Summary
European investigators allege that the Chinese-owned ship Yi Peng 3 deliberately dragged its anchor to sever two Baltic Sea undersea data cables connecting Lithuania-Sweden and Finland-Germany.
While the Chinese government is not suspected, officials are probing possible Russian intelligence involvement.
The ship’s suspicious movements, including transponder shutdowns and zig-zagging, suggest deliberate action.
The vessel, linked to Russian trade since March 2024, was carrying Russian fertilizer when stopped.
NATO warships surround the ship, but international maritime laws limit investigators’ access.
They can actually just store the data on drives on the snooping device, and then periodically swap out the storage devices with a submarine.
Periodically like every minute?
These cables can carry terabits per second. I suppose if you had 100 petabytes of storage (that could probably be achieved with a single large rack of machines) you could just swap the entire rig every few hours or so, but that feels extremely cumbersome.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
You can just store metadata instead of all traffic (most of it is encrypted anyway). Or just store the packets that interest you.
Feels like setup for a movie.
Call it Geek Squad