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.

Intentional or not is irrelevant. Damaging critical national infrastructure through negligence should still be considered a criminal act with mandatory prison time for the negligent captain and navigator(s), and a heavy fine assessed against the shipping company.

What kinds of repercussions do these cases have right now?