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The John Batchelor Show

Preview: Kevin Frazier discusses the extreme vulnerability and fragmented state of undersea cables, the vast majority of which are privately owned. The Department of Defense relies on these systems, which lack sufficient protection due to high costs. Fraz

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2025

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Preview: Kevin Frazier discusses the extreme vulnerability and fragmented state of undersea cables, the vast majority of which are privately owned. The Department of Defense relies on these systems, which lack sufficient protection due to high costs. Frazier highlights recent reports that the Russian ship Yantar, under GRU possession, is tracking and mapping these vital cables near Great Britain in the event of conflict.

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:20.0

This is John Batchel, a with colleague Kevin Frazier of the University of Texas

0:26.0

Law School. He's a law fellow. His article at law fair recently identified undersea

0:32.8

cables as vulnerable to sabotage or accident and very vulnerable. However, now there's information from

0:40.8

the Financial Times that the Russian Federation is running an operation around a ship called Yantar,

0:48.1

which is under possession of the GRU, that's Russian military intelligence, tracking and mapping

0:53.4

the undersea cables around Great Britain,

0:57.2

but there's no guarantee they're not also tracking around North America and South America.

1:02.9

Why?

1:03.6

In the event of conflict, here Kevin gives us why it is that this has happened, and what is to be done about it includes the fact it's way out of

1:13.6

proportion the cables that the U.S. is responsible for and the cables that private enterprises are

1:19.3

responsible for. Kevin Fraser, University of Texas Law School, the vulnerability of undersea cables.

1:26.4

More of this tonight.

1:29.3

John, I wish I had a more optimistic answer, but the state of the undersea cable system is highly fragmented.

1:37.0

The vast majority of undersea cables are owned by private entities.

1:42.0

And by way of example, the Department of Defense has just 40,000

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