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I'm curious how vulnerable these under sea cables are. IE if there was a war, surely a few subs could snip a dozen cables and break the internet into pieces. Is
by rb808 9y ago
I'm curious how vulnerable these under sea cables are. IE if there was a war, surely a few subs could snip a dozen cables and break the internet into pieces. Is that wrong?
- msl 9y agoSubmarine cables have actually been tapped in the past, so cutting them should not be much of a challenge. Blind Man's Bluff [1] is a book about this kind of thing (and all sorts of weird things that involve intelligence operations performed with submarines). It is one of those books that would not work if it were fiction: too unrealistic. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42343.Blind_Man_s_Bluff https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42343.Blind_Man_s_Bluff
- froindt 9y agoI have a buddy who is working on a sub. He couldn't really say what he was doing with much detail, but recommended this book. He says it contains a lot of secret info which was acquired by the author basically becoming friends with lots of submariners and them over time mentioning things. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list.
- walrus01 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter it's been modified to do something interesting, though whether that involves messing with the russian version of the SOSUS network, or tapping undersea fiber cables, is certainly classified at a very high level.
- Declanomous 9y agoKind of ironic considering Carter has a Nobel Peace Prize.
- walrus01 9y agoNot really - he was a submarine nuke engineer before going into politics.
- pjmorris 9y agoI've got a friend in the sub force. He recommended 'Blind Man's Bluff'.
- NeutronStar 9y agoConsidering Starlink et al., thoses cables won't be as needed in the future hopefully.
- walrus01 9y agoany additional satellite capacity is good, but that's comparing apples to oranges. the capacity of any satellite/RF based system will be significantly less than submarine fiber. the capacity of one singlemode strand of fiber is measured in the hundreds of terahertz. Just one strand can support a ridiculous number (40+) of 100/200/400 GbE, coherent modulated signals in a DWDM bandplan.
- lolc 9y agoI found it interesting to read that Starlink will use optical links between satellites. You don't need fibers in space. Aim well and your bandwidth per watt will be comparable to fiber on earth. I don't know about the capacity through the atmosphere which is what you're getting at I assume.
- jakobegger 9y agoNo. The point is that you can increase capacity of a fiber link by adding more fibers. Each fiber is an independent link. With radio, you have just a single link between two points, and you can‘t just put two dishes next to another because of diffraction.
- zamfi 9y agoI think lolc was referring to optical links in space specifically — no radio involved. No fiber necessary (or possible) because of line of sight.
- cbhl 9y agoAn earth-to-space optical link would still suffer from diffraction, right? As I understand it, this is also the same reason why it's dangerous to point laser pointers at airplanes.
- ksec 9y agoSame thought. But So why was it cut?
- pm90 9y agoI think for the world to get to a state where nations with submarines are engaging in an actual war will be one where we will have bigger problems to worry about.
- dogma1138 9y agoThere are considerably more nations with submarines than there are nuclear powers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submarine_operators https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submarine_operators Also these cables are very vulnerable in littoral waters which means that even surface vessels should be able to damage them with either existing arsenal or something they jerryrig. Push comes to shove even technical diving can be sufficient.
- sorokod 9y agoI seem to remember that one of the first offencive actions by the English against the Germans in WWI was cutting the German communications cables in the Atlantic. Ref: https://warandsecurity.com/2014/08/05/britain-cuts-german-cable-communications-5-august-1914/ https://warandsecurity.com/2014/08/05/britain-cuts-german-ca...
- lithos 9y agoFishing trawling and cargo ships(their anchor) not paying attention have had the same effect. If you only care about cutting why bother with a submarine, when you can just find an idiot.
- coldacid 9y agoThe drag-and-tear of anchor damage on a submarine cable is probably a lot more damaging than cutting that would be done by specialized military equipment, too.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoYup; if there ever is another major war, a lot of infrastructure that was built in the past 30 years will be destroyed - internet, internet companies/datacenters, sattelite networks, mobile phone networks, etc.
- rb808 9y agoYeah actually if you could take out a dozen AWS data centers most of the internet would be out.