Gray Zone Threats (GZT) refer to ambiguous, malicious activities that fall short of open warfare but undermine stability and integrity, often involving cyberattacks, disinformation, espionage, or covert operations. In New Jersey’s Communications Sector, these threats pose significant risks to critical infrastructure, including telecommunications networks, internet services, and emergency communication systems.

Impact on Critical Infrastructure:

Disruption of Communications: GZTs can compromise or disrupt communication channels, hindering emergency response and coordination during crises.

Cyberattacks and Espionage: Malicious actors may infiltrate network systems to steal sensitive information or disable critical services, creating vulnerabilities that can be exploited further.

Disinformation Campaigns: Spread of false information can undermine public trust and interfere with operational decision-making.

Undermining Confidence: Persistent gray zone activities erode confidence in communication systems’ resilience, potentially destabilizing social and economic stability.

 Mitigation Strategies: 

• Strengthening cybersecurity defenses.
• Enhancing cooperation between government and private sector.
• Implementing robust monitoring and response plans.
• Promoting resilience and redundancy in communication networks.

Overall, Gray Zone Threats challenge the security and reliability of New Jersey’s Communications Sector, requiring vigilant, adaptive, and coordinated efforts to safeguard critical infrastructure.

Please see below Gray Zone Threats, including examples:

Gray Zone threats refer to strategies and activities that lie between traditional war and peaceful competition. They are characterized by ambiguity, deniability, and often involve non-military tools to achieve strategic objectives without triggering a full-scale conflict.

Overview of Gray Zone Threats

• Definition: Actions intended to erode stability or influence an opponent without crossing the threshold of open warfare. They often involve cyberattacks, disinformation, economic pressure, and covert operations.
• Characteristics:
  • Ambiguous attribution
  • Plausible deniability for actors involved
  • Use of asymmetric tactics
  • Slow, persistent, and adaptable operations

Application to Critical Infrastructure (CI)

• Threats to CI include cyberattacks on communications, water systems, energy grids, transportation, and healthcare infrastructure.
• Gray Zone tactics may involve:
  • Cyber intrusions causing disruptions or damage
  • Supply chain interference
  • Disinformation campaigns to undermine public trust
  • Covert influence operations targeting policy or operational decision-makers

Application to the Communications Sector

• The communications sector is critical for societal functioning, making it a prime target.
• Gray Zone tactics include:
  • Disrupting or degrading communication networks via cyber means
  • Spreading misinformation or disinformation through social media and other platforms
  • Exploiting vulnerabilities in telecommunications infrastructure
  • Using clandestine influence campaigns to sway public opinion or political outcomes

Implications

• These threats challenge traditional detection and attribution methods.
• Need for robust cybersecurity, intelligence sharing, and resilience planning.
• Emphasis on understanding and countering ambiguous threats to protect national security and public safety.

Current Gray Zone threats facing the United States encompass a range of activities aimed at undermining national security, economic stability, and societal cohesion without provoking full-scale conflict. Key threats include:

1. Cyberattacks and Cyberespionage
   • State-sponsored hacking campaigns targeting government agencies, critical infrastructure, and private sector entities.
   • Examples include intrusion attempts on energy grids, financial systems, and supply chains.
2. Disinformation and Influence Campaigns
   • Efforts by Peer or Near-Peer Adversaries (Russai, China, Iran) to spread misinformation via social media platforms.
   • Aimed at sowing discord, influencing elections, and eroding public trust.
3. Economic Coercion and Sanctions Evasion
   • Use of economic pressure, sanctions, and covert financial activities to influence U.S. policy.
   • Activities like cryptocurrency-based money laundering to evade detection.
4. Covert Operations and Espionage
   • Attempts to clandestinely gather intelligence or influence policy through agents, private allies, or proxy groups.
5. Maritime and Territorial Ambitions
   • Near Peer (China) actions in the Indo-Pacific, involve gray zone tactics like reclamation and harassment without direct military confrontation.
6. Information Warfare
   • Manipulating online narratives, promoting propaganda, and leveraging social divisions to weaken societal cohesion.
7. Biological and Environmental Manipulation
   • Potential manipulation of environmental factors or biological agents to create instability or influence regions indirectly.

