Sen. Ted Cruz says the Biden administration in its new budget proposes to slash funding to protect the undersea cables that carry more than 95% of the world’s international data even as it seeks to pour more resources into diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

In a letter on Thursday to retired Navy Rear Adm. Ann Phillips, head of the U.S. Maritime Administration, the Texas Republican demanded to know why the White House has decided to defund the Cable Security Fleet, or CSF, program. Last year, senior Russian officials suggested their forces should take out the undersea communications links between Europe and the U.S. amid the growing tensions over the Kremlin’s war with Ukraine.

“Undersea cables form the backbone of modern communications and the global internet, carrying virtually all transoceanic digital commerce and communications, including sensitive government and military communications,” Mr. Cruz wrote. “Any disruption to these cables puts national and economic security at risk.”

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The cable security program helps sustain a fleet of commercial vessels that lay, repair and maintain underwater communications and power cables. Congress authorized $10 million annually for the CSF program to contract with two cable vessels from 2021 to 2035. Despite the authorization, the Maritime Administration’s budget for fiscal 2025 requests no funding for the program, Mr. Cruz said.

The agency’s 2025 budget request does include, however, millions in added funds to implement the White House’s executive orders on race, equity and environmental justice. Mr. Cruz said the agency has asked for more than $1 million to hire 11 full-time positions to provide support for diversity and equity priorities and $16 million to address environmental issues and “mitigate the impact of climate change.”

“The administration’s request to zero out the CSF program is puzzling considering the uptick in threats to undersea cables,” Mr. Cruz said.

The undersea cables are sometimes called “the world’s information super-highways.” The European Parliament called the network a critical infrastructure and said the global economy and worldwide digital services are fully dependent on it.

“Since cables lay out at sea, across national borders, and are often hidden underground, they have frequently been forgotten and received limited attention from policymakers,” European parliamentarians said in a June 2022 report.

After years of warnings about the vulnerability of undersea cables, NATO officials this past May hosted the first meeting of the new Critical Undersea Infrastructure Network. The group said it is putting in place new tools to enhance the security of undersea cables and to monitor potential threats.

Mr. Cruz said the U.S. will have to rely on foreign cable repair ships if the CSF program goes unfunded, posing what he said was a security threat because underwater cables are vulnerable to tampering.

“Other countries could tap undersea data streams, conduct reconnaissance on U.S. military communication links, or steal valuable intellectual property used in cable equipment,” he wrote in the letter.

Mr. Cruz requested a meeting with Maritime Administration officials about threats to the undersea communications networks and what the White House will do to protect them without the Cable Security Fleet program.