Critical Undersea Infrastructure w/ UoA's Dr Ulrich Speidel: 13th May, 2026

A recently released report to the Associate Minister of Transport, James Meager, outlined progress on the resilience and security of New Zealand’s critical underwater infrastructure. The heavily-redacted 9 page report detailed ten ‘no-cost, low-effort’ options to mitigate vulnerabilities to undersea cables and to improve ways of working with industry and regional partners.

While the incidents of cable faults that the report pointed to were typically accidents, or related to currents and seismic activity, a particular impetus for the report was the growing threat to critical underwater infrastructure internationally.

With 99% of our international internet coming from just five cables, their importance to our day-to-day lives is difficult to understate. So, to discuss the report and the importance of the undersea cables connecting New Zealand to the rest of the world, producer Theo spoke to Dr Ulrich Speidel, from the School of Computer Science at the University of Auckland.