The struggle for power in the Indo-Pacific is no longer centred on fleets and firepower alone. It is increasingly fought through cables, ports, satellites, and data networks.
By M A Hossain | Dhaka, Bangladesh | South-East Asia Correspondent For The News Analytics Herald
3 mins read.
There is an old imperial axiom: control the routes, and you control the world. Britain understood this when it established strategic positions at Gibraltar, Aden and Singapore—not for territory alone, but because they commanded the arteries through which global commerce moved.
Today, the language of empire has changed. Garrisons have been replaced by fibre-optic cables, deep-water ports, satellite constellations and digital corridors. The logic, however, remains: connectivity creates power, and connectivity can be weaponised.
This is a defining strategic reality of the Indo-Pacific. The region carries a major share of global maritime trade, hosts some of the world’s fastest-growing digital economies and sits beneath competing satellite networks. Increasingly, the contest is infrastructural. Whoever controls the pipes, ports and platforms acquires leverage over the future.
THE SUBMARINE CABLE
The British Empire’s strength rested not only on warships but communications. Its nineteenth-century “All-Red Line” telegraph network connected imperial possessions largely through British-controlled territory, giving London a significant information advantage.
The modern equivalent lies beneath the oceans. Hundreds of undersea cables carry around 95% of international data traffic, including financial transactions, diplomatic communications and civilian internet traffic. They constitute the circulatory system of the digital economy—and remain remarkably vulnerable.
Recent disruptions around Europe and the Red Sea have demonstrated how damaged cables can affect communications across entire regions. Whether caused by hostile action or accidents, such incidents expose a strategic reality: actors capable of locating, disrupting or manipulating submarine infrastructure can impose significant costs without conventional military confrontation.
China has recognised this domain’s importance. Chinese firms, including HMN Technologies, have participated in submarine cable projects across the Indo-Pacific and beyond. For strategic planners, involvement in cable construction, routing, landing stations and maintenance inevitably raises questions about resilience, information security and dependence.
Undersea cables carry more than data; they carry power, influence and vulnerabilities capable of shaping strategic outcomes.
THE GEOMETRY OF DEPENDENCE
Ports represent the second dimension of the connectivity contest.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has financed and developed port infrastructure across a vast geographic arc, including Hambantota, Gwadar, Djibouti and Piraeus. Although these projects vary considerably in ownership, financing and strategic purpose, collectively they have expanded China’s commercial presence and potential influence across important maritime corridors.
The Indo-Pacific geography makes such infrastructure particularly consequential. The Strait of Malacca remains one of the world’s critical maritime chokepoints and a major route for China’s energy and commercial flows. Beijing’s longstanding “Malacca Dilemma” has encouraged alternative pipelines, transport corridors and deeper relationships with ports across the Indian Ocean.
Indian strategic discourse has frequently viewed this expanding Chinese presence through the concept of a “String of Pearls.”
India, meanwhile, has strengthened its own connectivity partnerships and maritime access. Development of Chabahar Port in Iran provides an important route towards Afghanistan and Central Asia bypassing Pakistan, while India’s expanding engagement across the Indian Ocean and its strategically positioned Andaman and Nicobar Islands strengthen its maritime options.
The underlying contest is increasingly about who builds connectivity, who operates it, and whose strategic interests the resulting dependencies ultimately serve.
Commercial infrastructure can acquire strategic significance, quietly redefining influence across critical maritime corridors.
DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Beyond cables and ports lies another increasingly contested layer: satellites, cloud platforms, telecommunications networks and data centres.
Satellite systems guide aircraft and ships, synchronise financial networks, support telecommunications, monitor weather and provide military intelligence. Modern economies have become deeply dependent upon positioning, navigation and timing systems. Significant disruption could simultaneously affect transport, financial transactions, communications and military operations.
The Ukraine war demonstrated another dimension of this dependence. Starlink showed how commercially developed satellite connectivity could acquire major operational importance during conflict. Low-Earth orbit constellations have consequently moved from civilian infrastructure towards strategically consequential assets.
China’s development of large satellite constellations similarly reflects recognition that space-based connectivity has become another arena of technological and strategic competition.
Across the Indo-Pacific, the United States and its partners have sought to provide alternative infrastructure financing and standards through initiatives including the Blue Dot Network and broader G7 infrastructure programmes. Yet Western initiatives have often faced a challenge of execution: matching the speed, scale and risk tolerance associated with Chinese state-backed infrastructure financing.
Strategic competition is therefore increasingly about more than constructing infrastructure. It is about setting standards, creating ecosystems and establishing long-term technological dependence.
The next great geopolitical contest may be decided less by territory than by control over networks and access.
THE NEXT CRISIS
Infrastructure competition does not inevitably lead to conflict. States have long competed for strategic advantage through railways, ports, shipping routes and telecommunications.
The danger lies instead in the accumulation of leverage at critical chokepoints, the use of infrastructure for coercion and the gradual erosion of the assumption that global connectivity is politically neutral.
The Indo-Pacific will be central to this contest. Its sea lanes, submarine cables, ports, satellite systems and digital corridors are not simply commercial assets; collectively, they constitute part of the physical architecture of the international order.
For governments, the answer cannot be isolation. Modern economies depend upon interconnected networks. Instead, states need diversification, redundancy and trusted partnerships across critical infrastructure. No strategically important economy should allow a single external actor to become indispensable to its communications, logistics or digital architecture.
For India, this has particular significance. Its geographic position astride the Indian Ocean, growing digital economy and expanding geopolitical ambitions make resilient connectivity a component of strategic autonomy. Ports, cable landing stations, satellite networks, data infrastructure and maritime partnerships must increasingly be considered through the same national-security lens as conventional military capabilities.
The fundamental strategic lesson is straightforward: infrastructure is no longer politically neutral.
Connectivity can generate prosperity and deepen cooperation. But when dependence becomes concentrated, the same networks can generate leverage.
The twenty-first century’s competition for influence will therefore not be fought only over territory. It will increasingly revolve around who finances, owns, operates and protects the networks upon which nations depend.
Connectivity built around excessive dependence can become a strategic constraint—commercially attractive, technically efficient and extraordinarily difficult to unwind.
The countries that recognise this transformation will be better positioned to protect their strategic autonomy. Those that do not may discover that modern sovereignty is measured not only by the territory a nation controls, but increasingly by the networks it can access, secure and continue operating when geopolitical conditions deteriorate.
(M. A. Hossain, senior journalist and international affairs analyst based in Bangladesh. He covers South Asia and South-East Asia for News Analytics. The views expressed by the author and any guest experts do not necessarily reflect the views of The News Analytics Herald.)
