15 ms·

What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like

542 points by ingve 2y ago

jamesblonde 2y ago
TLDR; it probably wasn't the russians, most likely a trawler.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  This was January 2022. Didn’t the alleged Russian interference happen later, during the invasion of Ukraine?
  - defluct 2y ago
    Maybe you're thinking about Nord Stream
    - jhugo 2y ago
      What would the Russian motivation be for blowing that up? They could have just turned off the gas supply.
      - omnibrain 2y ago
        They left one pipe of NS2. It would have been a political victory for Putin with humiliation of the German government if they had switched to this instead of stopping gas imports via NS1&2 completely.
      - luuurker 2y ago
        I don't know who did it, but it helped to increase gas prices and Russia is a seller.
      - doublepg23 2y ago
        [flagged]
        ajsnigrutin 2y ago
        [flagged]
        lamontcg 2y ago
        The Ukrainians are flying drones filled with explosives into Russian refineries and we still don't think it was just the Ukrainians taking out the Russian gas pipeline?
        austhrow743 2y ago
        That's a good reason to think it wasn't Ukraine not that it was. They're in open war with Russia, are openly attacking their resource infrastructure, and are frequently posting excellent high quality footage of it. Taking out the gas pipeline and then not using the attack for propaganda doesn't fit either their situation or their actions.
        lamontcg 2y ago
        The pipeline had the additional complication that it was supplying heating fuel to Europe. Bragging about it to the Germans would have probably been a bad idea.
        Sabinus 2y ago
        That's the thing though, at the time it wasn't supplying gas. Gazprom said it was having 'technical difficulties' (that the German equipment manufacturer denied) and had reduced the flows over time to zero to put pressure on the Europeans through high winter gas prices and low supplies. Your broader point is correct though, admitting to blowing it up would be bad press to any party.
      - generj 2y ago
        The argument I remember goes something like this (and I could be remembering it wrong). They claimed technical problems prevented them from fulfilling the amount of gas required by their contract for NS1 and NS2. Due to sanctions they essentially had to provide gas for free - or at least in exchange for money they were unable to spend or access. The pipe blowing up potentially saved them from having to pay a penalty fee in the contract once the gas hadn’t been moving for X number of days.
        gjs4786 2y ago
        Why would Russia be concerned about a contract? Reminds me of a story on something like Unsolved Mysteries....lady had her husband killed because she was a christian, and thus, didn't believe in getting a divorce, and wanted to be with another man (his best friend.) And his friend went through with it...
- cess11 2y ago
  "NRK has previously reported how a Russian trawler crossed the Svalbad cable more than 140 times, and more than a dozen times before the damage occurred in January 2022. The shipowners have denied having anything to do with the damage." The norwegians seem to think it was a russian trawler and that trawler doesn't exclude the possiblity that russians did it.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Yeah the Russians also used "trawlers" to hide their recovery operations of KAL007 to hide their mass murder. Trawler does not mean unintentional or not state related.
    - berkes 2y ago
      Wow, the Russians shot down another plane. I never heard of KAL007 and thought MH17 was the first time this happened. Did any other nation states ever shoot down passenger airplanes?
      - arprocter 2y ago
        Full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...
      - yborg 2y ago
        Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 Siberia Airlines Flight 1812
      - dboreham 2y ago
        For completeness: the US navy shot down an Iranian airliner.
        astro-throw 2y ago
        The "full list" posted earlier has that one on it.
- stanislavb 2y ago
  A trawler driven by the Russians?
- lijok 2y ago
  If by "the russians" you mean russian defence, I can guarantee they would use something as inconspicuous as a trawler for the job rather than a combat vehicle
  - trhway 2y ago
    For the curious - google “tanker Minerva Julie Nord Stream”. While officially the tanker is Greek, it is tightly connected to Russia. I’d be looking for the key places in international waters and the likes needed to be cut simultaneously to say paralyze Europe banking and other infrastructure and would be checking whether there are Russian (and affiliated like that Minerva company) “trawlers” with a habit of hanging around those places.
- dagss 2y ago
  This article details how certain russian trawlers criss-crossed a lot over another cable in Norway that broke some time before... ...and then the same trawlers were in the vicinity of this cable in Svalbard when another trawler criss-crossed over it until it broke (In Norwegian but hopefully Google Translate will do an OK job and mainly graphics) https://www.nrk.no/nordland/xl/russiske-tralere-krysset-kabler-i-vesteralen-og-svalbard-for-brudd-1.16007084 https://www.nrk.no/nordland/xl/russiske-tralere-krysset-kabl...
