Torsten Benner
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
Funnily enough, in criminal code, punishment for accidentally severing these cables or even intentionally is somewhat negligible. So that's not really the issue. The issue is political responsibility. I mean, it is clear from circumstantial evidence, and the German defense minister has said this, this was no accident. Not two cables cut, not in such a kind of seemingly deliberate way.
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
So the question is, who is behind this? And the working hypothesis of the prosecutors right now, that is indeed Russia that may be behind, that may have bribed or blackmailed the captain and incentivized the captain to do this sabotage operation. But we just don't know whether there's any evidence
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
Evidence that European prosecutors have for this hypothesis, we're unlikely to know the exact details anytime soon.
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
The lessons are we need to invest in both better deterrence and also resilience. Deterrence means our ways to actually do surveillance to make it more likely that any perpetrator gets caught and that we can do attribution of who did it. That would deter future even gray zone aggression. And then once we know who did it, you know, those also need to pay a price. Russia did it.
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
There's ways to get back at Russia for other gray zone aggressions. I mean, the Skripal case was not negotiated in court, but there were political and other reactions, some publicized and some non-publicized. So to deter future aggression, that's the first thing. we need to invest in. But the second thing we need to invest in is much more resilience of these cable networks.
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
And we also need much more capacity to then repair cables quickly.
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
It's a resolution of a longstanding diplomatic standoff. In mid-November, two vital submarine data cables between different European countries had been cut and immediately the suspicion fell on a Chinese cargo ship, the Yipang-3.
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
And unlike a year ago, where there was another suspected Chinese vessel that then sailed away to Russia and China, this time around, European authorities reacted quickly and held up the ship and made it anchor in Danish waters. So they negotiated with the Chinese authorities. And this is the resolution. The Chinese conduct an investigation and the European countries involved observe.
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
What comes out of this is unclear, but there's a promise that after this investigation, the Chinese vessel can then sail on back to China.