Recommendation 77

In 2017, then-Chief of Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart (now Lord) Peach stated that Russia’s unconventional warfare capabilities were creating “a new risk to our prosperity and way of life” through the potential exploitation of “the vulnerability of the cables that criss-cross the seabed”. 90 In May 2023, David Cattler, NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence and Security, said that “there are heightened concerns that Russia may target undersea cables and other critical infrastructure in an effort to disrupt Western life, to gain leverage against those nations that are providing support to Ukraine”. 91