  - holoduke 2y ago
    Criss crossing is quite normal behavior btw. I see it all the time here at the North Sea near England.
    - glitchcrab 2y ago
      Sure, but that also makes it an ideal cover story too.
      - staplers 2y ago
        Why would the russians care to have a cover story? They're in an open hot war with the west.
        austhrow743 2y ago
        They weren't at the time.
        trompetenaccoun 2y ago
        https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/us/politics/russia-sabotage-campaign-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/us/politics/russia-sabota... It's an open war with Ukraine only so far. And many are not aware of the wider geopolitics of it, they don't know their countries are at war with Russia. Open attacks would scare many of those people and make them more hostile towards the Russian side. As it stands many are more neutral and Putin even has a significant number of fans in the West.
- Rebelgecko 2y ago
  Does the Russian part of Svalbard depend on the cable for Internet?
Waterluvian 2y ago
> The current is used to amplify the fibre optic signals that flow through the 1300km long cables between the peninsula and the Norwegian mainland. This is magic to me. Anyone have a search term I could use to better understand how electricity is used to boost a fibre optic signal?
- orlp 2y ago
  The optical signal repeaters that are part of the cable every N kilometers need power to do their job.
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    Ohh there’s physical electronic repeaters. Okay. I thought this was some sort of electromagnetism witchcraft.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      It’s all witchcraft anyway. I’m not sure what they use exactly, but even photodiodes are pure witchcraft.
    - nbernard 2y ago
      There is still some witchcraft. Look up "optical pumping amplifier" for instance.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      They actually are witchcraft. They amplify the signal directly, without transforming it into electrical signal.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cricalix 2y ago
  "Fiber optic amplifier undersea" should do the trick. It's not that the power supply wrapped around/alongside the fiber does anything directly; it's being delivered to amplifiers. There's a hackaday article that's got some history in it.
next_xibalba 2y ago
> The critically important cable that connects Svalbard to the mainland is no thicker than a pinkie finger This is amazing. I wonder how much data per unit of time this is capable of transporting. Wikipedia says "Each segment has a speed of 10 gigabits per second (Gb/s), with a future potential capacity of 2,500 Gbit/s." [1] Wikipedia also notes that NASA helped fund this system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  I think NASA helped fund it because they wanted more (And more reliable) data to a groundstation on the island, not because this subsea cable is anything special. Fibre optic is great because you can usually add more bandwidth by lighting up another wavelength. The amplifiers don't need to be substituted if the wavelength is within its range.
  - _zoltan_ 2y ago
    I've wondered in the past: is there an actual theoretical upper limit based on the physicality of it on the bandwidth of a single fibre link?
    - dboreham 2y ago
      Shannon bound. But it's very large. I don't think we're anywhere close with current DWDM emitter/detector technology.
      - candiddevmike 2y ago
        OS2 single mode fibre is pretty future proof. The transceivers may change, but the underlying cable should last a looong time and can be sliced and diced considerably with WDM (16+ channels AFAIK).
      - cycomanic 2y ago
        Actually we know that a single mode fibre (there would typically quite a lot of them in a cable) can carry around 100 Tb/s in the C band (used by most systems due to amplifier availability) over about 100km. Research systems have reached that limit and commercial systems are not very far off.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
Scoundreller 2y ago
Had a case in Canada where a fisherman ignored the maps and kept picking up a fibre optic line with their fishing gear, and eventually cut it with a saw (twice): (I suspect it was a short-haul line, so carried no electricity for amplifiers) https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2011/2011fc494/2011fc494.html https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2011/2011fc494/2011fc49... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peracomo_Inc_v_TELUS_Communications_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peracomo_Inc_v_TELUS_Communica... > In 2005, however, he managed to pull up the Sunoque I. He did not know what it was but managed to free his anchor > The next year, he again hooked an anchor on the Sunoque I. This time he was able to haul it out of the water and secure it on deck. He made no effort to free it. He deliberately cut the cable in two with an electric saw. A few days later the same thing happened. This time it was much easier to haul the cable out, and he cut it again. > Some weeks later, after the fishing season, while on the dock at Baie-Comeau he noticed a strange looking ship in the area where he usually fished. Later, he saw a photo of the ship in the local newspaper. The accompanying article stated that the cable had been deliberately cut and a search was on for the culprit.