These threats often blend military, intelligence, cyber, economic, and informational domains, making them complex and challenging to counter. The U.S. government continues to enhance its resilience and detection capabilities to address these evolving Gray Zone activities.

Gray Zone threats to Subsea Infrastructure and Cable Landing Stations (CLSs)

• Remain particularly concerning due to their critical role in global communications, economic stability, and national security. These threats leverage ambiguity, deniability, and asymmetric tactics to undermine or disrupt these vital assets without triggering traditional military responses. A detailed overview includes:

1. Cyberattacks on Sub-Sea Infrastructure and CLSs

• Targeted Cyber Intrusions: Adversaries may attempt to infiltrate network management systems of subsea cables and landing stations, causing disruptions, data interception, or sabotage.
• Supply Chain Exploitation: Compromising hardware or software components during manufacturing or deployment to introduce vulnerabilities.
• Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs): State-sponsored groups could establish long-term access to monitor traffic or prepare for future disruptions, blending espionage with potential sabotage.

2. Covert Physical Operations

• Undersea Cable Tampering or Sabotage: Gray Zone actors might engage in clandestine cutting, tapping, or interference with subsea cables, often under cover of darkness or through disguised vessels, aiming to degrade communications without immediate attribution.
• Vessel Incursions or Harassment: Disguised or non-military vessels may loiter near cable landing sites or anchor points, gathering intelligence or attempting physical interference.

3. Disinformation and Influence Campaigns

• Misleading Narratives: Propaganda to undermine confidence in the security or reliability of subsea communications, potentially creating panic or mistrust.
• Operational Deception: Disinformation about the state of infrastructure or the presence of threats, complicating detection and response efforts.

4. Exploitation of Vulnerabilities

• Network Vulnerabilities: Use of cyber exploits targeting known weaknesses in SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) or other control systems managing cable operations.
• Legitimacy Exploitation: Leveraging legal or diplomatic channels to create plausible deniability or delays in response, e.g., claiming routine maintenance or environmental concerns.

5. Economic and Strategic Leverage

• Restricting or Disabling Critical Links: Gray Zone actors might threaten or partially disable subsea cables to exert economic or political pressure, even if overtly denying involvement.
• Influence in Policy and Decision-Making: Using cyber and influence tactics to sway regulatory or strategic decisions affecting subsea infrastructure.

Implications and Countermeasures:

• Enhanced Cybersecurity: Robust encryption, intrusion detection systems, continuous monitoring, and regular audits of infrastructure management systems.
• Physical Security & Surveillance: Deployment of underwater sensors, maritime patrols, and vessel monitoring around key cable landing sites.
• International Cooperation: Sharing intelligence, best practices, and coordinated responses among nations and private operators.
• Resilience Planning: Diversification of routes, redundant systems, and rapid repair capabilities to minimize impact from Gray Zone disruptions.
• Attribution and Response Readiness: Developing capabilities to attribute attacks accurately and respond proportionally within the Gray Zone framework to deter future activities.

In summary, Gray Zone threats to Subsea Infrastructure and Cable Landing Stations are multifaceted, involving cyber, physical, informational, and strategic tactics. Addressing these requires a comprehensive, layered approach encompassing technological, diplomatic, and operational measures to safeguard these critical components of global communications.

Overall Analysis:

There are many recent examples of how Gray Zone tactics are employed across multiple domains and are often interconnected—cyber operations complement disinformation efforts, and economic pressures support territorial ambitions. They are designed to undermine U.S. influence, destabilize societal cohesion, and assert strategic advantages without provoking direct military conflict. The ongoing evolution of these threats requires comprehensive resilience, advanced detection, and international cooperation.

