at their disposal the best teams of lawyers and engineers.     

Some substantial fines have been imposed but without effect on the astonishing growth of data centres and the associated urban construction of factories and dwellings for new communities.

Cyber-security in the coming decade is the most urgently needed element for the maintenance of European digital sovereignty.

For Portugal, there is the challenge, as expressed by the American ambassador, that its economy may be held hostage to the determination of the cyber-giants in the same way as has happened in Ireland.

The EU has failed to produce a cyber industry and must accept relegation to a secondary position in the global hierarchy. For a stable future, it may well now turn to the vastly improved technology of the East to preserve its economic and geopolitical standing in a changed world.