Summary
Taiwan’s coastguard detained a Togolese-flagged cargo ship with a Chinese crew after an undersea communications cable connecting Taiwan to Penghu was cut.
Authorities suspect a possible “grey zone” act—hostile interference short of warfare—by China but have not ruled out an accident.
The ship, which initially ignored radio contact, was intercepted and escorted to port. Taiwan has been monitoring Chinese-linked vessels under flags of convenience due to previous cable damage incidents.
Chunghwa Telecom activated a backup cable, preventing communication disruptions.
My point is that regardless of whether investigators say “this ship tore cables intentionally” or “oops, they screwed up”, penalties need to apply so that:
A) Insurance rates reflect these risks
B) Operators are incentivized to care about not damaging undersea cables
C) Intentional damage will be more obvious, because shipping companies won’t want to risk getting dropped from their insurance for repeat expensive cable cut offenses. (This kind of insurance is mandatory for major shipping ports to allow those ships to dock.) Bad actors will have to use other means to destroy these cables that cannot be easily blamed on negligence.