- resolutebat 2y ago
  TL;DR of the court cases: the fisherman was guilty of damages to the tune of $1.2M, and his insurance cover was voided because his act was so reckless. Funnily enough, the cable owners (Telus) tried to thread the needle of making the owner liable, but not so badly that insurance wouldn't pay for it. The judge didn't buy this, and obviously a sole operator crab boat can't pay over a million in damages (although he did lose his boat), so in the end everybody except the insurance company got screwed.
  - cma 2y ago
    Seems like the insurance would still pay but he loses his boat to the insurance company at that point, assuming carrying insurance was part of his fishing license.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Due to problems with moral hazard, insurance generally doesn’t cover anything illegal done intentionally or due to extreme (willful) recklessness/negligence. Hard to argue that wasn’t what the fisherman was doing at the point he was sawing a cable in half using a saw he’s already dredged up several times.
swader999 2y ago
This has sea monster written all over it.
- mcswell 2y ago
  Alien sea monsters!
mschuster91 2y ago
Let's assume that these incidents actually were accidents, there's still a bigger question open: why is trawler fishing still allowed? Imagine it's not a fiber cable that ends up being crushed by a trawl door... but all the other marine life: Fish can swim away (or not, being the point of getting fished), but plants, corals, bugs? Trawler fishing is devastating for the local ecology, we just don't see the damage - to quote [1], page 16: > Seabed habitats are under significant pressure across European seas from the cumulative impacts of demersal fishing, coastal developments and other activities. Preliminary results from a study presented in SWD(2020) indicate that about 43% of Europe’s shelf/slope area and 79% of the coastal seabed is considered to be physically disturbed, which is mainly caused by bottom trawling. A quarter of the EU’s coastal area has probably lost its seabed habitats. Honestly I'm pretty much in favor of banning trawler fishing and the import of trawler-fished fish into the European Union, even if it's just to protect our fiber links. [1] https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/720778d4-bb17-4248-a5b3-4d5f66fc9e2c_en?filename=com2020_259_final_en.pdf&prefLang=de https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/720778d4-bb17...
- steve_adams_86 2y ago
  I agree. The more you learn about trawling the less you’ll understand why it’s still permitted in so many places. Where I live it’s cut back dramatically, but the bizarre thing is that it’s strictly permitted in territories where we know rare deep sea glass sponge reefs exist, and once thrived. These reefs are islands of immense diversity and biomass which fed huge numbers of transient species moving through the deep. They were also nurseries for a large number of fish species we commonly fish for. We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little to properly protect the resources they extract from a holistic perspective.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little to properly protect the resources they extract from a holistic perspective. Our fish industry is really well connected politically and the large players exactly know how to play the fiddle, and any attempt to hold the foreign ones accountable with actually working and appropriate measures (it's highly likely that it will take live ammunition or an intentional collision, at least in legally "open" seas) would likely result in WW3.
adolph 2y ago
This reminds me of a story in "Blind Man's Bluff," summary: [Capt James F. Bradley Jr.] was at his office in Naval Intelligence one day at 3 a.m. when the St. Louis native began reflecting on his boyhood life on the Mississippi River. As he later told the authors, he recalled that the river beach was dotted with signs warning, “Cable Crossing — Do Not Anchor,” so a boater would not foul the cable. At that point, he wondered if the Soviets did not have similar signs along their Arctic coasts to prevent their critical cables, including those used by the KGB and the Soviet Northern Fleet, from being damaged. As a result of these ponderings, in 1971 the American submarine Halibut, with its periscope up, slowly and secretly traced the Siberian coast looking for telltale warning signs. The cable signs were found, and American divers put a tap at the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk on Soviet communications. https://stationhypo.com/2021/09/05/remembering-captain-james-f-bradley-jr-usn/ https://stationhypo.com/2021/09/05/remembering-captain-james...
- fbdab103 2y ago
  Is it possible to tap fiber-optic cables without the owner getting wise? Even if you could tap modern cables, I assume everything is now encrypted and carries so much bandwidth that it becomes possible to sample the interesting intelligence.