Telecommunications has always been an industry defined by infrastructure. Massive networks, subsea cables, data centers, and the executives who built them. For decades, experience was the currency of influence and leadership tables were shaped by tenure and tradition. But as AI, high-density workloads, and global interconnection redefine the digital landscape, the question is no longer just about capacity and speed – it’s about who is shaping what comes next.

Within that evolving landscape, Emily Newman, Marketing Director at NJFX, has emerged as one of the defining voices of the next generation. Her journey is not just a personal success story. It reflects a broader shift where young leaders are no longer waiting for permission to contribute, but actively shaping the industry’s future.

Identifying the Gap

At major global conferences, the age disparity is evident. While the rooms are filled with decision-makers and influential executives, younger professionals are often underrepresented. The pipeline of emerging talent is thin not because interest was lacking, but because access is limited.

NJFX recognized this early. Under the leadership of Felix Seda, an initiative was introduced at the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) to intentionally create space for younger professionals within the conference ecosystem. What began as a small, focused gathering just 8 to 13 participants quickly revealed its impact.

Emily was among those who stepped into that room. She didn’t enter as an executive. She entered as a professional eager to grow, to understand the broader industry beyond her day-to-day responsibilities, and to build meaningful relationships with peers navigating similar challenges. That decision would redefine her trajectory.

From Participant to Contributor

As the initiative evolved into what is now widely recognized as PTC Beyond, participation grew from a handful of attendees to more than 150 registered professionals by 2026. The program became permanently integrated into PTC’s agenda. Complete with curated educational sessions, targeted networking opportunities, and programming designed specifically for emerging leaders.

Emily did not remain a participant for long. She became actively involved in shaping the very initiative that had shaped her. Her engagement expanded into service on the Advisory Council, where she contributed to internal committees focused on:

Advancing PTC Beyond programming
Elevating Women in Tech initiatives
Strengthening membership engagement
Supporting strategic agenda development

Her work was not symbolic. It was operational. She helped craft agendas, support programming structure, and advocate for continued inclusion of younger voices within high-level industry discussions.

Her contributions were visible and impactful.

Emily’s consistent involvement, thoughtful perspective, and demonstrated commitment to inclusion positioned her as a natural choice to support. She was elected Vice Chair of the Advisory Council an achievement that signaled both trust and recognition from industry peers.

In this role, Emily supports the Board of Governors and contributes to advancing PTC’s broader mission across global telecommunications. Her focus remains clear: ensure the next generation is not only present, but prepared. Her ascent to Vice Chair represents more than a title. It reflects a generational shift. Proof that young professionals can influence governance, programming, and strategic direction within one of the industry’s most respected organizations.

Recognition at PTC ’26

At PTC ’26, Emily’s contributions were formally recognized when she was awarded the prestigious Next Gen Award. This award is not widely distributed. In fact, it had only been presented once before also to Felix Seda, the leader who originally championed the initiative to empower younger professionals. The moment carried weight. It symbolized continuity. It demonstrated that leadership development, when intentional, produces measurable results. It highlighted Emily as a rising force within digital infrastructure. Someone who embodies not only professional excellence but community advancement.

While Emily’s accolades are personal milestones, their impact extends far beyond individual recognition. As Marketing Director at NJFX, she has been instrumental in positioning the company as more than a carrier-neutral cable landing station. Through strategic storytelling, event leadership, and thought leadership engagement, she has helped elevate NJFX’s reputation as a forward-thinking connectivity hub—one that values both infrastructure and inclusion.

Her presence on panels, advisory boards, and industry committees reinforces NJFX’s commitment to:

Supporting young professionals
Advancing diversity and inclusion
Bridging generational gaps within telecom
Building sustainable leadership pipelines

In just three years, Emily has grown from a participant seeking guidance to an industry-recognized leader shaping conversation and strategy at the highest levels.

The Future Is Built by Those Who Show Up

Telecommunications is entering a new era defined by AI workloads, global subsea expansion, hyperscale connectivity, and digital transformation at unprecedented speed. Infrastructure must scale. Networks must evolve. But none of it happens without people.

