‘Security through obscurity’: the Swedish cabin on the frontline of a possible hybrid war | Sweden

oneOn a small island on the edge of Stockholm’s vast Baltic Sea archipelago, at the end of an unmarked path lies a nondescript cabin painted deep red. The water laps gently against the snow-covered rocks and the scent of pine fills the air.

The website offers few clues about the geopolitical drama that has erupted in Scandinavia in recent months over accusations of infrastructure sabotage. But in fact, the hut contained a key cog in Europe’s digital link, and a vulnerability in a potential hybrid war: a data center that amplified the signal of the 1,615-mile-long fiber optic cable from northern Sweden to Berlin.

last month, Two nearby fiber optic cables were cut, prompting Swedish authorities to continue investigating. Many Western intelligence officials expressed confidence that A Chinese ship caused production cuts After departing the Russian port of Ust-Luga, although there are differing opinions on whether the cuts were accidental or possibly intentional.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Sweden Hybrid warfare – using methods other than traditional military operations to attack opponents – has been blamed on pro-Russian groups. The Guardian has gained exclusive access to the Stockholm data center site as Nordic governments remain wary of Russian hybrid activity.

Daniel Aldstam, the company’s chief security officer at GlobalConnect, which carries 50% of Northern Europe’s network capacity and operates the centre, describes its location and plain-looking approach as “security through obscurity”.

“Essentially you have two different approaches,” he said. “Either you put a lot of fences around it and make it obvious that there are some key things, or you try to make things more discreet like we do here. Of course, we have alarms, closed circuits TVs, access controls, all the normal stuff. Inside, cages full of equipment glow with flickering lights, and the ceiling is lined with cables of different colors.

Following recent incidents of suspected sabotage, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk proposed a “naval policing” initiative involving joint military patrols by countries surrounding the Baltic Sea.

A helicopter flight from Stockholm over the archipelago of 30,000 islands, rocks and cays makes it clear just how difficult it is to protect the coastline. But its scale also shows how effective the security-through-obscurity approach can be—at least to some extent. Maps showing where all undersea cables are laid are publicly available.

“We have hundreds of thousands of kilometers of fiber. How do you physically protect it? You can’t,” Alderstein said. “The important thing here is redundancy [using multiple cables offering alternative routes if one is cut off]. You need more fiber.

With infrastructure considered particularly vulnerable to hybrid warfare, there are signs of adjustments to the “obscure” approach, reflecting worrying times.

GlobalConnect is building a larger, more modern-looking data center nearby, and although it remains unmarked and painted a similar shade of red, it’s more obvious that this is a building that serves an important function. It has its own diesel backup generator in-house to ensure continued operation in the event of a power outage.

The vulnerability of undersea cables and other critical infrastructure, especially in the relatively shallow and busy Baltic Sea, has been thrust into the spotlight since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In September 2022, the Nord Stream pipeline transporting natural gas from Russia to Germany was blown up. Initially, many believed Russia was to blame. However, in August this year, German media reported that German authorities had Arrest warrant issued for Ukrainian man A team suspected of being involved in placing explosive devices on pipelines. Both sides in Ukraine’s war have denied responsibility for the attack and blamed each other.

NATO has established a dedicated undersea security center and warned that nearly 1 billion people Europe and North America face the risk of hybrid warfare by coalition adversaries due to the vulnerability of wind farm, pipeline and power cable infrastructure. Earlier this month, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte urged Europeans to “switch to a wartime mindset”.

Despite all the warnings, submarine cables that could lie or be buried on the ocean floor look surprisingly tiny.

“We call it a mega cable, but it doesn’t sound mega and it doesn’t look mega,” said Patrik Gylesjö, who oversaw the entire GlobalConnect Sweden-to-Berlin cable project, which was completed earlier this year. . “The name refers to its capacity rather than its size.”

A small section of the cable’s interior, which is just over 2 centimeters in diameter, is made up of 96 hair-thin fiber pairs, enough to support 1 billion concurrent Netflix streams, he said. The rest consists of steel armor and waterproofing.

It only takes an anchor from a relatively small ship to damage the cable, Gylesjö said. “If you want to snap or cut this cable, you don’t need a super big tool. It’s pretty fragile.

Making it stronger would make it heavier, more expensive and “more complex to deploy,” he added.

Accidental breakage of submarine cables is extremely rare. “Generally speaking, damage is very rare,” Gylesjö said. “Very rare. During our time as an offshore cable operator [more than 20 years] I think this happened two or three times at most.