In the early days of his pandema, I started to think about the idea of healing. I stumbled a story about a cable repair vessel Leon Thevenen, a cable repair vessel that participated in a cable break on the west coast of Africa. The deep -broken cable in the sea caused a worrying and potentially fatal slowdown in internet connections in the West and South Africa.
The break seemed like a reasonable metaphor for our broken times: the cable was caught during a collapsed ocean landslide by the great floods on the Congo River. It took more than a month to find the ship rupture and complete my repair. The idea of a cable carrying all our data under the sea came to me as a touch of a touch in our digital age. After all, everything on my computer seemed to live in the cloud.
The ads argued that my phone has taken its information upwards, and then returned to the world. My night sky was peppered with moving satellites. Even my printer was wireless. However, I would soon learn that most of our information moved along the cold wet floors of our silent seas, and that the cables were much more vulnerable than I could imagine. In fact, I – during the three -year research – a virtual luddite – I was able to imagine a reasonable plan that could reduce a good part of the world’s internet.
It is estimated that more than 95% of the world’s intercontinental information passes through underwater cables that are not larger than the pipes behind your toilet. In these cables, there are small wires of a eyelash width, fiber optic material. More than 500 working data cables in the world carry not only our e-mails and phone calls, but also most of the financial transactions of the world, which is estimated to be worth 10 trillion dollars a day. Of course, they carry all our little desires and beliefs, emojis, porn, tiktox, data smoke. Essentially, our technological umbilical cords are our cords.
The world’s Elon Musks may want us to believe that Starlink is the real wave of the future, but satellites are slower and much more expensive, and most experts say we will use underwater cable systems for at least the next thirty years. Nevertheless, cables should be broken sometimes like all of us. Fishing trolls can wear a wire. The anchors falling from cruise ships may cause precise damage. The underwater earthquake or landslide cable may in -depth in the cliff area. Or, as last year, as it was more and more, they can be sabotaged by state actors and terrorists, who have already focused on disrupting the political, social and financial rhythms of a turbulent world.
Historically, all the cables in Taiwan, Vietnam and Egypt were vulnerable to breaking 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 Healey accused Russian ships of espionage about the location of submarine communication and useful cables connecting England to the rest of the world. China and Russian carriers are accused of dragging anchor over the fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea and caused damage to Finland, Estonia, Germany and other NATO regions. All this has accelerated a cold water war. In 2023, the former Russian President and close Putin Ally Dmitry Medvedev said that there is no longer restriction in order to prevent our enemies from eliminating the ocean floor cable communication ”.
Cables – usually many are collected together – coming to our shores through landing stations. These are actually the coastline buildings in the suburban areas. They look like low -curved windowless bungalows. Landing stations usually have minimum security. Even in the New York region, landing stations are more protected from a camera and sometimes a chain connection fence. During the PANDEM, I was able to access a long Island inteling station and focused on the manhole cover where the cables came before the Atlantic. I could reach and touch them with a lever, I felt that the knowledge of the world was traveling from my fingertips.
However, a small level of sabotage will never disrupt our major information flow. One of the beauties of the Internet is self -healing, that is, when knowledge is blocked, it only goes in a new direction. However, by combining the landing stations with some low -level sabotage at sea (a masterful diver can be quite able to cut a cable), it can bring the world economy together with some deep sea sabotage (lowering dates and cut off from boats).
The idea of lifting from a global broadcast may seem a little distant to some, and the world is at more risk for fishing trolls that drop the diameter, but we didn’t expect the planes flying to skyscrapers at the beginning of the century. The next large 9/11 can be under water with a series of local and global attacks at the same time. A few strategically placed boats, a handful of divers and several land sabotage teams can send the world to a vicious tail point.
Deep sea sabotage is the most worrying, because it can take a few weeks of repair boat to find a break and start a correction. For example, the African continent is based on few large cable systems working on the east and west coasts. If the cables break with simultaneously, the entire continent may fall. And a malfunction can affect almost everywhere: If the African or Baltic Sea or Philippines were to be isolated, reflections would be felt all over the world.
Information can lead to salvation. However, control can become a new form of colonization. We once had ships. Now we have fragile tubes. This is frightening in a world where no one wants to be a policeman. The International Cable Protection Committee is an effective lobby, but it is more than a legislature. The repair task almost always falls to private enterprises. Cables belong to network operators (Subcom, Alcatel, Nippon Electric Co.), but more and more content providers (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta) put their money into cables to connect data centers.
We are connected and connected to each other, but sometimes these connections can be hung in a string that is not very protected. If a novelist who struggles with technology can find a damage system-and nothing I put forward here is not beyond the end of everyone’s fingers-perhaps it is time to re-evaluate our systems or at least to be aware of what can be revealed or solved.
Colum McCann is the author of the latest novel “Bend. “