  - dooglius 2y ago
    Normal fiber optic can be tapped surreptitiously[0]. There are a number of companies that sell anti-intrusion tech, but it's hard to say which side is winning with respect to what governments can do. [0] https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/06149809-Optical_Fiber_Tapping_Methods__and_Precautions.pdf https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/06149809-Optical_...
  - gravescale 2y ago
    This is one of those ones where my instinct is "no": not only would you have to not cause an interruption or reflection that the break detection TDR systems could see, and crack any encryption, and sample what you want from the Tbps, all from a small box under the sea, but also you have to somehow get that data out and back to base, again from under the (mostly radio-opaque) sea and halfway around the world, all without even a whisper of a clue to the tappees. Then I remember how far ahead the likes of the NSA and NRO are compared to what we're familiar with, and become rather less sure. The Orion satellites have 100m radio dishes, and were first launched in the 90s. Two Hubble-like telescopes were so old hat that they were donated to NASA in 2012. Considering that the NRO is so secrecy-oriented that its very existence was classified until 1992 (it went 11 years completely undetected, and leaked via a New York Times article in 1971 and an accidental entry in a budget report in 1973) and no mission since 1972 is declassified, this says a lot about how much further on they are. Then again, if unattended taps were installed on cables, you'd also expect them to occasionally be found when lifting cables for repair. And they'd be so advanced that it might be worth lifting an entire cable to check for and acquire such a tap. Which means the tappers would think twice about putting one in, if they could then lose it.
Kon-Peki 2y ago
What, no mention that the Norwegian police use evidence markers with inches printed on them? That company sells them with CM markers.
- rwmj 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tadfisher 2y ago
    That line of thinking ultimately leads to the conclusion that trust is impossible. If you cannot trust the Norwegian police to produce accurate information, then you must trust the media. If you can't trust the media, then you have to trust strangers on the Internet. If you can't trust strangers on the Internet, you have to trust your friends and family. But what if they're informed by the corrupt police, media, or Internet commenters? Can you even trust yourself? Apply this logic elsewhere, and you cannot trust social institutions; for example, your local human services department when they come to warn you about your domicile being unfit for human habitation. Next, you can't trust the medical profession after you've been involuntarily committed to a mental institution after threatening the local schoolchildren (although we all know you were only warning them about the coming danger). You can't trust the state medical authority to regulate the medication that is used to treat paranoid schizophrenia. Now you're stuck in a padded room, unable to move your arms to scratch that incessant itch on your nose, pleading with your caretakers to just listen to reason, open their eyes to the truth. All you wanted to do was alert the world to the alarming fact that the United States obviously staged evidence that someone intentionally cut an undersea communications cable to Svalbard, Norway on the 7th of January, 2022.
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      You're not making a logical argument against the reasoning, you're just saying that a logical argument, ignoring probability at every level, leaves you helpless. Trusting things isn't a solution, it's a cop-out. Instead of a magic formula, you take things on a case-by-case basis, examining sources and possible motives of those sources, looking at past experience with them for hints. This sounds like work because it is. It's very easy to just accept what you're told, but it's not heroic or even reasonable. > All you wanted to do was alert the world to the alarming fact that the United States obviously staged evidence that someone intentionally cut an undersea communications cable to Svalbard, Norway on the 7th of January, 2022. Meanwhile, the United States government is like "that line of thinking ultimately leads to the conclusion that trust is impossible."
anonymousiam 2y ago
Historically, there's been a lot of mischief with the cables. https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/new-us-spy-sub-built-for-seabed-war-with-china/ https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/new-us-spy-sub-built-for-seabe...
debo_ 2y ago
Whoever named the time-traveling, world-saving X-Man from the future "Cable" was oddly prescient. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(character) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(character)
throwup238 2y ago
> Initially, the police stated that they believed the damages were caused by human activity. Later on, the investigation was dropped, due to lack of evidence.... > Several experts with extensive experience with submarine cables and installations have assessed the images for NRK. Their judgement is that the damage to the Svalbard fiber was due to the cables being crushed. Finally evidence that Godzilla is real!
tailspin2019 2y ago
I’m probably being really slow but I couldn’t really work out what the pictures are actually showing. I see a bunch of yellow cables and some with steel sheathing - I’m not really sure what I’m looking at? Are all those cables laid together or are these photos of just one actual cable that has been fully pulled up and coiled?
