Us lawmakers are pressuring tech giants to take the safety issue of submarine communication cables seriously

Three Republican congressmen in the United States sent letters to the ceos of Google's parent company Alphabet, Facebook's parent company Meta, e-commerce company Amazon and Microsoft, asking whether they have taken adequate safeguard measures to address the growing national security concerns over submarine communication cables.

Reuters reported that the letter, jointly signed by John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Committee on China, Republican representatives Carlos Gimenez and Keith Self, We are concerned that entities associated with China, such as China-UK Subsea Systems Limited (SBSS), Huawei Marine, China Telecom and China Unicom, continue to provide maintenance or services for the cable systems directly or indirectly operated or owned by these US technology companies.

Jimenez and Self respectively served as the chairpersons of the two sub-committees.

Washington has been warning about over 400 submarine cable networks that handle 99% of international Internet traffic, as well as threats from China and Russia.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment on the report.

The above-mentioned technology companies also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.