It’s really hard to figure things out from looking at the news.
In the last few days, major communications cables were cut between Germany and Finland and between Lithuania and Sweden. At the same time, an undersea natural gas pipeline was damaged. Sabotage was suspected — it would be a massive coincidence to have two major cables cut by accident — and it happened right after the Biden administration authorized limited use of longer-range weapons into Russia by Ukraine.
How did that happen? It’s a puzzlement. And it continues to be a puzzlement.
There are reports that two ships, the Chinese container ship Newnew Polar Bear and the Russian cargo ship Sevmorput, were transiting that area at about the right time. According to Forbes:
The Chinese-owned container ship, Newnew Polar Bear, and a Russian cargo vessel (the Sevmorput) transiting the Gulf of Finland in early October are alleged to have been in areas where damage to an undersea natural gas pipeline and two telecommunications cables took place by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation and by the Swedish government.
It really is quite a coincidence that these cables and a natural gas pipeline were damaged at around the same time. Newnew Polar Bear was observed later to be missing a port-side anchor.
@amuse reports similarly:
WAR: NATO is convinced that China is responsible for severing the C-Lion1 undersea communication cables between Finland and Germany. In response, three Danish Navy vessels, including the DNK Navy Patrol P523, converged on the Chinese vessel "Newnew Polar Bear," which is suspected… pic.twitter.com/rXkUNG1crV
— @amuse (@amuse) November 19, 2024
On the other hand, there are reports that the strongest suspect is the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3:
— auonsson (@auonsson) November 19, 2024
Another smoking gun.
— auonsson (@auonsson) November 19, 2024
Follow me on the other site as this stream will stop. pic.twitter.com/LgXifvUqNH
Given what we’ve seen so far, we have a couple of suspects, and the best suspects are Chinese, not Russian. Of course, the Chinese government could be responsible and it’s a covert operation, or the captains of these Chinese ships could have gotten big money from Russia.
So it is, as I said, a puzzlement. The coincidences are awfully coincidental, but it’s also hard to ascribe malice to something like this with any certainty, and I don’t want to fall into the recent error of seeing malice in alphabetical order. The other side here might be that the captain of the Newnew Polar Bear fouled an anchor, dragged for miles, and finally cut it loose. By Hanlon’s Rule, it’s possible this was just stupidity and not malice.
Possible.
When I was in the Intelligence Community, I was in collection and not analysis; we saw something, we said something, and it was the job of the guys at the CIA to decide what it meant. This looks like raw intelligence and rumor; I’m suspicious of drawing conclusions too early, especially from news reports and unknown postings on X.
What I suspect is that we’re seeing a revival of the old Cold War, where both sides are pushing their limits but unwilling to open an actual war.
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