Meta and Google Are Wiring the World’s Oceans: What Does This Mean for Geopolitics and Business?

Submarine cables transmitting most intercontinental communications are a foundation of the world’s economy. For policymakers, they are a strategic infrastructure that must be secured in case of conflict and whose resilience must be improved. They are largely built and operated by privately owned firms, yet policymakers rarely make explicit how these businesses make money and how this ultimately matters to the resilience of the cable network. In this paper, I focus on the growing role taken in the submarine cable sector by so-called Big Tech (or “hyperscaler”) firms—Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta. I argue that the causes of Big Tech’s growing role are typically misunderstood. Conventional wisdom sees these investments and direct ownership as a simple consequence of their share of data traffic. However, I find that two firms, Google and Meta, have come to dominate investment in submarine cables. The routes they choose differ sharply from those taken by traditional actors in the sector. They are more likely to avoid maritime chokepoints and they effectively create alternative worldwide cable loops.

I argue that Google and Meta behave differently because they can uniquely capture positive security externalities from the resilience of their networks that other firms cannot capture. Their shared business model based on advertising puts a unique premium on the integrity of their global networks. This explains their peculiar choice of routes and why other players do not follow suit.

For policymakers, the first lesson is that Google and Meta have become suppliers of communication resilience at a global scale. This alleviates concerns about resilience but, at the same time, creates another set of dependencies. The second lesson is that policymakers must understand in depth the internal logic of private actors, beyond what conventional wisdom may suggest, to anticipate their incentives, decisions and the geopolitical implications.