In the early days of the epidemic, I began to think about the idea of recovery. I found a story about the cable repair container, Lyon Thievin, who came to the cable breaking the western coast of Africa. The cable, which was broken in the depths of the sea, caused a worrying slowdown and possibly fought in Internet connections in West and South Africa.
The rest seemed to be a reasonable metaphor for our broken times: the cable was cut during a surrounded ground collapse, depositing huge floods in the Congo River. It took more than a month to find the rupture and complete the repair. The idea of a cable bearing all our data under the sea, at the time, appeared to be a historical paradox in this digital age. After all, it seems that everything on my computer lives in the cloud.
The ads suggested that my phone photographed his information to the top, fertilizer, and then bounced it to the ground. The night sky was covered with moving satellites. Even my printer was wireless. However, I quickly learned that most of our information was actually moving along the cold wet floors in the silent seas, and that the cables were more vulnerable to than I was imagining. In fact, I – Ludette Virtual Ludet – has managed for three years to search, to imagine a reasonable plan that could download a large part of the Internet in the world.
It is estimated that more than 95 % of the world’s continental information is transmitted across the underwater cable that is not larger than the tubes in the back of the toilet. Inside these cables, there are small strands of optical fiber and eyelashes. Working data cables of more than 500 people in the world not only carry our emails and phone calls, but also carry the majority of financial transactions in the world, which are worth $ 10 trillion per day. Of course, they also carry all our simple desires and brackets, emojis, porn, tiktoks, and data fog. They are, mainly, our technological ropes.
The world’s Elon Musks may want to believe that Starlink is the true wave of the future, but satellites are slower and much more expensive, and most experts say we will use underwater cable systems at least at the next three decades. However, the cables should be broken, like all of us, sometimes. Fishing vessels can disrupt a wire. The coordinated anchor of cruise ships can be accurate. An underwater earthquake or ground breakdown can pick up the cable deep in the district area. Or, as it happened increasingly in the past year, they can be sabotaged by actors and terrorists in the country that belongs to the disruption of political, social and financial rhythms of a already troubled world.
Historically, the cables in Taiwan, Vietnam and Egypt were all vulnerable to breakage and sabotage. Last year, the Houthi rebels in Yemen were accused of cutting three cables under the Red Sea. In January, British Defense Secretary John Healy accused the Russian ships of spying on the site of the surface of communication and benefit cables that connect Britain to the rest of the world. Chinese and Russian tankers were accused of withdrawing the anchor on the optical fiber cables in the Baltic Sea, causing damage in Finland, Estonia, Germany and other NATO lands. All this, in essence, the Cold Water War hastened. In 2023, former Russian President and Putin’s ally Dmitry Medvedev said that there are no longer any restrictions “to prevent us from destroying the cable contacts of our enemies.”
Cables – often assembled together – come to our beaches via landing stations. These are the coastal buildings mainly, in suburban areas. It appears like a low window pulp. The decline stations in general have minimal security. Even in the New York region, the landing stations are protected by more than one camera and sometimes a chain binding fence. During the epidemic, I managed to reach the Long Island Landing Station and stand directly over the opening of the opening of the opening as the cables came across the Atlantic Ocean. With Marmar, I could get down and not, and I felt the information pulse in the world that is going through reach.
But sabotage at a small level will not disrupt our wide information flow. One of the beauty of the Internet is that it is self -floating, and this means that the information, when it is banned, only travels in a new direction. But a chain of coordinated attacks on landing stations, along with some low -level sabotage in the sea (innovative diver can easily be able to cut the cable), which are strengthened by some deep sabotage (cutting cables using ropes and cutting low grapes from boats), in fact, brings global economies to Halmsal Halt.
The idea of global removal may seem somewhat far for some, and the world is more likely to fall into fishing, but again we did not expect the planes that fly to the skyscrapers in the first part of the century. The next 9/11 may happen underwater, with a series of local and international attacks simultaneously. Some strategically placed boats, a handful of divers and sabotage teams on the ground can send the world to a evil tail.
The depths of the depths of the seas are more concerned because it may take several weeks repair boat to find a break and start repair. The continent of Africa, for example, depends on a small number of major cable systems that operate along the eastern and western coasts. If the cables are cut at one time, the entire continent can decrease. The collapse can affect almost everywhere: if Africa, the Baltic Sea, or the Philippines have become isolated, then observance will be feeling all over the world.
Information can lead to editing. But control can also become a new form of colonialism. Once, we had ships. Now we have fragile tubes. This is especially frightening in a world where no nation wants to be the police anymore. The International Cable Protection Committee is an effective hall, but it is a forum more than a legislative organization. The task of reform is always located to private companies. Cables owned by network operators (Subcom, Alcatel, Nippon Electric Co.), but the growing content providers (Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta) put their money in the cable to ensure their databases are bonded.
We are connected, and we settled each other, but sometimes these communications can be shining on a non -protected chain. If a novelist who has challenged technology can discover a system of damage-there is nothing to reveal here that exceeds the parties of anyone-it is time for us to re-evaluate our systems, or at least to realize what can be revealed, or decipher.
Colom McCane is the author of the novel recently.development“