The tool, which is able to cut lines at depths of up to 4,000 metres (13,123 feet) – twice the maximum operational range of existing subsea communication infrastructure – has been designed specifically for integration with China’s advanced crewed and uncrewed submersibles like the Fendouzhe, or Striver, and the Haidou series.
They already do it by simply dragging boat anchors across, it’s obviously going to be weaponized further. There have multiple data and power cables cut like this in the Baltic sea recently. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/30/europe/baltic-sea-cable-anchor-drag-russia-intl-latam/index.html
max depth of baltic sea is 1,500 ft
And it was done with something no designed for this purpose. Why is it hard to conceive that a tool designed for it would do much better?
because military subs can’t go that deep. It’s a lot harder to police.
I don’t think they need to send people down or even complex sensors, they could use a similar dumb tactic, as above, of dragging something heavy for kilometers, until they can confirm that there was a disruption on the network.