In this episode of the National Security Podcast, Samuel Bashfield and Anthony Bergin join William Stoltz to discuss the importance and vulnerabilities of submarine cables.

In the Indo-Pacific, submarine cables carry over 95 per cent of international data traffic, including telephone and data communications. But they are vulnerable to a variety of environmental, accidental and malicious threats.

Samuel Bashfield and Dr Anthony Bergin, join Dr William Stoltz, to analyse the current challenges facing undersea cable infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific, and policy recommendations that could increase their resilience. 

Samuel Bashfield is a PhD candidate and Research Officer at the ANU National Security College. His research engages with Indian Ocean security issues, with a focus on the past, present and future of the Chagos Archipelago (British Indian Ocean Territory).

Dr Anthony Bergin is a Senior Fellow with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. For 20 years Dr Bergin served as an academic at the Australian Defence Force Academy. From 1991-2003 he was the Director of the Australian Defence Studies Centre.

Dr William A. Stoltz is Policy Director at the ANU National Security College. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Menzies Institute at the University of Melbourne, and an Associate Member of the Centre for the Study of Subversion, Unconventional Interventions and Terrorism (SUIT) at the University of Nottingham.

Show notes

Options for safeguarding undersea critical infrastructure: Australia and Indo-Pacific submarine cables, Samuel Bashfield and Anthony Bergin, (2022)

The Deep-Sea Cables, Rudyard Kipling, (1893) 

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