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Preoccupations with profitability come at the expense of security. Neither a dedicated national agency for undersea cables, nor a comprehensive framework for maintenance, protection, and repair currently exist in the US.

While some US government funding has been provided for ships with cable repair capabilities, cable repair remains far less lucrative than cable construction, meaning little financial incentive for private companies to increase or improve repair fleets. Globally, there exist just 22 ships exclusively designated for cable repair, many of which are approaching obsolescence.

Compared with private firms, the public sector's investment in undersea cables is currently minimal (maybe with the exception of China, noted below). The private sector's dominance in undersea cables also threatens to undermine legal frameworks for cable protection.

While the state sector oversees relevant legislative measures, such as Articles 113 to 115 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, inconsistencies and gaps appear in their implementation. In particular, maritime law enforcement faces myriad challenges compared with equivalent laws on land, including difficulties in determining jurisdiction in international waters and in detecting violations due to the sheer size of the ocean.

Instead, the preeminence of the private sector in the undersea cable market enables companies to dictate their own norms around undersea cables. These norms are not always favourable to nation-states.

Notably, as cable owners determine the locations of new cable projects (as well as which nations these cables connect to), companies proactively shape the physical geography of the Internet beyond the purview of the state, perhaps even granting such companies a degree of geopolitical leverage.

In this regard, the development of influential private sector norms around undersea cables would further weaken the state's ability to enforce already deficient laws. In any case, states are unlikely to be the sole or primary authority over maritime issues, providing private companies with ample room to act in their own self-interest at sea-in ways not necessarily conducive to the protection of critical infrastructure.

Occasionally, private sector interests may in fact align with those of sanctioned states, even if only coincidentally. Though some companies are motivated exclusively by the pursuit of profit, a willingness to engage in business with sanctioned nations has geopolitical implications, unintentional or otherwise.

This includes private shipowners willing to sell vessels for the eventual purpose of being used for shadow fleets. In some instances, sellers originating from nations participating in global sanctions are nevertheless incentivised to sell ships to sanctioned states, due to the prospect of considerably larger profits than they would otherwise receive for ageing, poorly-maintained vessels.

Moreover, to avoid legal consequences of violating sanctions, private companies in the above nations are unlikely to directly provide sanctioned states with ships. Rather, these shipowners often first sell vessels to shell companies registered in non-participating jurisdictions in international sanctions regimes (such as India and Seychelles), before subsequently being operated by sanctioned states themselves.

In doing so, these companies play a key role in complicating shadow fleet ownership structures, which in turn helps to obscure the identities of shadow fleet vessels to the benefit of sanctioned states, and possibly facilitating covert sabotage operations.

Recent developments, such as Russia's use of fighter jets to protect shadow fleet ships, and China's unveiling of a specialised subsea cable-cutting vessel , underscore linkages between shadow fleets and sanctioned states, as well as a rising urgency to secure critical maritime infrastructure.

While its growing gray-zone capabilities suggest a more complex reality, China's efforts to publicly position itself as a protector of such infrastructure demonstrate an strategic attempt to seize the narrative and shape public opinion around undersea cables.