With Indo-Pacific undersea cables at risk, companies tout their tech

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Taiwanese authorities this month charged the Chinese captain of the cargo vessel Hong Tai 58 for damaging an underwater communications cable connecting Taiwan to the Penghu Islands near the Chinese coast.

The legal move is a reminder that sabotage of vital seabed cables, which is notoriously difficult to prove, has firmly entered the canon of gray-zone tactics meant to find weak spots in an adversary’s defenses.