Emily Newman’s journey underscores a simple but powerful truth: when opportunity meets initiative, industries transform. From an 8-person gathering to a permanent transformative program. From participant to Vice Chair. From attendee to award recipient. Her story reflects the kind of leadership digital infrastructure needs now.

As NJFX continues to expand its global connectivity footprint it does so with confidence that the next generation is not only ready but already leading.

Over the past decade, global data demand has accelerated at a pace that has fundamentally reshaped network architecture and the way digital infrastructure is designed, deployed, and operated. Hyperscalers, cloud service providers, content delivery networks, AI-driven workloads, and financial trading firms are generating unprecedented volumes of traffic that must move seamlessly across both subsea and terrestrial networks. This shift has pushed capacity requirements well beyond what legacy models were designed to support and has placed renewed focus on the physical locations where global connectivity converges.

Traditionally, a cable landing station (CLS) has functioned as a handoff point rather than an active network node. Once a subsea cable reaches land, traffic is typically transferred onto terrestrial backhaul and transported to a separate data center or internet exchange for routing, peering, and distribution. While this architecture has served the industry for decades, it introduces several structural limitations in today’s high-capacity environment. Backhauling traffic from the CLS to an external facility increases latency, adds operational complexity, and creates additional points of failure along the network path. It also concentrates risk along a limited number of terrestrial routes, reducing true diversity once traffic exits the landing station. From a security and resiliency standpoint, each additional handoff represents a new exposure point, particularly for latency-sensitive, regulated, or mission-critical workloads.

As traffic volumes continue to increase, so does the need for localized interconnection at the point of landing. Enterprises, content providers, financial networks, and cloud platforms are seeking to exchange traffic as close to the CLS as possible in order to minimize latency, reduce transport costs, and retain greater control over routing, performance, and security. This demand fundamentally challenges the passive CLS model and exposes its growing misalignment with modern network design. The traditional separation between subsea termination, terrestrial transport, and interconnection is becoming increasingly inefficient as port speeds rise and applications become more sensitive to delay and disruption.

NJFX has taken a fundamentally different approach by redefining the cable landing station as an active interconnection hub rather than a simple termination site. A critical component of this strategy is ownership and control of the front haul infrastructure. In 2024, NJFX acquired bore pipes from SubCom, allowing the company to directly own and manage the physical conduit between the beach manhole and the facility. By controlling this front haul segment, NJFX eliminates reliance on third-party infrastructure at one of the most sensitive points in the network path. This approach enhances security, increases resiliency, and provides greater operational certainty for subsea system owners and customers deploying critical capacity.

NJFX’s CLS and data center campus sits directly at the point of convergence between subsea systems and terrestrial networks. Rather than pushing traffic inland immediately, global networks can interconnect locally within the same secure facility where the cable lands. Traffic can be exchanged, routed, and distributed without unnecessary transport hops, reducing latency and minimizing dependence on legacy backhaul architectures. Multiple diverse points of entry further strengthen physical and network diversity, while keeping routing decisions close to where traffic enters the United States.

This model has enabled NJFX to support traffic at a scale rarely seen at a cable landing station. Today, more than 250 terabits per second of live traffic transits the NJFX campus, reflecting the shift from legacy architectures to high-capacity, high-density environments. Networks have moved well beyond 10G and 100G deployments. As demand for data-intensive workloads such as generative AI, real-time analytics, high-frequency trading, and cloud-native applications continues to grow, 400G has become the operational baseline. At the same time, active planning is underway across the industry for 800G interfaces and spectrum-based capacity strategies to further maximize fiber utilization and future-proof network investments.

This level of traffic concentration is made possible by combining direct access to four subsea cable systems with a dense, carrier-neutral interconnection ecosystem. NJFX supports more than 35 network operators and connects to 28 terrestrial fiber networks leading to major metro hubs throughout the Northeast and beyond. Traffic entering the facility benefits from four diverse points of entry, enhancing resiliency while maintaining proximity to population centers, cloud regions, and financial markets. By consolidating subsea landing, interconnection, and terrestrial access within a single campus, NJFX enables efficient traffic exchange at scale.

