Future Leaders Competition 2026: Winning Essay – Marc-Antoine Prévost

Resilience by Accident, Not by Design: Are Current Policies Enough to Protect Communications Networks from Disruption?

By Marc-Antoine Prévost

Abstract:
Communications networks are treated as critical national infrastructure, yet the policies meant to protect them have largely been written after a failure rather than ahead of one. Drawing on the 2025 Red Sea cable cuts, Hurricane Melissa’s devastation of Jamaica, and Canada’s 2022 Rogers outage, this essay argues that current network-resilience policy is necessary but structurally insufficient. Three weaknesses recur across jurisdictions: a reactive posture that responds to incidents instead of preventing them; a siloed governance model that separates physical security, cyber security, supply-chain integrity, and power dependency; and an over-reliance on voluntary commitments from operators. Examining both infrastructure protection (undersea, terrestrial, and data-centre) and supply-chain diversification, the essay weighs the case for restraint against the evidence of fragility, and proposes a shift toward resilience that is designed in from the start, integrated across domains, adequately funded, and enforceable in practice.