Yesterday The New York Times posted an article about American concerns that Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications

The article reports:

In private, however, commanders and intelligence officials are far more direct. They report that from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and even in waters closer to American shores, they are monitoring significantly increased Russian activity along the known routes of the cables, which carry the lifeblood of global electronic communications and commerce.

Just last month, the Russian spy ship Yantar, equipped with two self-propelled deep-sea submersible craft, cruised slowly off the East Coast of the United States on its way to Cuba — where one major cable lands near the American naval station at Guantánamo Bay. It was monitored constantly by American spy satellites, ships and planes. Navy officials said the Yantar and the submersible vehicles it can drop off its decks have the capability to cut cables miles down in the sea.

This is part of Vladimir Putin’s muscle flexing. It is the result of Putin’s knowing he will not meet resistance from President Obama. We can expect this sort of cat and mouse game to continue until America gets a stronger President. It is also quite likely that the Russians have tapped into our communications lines, just as we have done to them in the past.

The article further reports:

Attention to underwater cables is not new. In October 1971, the American submarine Halibut entered the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan, found a telecommunications cable used by Soviet nuclear forces, and succeeded in tapping its secrets. The mission, code-named Ivy Bells, was so secret that a vast majority of the submarine’s sailors had no idea what they had accomplished. The success led to a concealed world of cable tapping.

And a decade ago, the United States Navy launched the submarine Jimmy Carter, which intelligence analysts say is able to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on communications flowing through them.

The story of the Halibut is told in a book called, Blind Man’s Bluff, by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew. It is an amazing book that details some of the exploits of American submarines during the 1970’s.