Supporting hundreds of terabits per second of live traffic also requires infrastructure engineered for long-term growth. Expansion at NJFX is reflected not only in increasing port speeds, but in the evolution of the physical environment itself. Higher-density switching and routing platforms drive increased rack power requirements, greater cross-connect density, and the need to scale from single cabinets into private cages and integrated network environments. These changes are planned in parallel with ongoing discussions around 800G optics, spectrum-based capacity planning, and future optical transport upgrades, ensuring that the facility remains aligned with the direction of global network evolution.

As the global subsea network continues to expand, with hundreds of cable systems active or under development worldwide, the question facing operators is no longer simply where capacity lands. The more pressing question is where that capacity can be efficiently exchanged, securely managed, and scaled over time. Most cable landing stations will continue to operate as passive sites, feeding traffic into traditional data centers and exchange points. NJFX represents a different path, one that aligns the landing of subsea capacity with the realities of modern, high-capacity network design.

With new subsea systems coming online and the addition of a 10MW data hall within the NJFX campus, demand for capacity, interconnection, and localized traffic exchange is expected to continue growing. In an era defined by scale, resiliency, and performance, bringing interconnection directly to the cable landing station is no longer an edge case. It is a purpose-built model designed to support the future of global connectivity.

Strengthening Our Digital Frontlines: The Importance of Cyber Preparedness, Safety, and Recovery

As Cybersecurity Awareness Month continues, NJFX is underscoring the critical importance of preparedness, safety, and recovery practices when facing cyber threats. Our team has been diligently completing individual cybersecurity training modules, and we are proud to share that we are nearing 100% compliance. This proactive approach reflects our commitment to protecting the vital infrastructure and communities we serve.

Why Cybersecurity Matters More Than Ever

Cyberattacks have evolved in scale, frequency, and sophistication. Organizations supporting digital communication infrastructure—like data centers, subsea cable landing stations, and network interconnection points—are increasingly being targeted. These assets are foundational to everything from global financial transactions to emergency response communications.

In New Jersey, the Communications Sector plays a vital role in national connectivity, linking domestic networks to international subsea routes that carry the world’s data. A disruption in this ecosystem has the potential to impact millions of people and organizations across the region and beyond.

The Impact of Cyberattacks on Critical Infrastructure

When malicious actors launch cyberattacks—whether ransomware, distributed denial of service (DDoS), phishing campaigns, or system intrusions—the consequences can be significant:

• Service Disruptions & Outages: Interrupting connectivity can halt operations, restrict communication, and impact essential services like hospitals and emergency management.

• Financial & Operational Losses: A breach can lead to costly recovery efforts, system repairs, and reputational damage.

• Data Integrity & Security Risks: Unauthorized access can compromise sensitive data, customer information, and mission-critical systems.

• Cascading Regional or National Impacts: Because networks are interconnected, a cyber incident at one facility can spread, affecting broader infrastructure ecosystems.

This is especially relevant for facilities like cable landing stations and carrier-neutral interconnection hubs, where domestic and global networks converge. An attack at one point of interconnection can trigger far-reaching disruptions.

Preparation, Safety, and Recovery: A Resilient Approach

At NJFX, cybersecurity is not just a compliance requirement—it’s a culture of vigilance. Our approach is built on three key pillars:

1. Preparation

• Ongoing employee training and awareness programs

• Updated security protocols aligned with industry standards

• Regular vulnerability assessments and proactive network monitoring

2. Safety

• Strong access control measures and 24/7 security operations

• Physical security integration with digital threat protection

• Strict procedures for managing and maintaining customer equipment and systems

3. Recovery

• Comprehensive incident response planning

• Cross-team coordination to minimize downtime

• Redundant pathways and diverse connectivity options to maintain resilience even during disruptive events

By reinforcing these measures, we help ensure that the communications infrastructure supporting regional, national, and global networks remains secure and reliable.