UK looking to revamp defense laws as undersea cable sabotage and cyber attacks create ‘gray zone threats’

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On July 8, 2025

As technology moves forward there will always be laws, frantically running behind them desperate to keep up. The problem is technology moves fast. Really fast. Especially compared to lawmakers. It’s why we see countless of uncertain law cases around fields in tech especially when it comes to things like the internet and AI. It’s also why the UK is needing to rethink its laws around sabotage when it comes to the undersea cables that connect most of this tech.

According to The Register, the UK government is concerned over the current legislations when it comes to things like cybercrime and attacks on the underwater cable by other powers. It went so far as to publish a Strategic Defence Review earlier this year, which sets out a bill that will hopefully help cover the issues.

The move comes after what appears to be an increase in sabotage attempts in recent times. Just this year, Sweden has run into multiple ships it believes were possibly sabotaging the undersea cables and 12 incidents occurring between 2021 and 2025 are also under investigation with 8 of the vessels involved having links to China or Russia.

These attacks would come under the Submarine Telegraph Act of 1885. Under the act, attackers can receive fines of up to £1,000 which was bumped up from 100 in £1982. Though this still, as the Ministry of Defence parliamentary under-secretary Luke Pollard told the National Security Strategy “does seem somewhat out of step with the modern-day risk.”

With more infrastructure than ever before relying on these cables, these attacks are clearly becoming more of a concern, and while the UK government seems aware of that, fixing it is less straightforward. It’s not about finding what the punishment would be, but also defining what constitutes an attack or as Pollard dubbed them “gray zone threats”.

“It is legitimate to have a question about at what point is someone at war, because on a simple article five of the NATO Treaty basis, if Russia were to roll tanks into the Baltic states, it would be reasonable for the Atlantic council then to take a position that that is an attack on one as an attack on all, [but] where there are cyberattacks and potential threats to undersea infrastructure, the moment where you might move from peace to conflict might be less certain, and because of that, we’ve identified that as an area where it is prudent to undertake more work, both in terms of how the UK would respond, to how do we update our activities around our reserve forces and other aspects.”

It will likely be a while before we see the direction the UK government plans to take over these modern war crimes, but given all the important work submarine communications cables do it seems valid they would need more protection. Without them countries can lose their connection to the world, and especially in war times this could mean life or death for many who live there. Plus, just think how mad you’d be losing the game because Russia sabotaged your ping.