China’s silent war on West: Undersea cables, TikTok, and technological takeover

BEIJING: As the global battle for technological supremacy intensifies, national security experts are sounding the alarm over China’s creeping dominance in telecommunications, an invisible war being waged far below the surface through undersea cables, data centres, and surveillance platforms.

According to Pieuvre, Salih Hudayar, Foreign Minister for the East Turkestan government-in-exile, warns that China’s grip on global communications infrastructure poses a direct threat to democracy and security in the West.

“It’s not just a trade issue. It’s war, an information war,” Hudayar told Pieuvre. “And the West is losing.”

Undersea cables, critical for internet and communications connectivity, are now central to China’s strategy. These massive, often-unnoticed arteries of digital life are increasingly built or controlled by Chinese state-linked firms. Hudayar emphasised that allowing Beijing to dominate this infrastructure risks giving a totalitarian regime access to sensitive data and the means to cripple Western economies and militaries in a crisis.

According to Pieuvre, Hudayar revealed that China is rapidly building massive AI data centres in East Turkestan, an occupied region where the Uighur population continues to face state persecution. Shockingly, many of these projects are powered by Western-manufactured chips, despite export restrictions.

“This is the absurdity of the situation,” said Hudayar. “The US is enabling China’s growth by selling advanced tech, all in the name of short-term trade stability. Meanwhile, Beijing is turning it into a weapon.”

Another major front in this covert war is TikTok, which Hudayar called a “surveillance platform masquerading as entertainment.” Pieuvre reports that user data from TikTok is harvested by ByteDance and handed over to Beijing, forming digital profiles of millions of Western citizens. Hudayar warned, “The Chinese Communist Party is compiling dossiers for future blackmail, political manipulation, and ideological influence.”

The stakes, Hudayar told Pieuvre, are clear: If the West fails to invest, at great cost, in homegrown tech infrastructure, it risks falling under China’s digital dominance. This includes everything from building secure undersea cables to banning Chinese-made devices and services that serve as Trojan horses.

“China didn’t ask permission,” Hudayar concluded. “It launched this war. Now it’s up to the West to fight back, before it’s too late.” (ANI)