- db48x 2y ago
  Yes, that must be the coil of cable after they had started pulling it off of the seabed. The steel armoring is supposed to be a bunch of steel wires tightly wound around the cable, to protect it from damage.
jorisboris 2y ago
We once booked a night on Rebak Island, next to Langkawi, Malaysia. The day before our arrival I receive a call that a boat somehow broke the water pipe which lies on the bottom between Rebak and Langkawi, cutting the island off from fresh water, and whether I wanted to rebook to another hotel. Not sure what the moral of the story is, but it kinda fitted the context :)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bimguy 2y ago
Ah excellent, fishermen not only destroying the ocean but also the infrastructure of countries. When will peoples appetite for destroying the ocean be qualled?
- bjornasm 2y ago
  There might be things that point towards this not being totally by accident.
  - bimguy 2y ago
    Despite people downvoting me I did read the article. I don't assume this is all fisherman since that Chinese boat mentioned seems to be conveniently taking out cables and the Chinese gov is not responding to their investigation requests. Still doesn't change the fact that fishing operations destroy the ocean floors, a simple amount of research can confirm this.
cjrp 2y ago
Russian trawlers going back and forth in that area… https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514 https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514
- the_gipsy 2y ago
  While this looks alarming and makes an engaging tweet, I have no idea how regular trawling patterns look like. They might circle around fishing spot.
  - mgoetzke 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - HenryBemis 2y ago
      Plausible deniability because it works. As for the fishermen in that boat.. yeah.. totally innocent fishermen, and on that very spot they hit a 'school' of that one fish they were looking for, so they are fishing this 'school' and nothing else sinister going on keep walking (omitting commas on purpose)
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    Dave Barry made a similar observation about antismoking PSAs, objecting to one that had someone throw a diseased lung on a table. He pointed out that you could present any random internal organ and it would look just as bad: "This is what will happen to you if you keep smoking. Look! A perfectly healthy goat kidney!"
    - iopq 2y ago
      I think what had a big impact on me is they show both a healthy lung and a smoker's lung
      - Shrezzing 2y ago
        This was the big one for me too. The juxtaposed healthy versus unhealthy lungs resemble an uncooked chicken versus a roast chicken which was left in the oven for 30 minutes more than necessary. https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_28724349.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&width=990&quality=65&enable=upscale https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_28724349.jpg?crop...
bjornasm 2y ago
Just in case why people are wondering why cutting of internet for an arctic island is a big deal. What many might not know is that Svalbard is home to the northernmost satellite station in the world. It is just one of two stations that can communicate with polar orbiting satellites each day. ESA and NASA as well as other civilian organisations are present there, and the station communicates with well over a hundred satellites, and are pretty vital for much of the satellites that look back at us.
- mgoetzke 2y ago
  Time for a Starlink backup then
  - sunbum 2y ago
    That's not how satellites work.
    - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
      Starlink can act as a backup for the ground station utilizing the laser links.
      - chtitux 2y ago
        Maybe just use Starlink from the satellites, so we don't rely on a specific ground station. Starlink Ground Station Network is global, spread in many different countries and look more resilient than a single one.
        tedivm 2y ago
        That would require replacing all the satellites with new ones capable of doing that, which doesn't seem feasible. Starlink also doesn't have great coverage of the polar regions.
        2y ago
deleted 2y ago
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mortb 2y ago
What kind of international law can we expect in the future? A law that is constantly broken by various maleficent actors? Of course we've heard them complain that the current order is run by the west and harmful to others. What are the alternatives? A hundred cables?
- bell-cot 2y ago
  "constantly broken by various maleficent actors" is a pretty good description of the past of international law. There is no reason to expect the future to be any different.
- ThalesX 2y ago
  > According to Johnson the US has never endorsed the ICC because it's a "direct affront to our own sovereignty. [...] We don't put any international body above American sovereignty and Israel doesn't do that either," he added. God I have developed such a distaste for political opinions. Everyone thinks they're right and everyone sees the various maleficent actors in others. [0] https://www.jpost.com/international/article-802290 https://www.jpost.com/international/article-802290
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  "Real" international law would require a sovereign international government that is more powerful than any singular nation. You need to construct an entity that both the US and China make themselves fully subservient to. Good luck.
sschueller 2y ago
"anchor or a trawl is dragged across it" At this point this seems to be the most common cause of see cable damage. I guess the captains decide that it's worth dumping the anchor in a storm to protect the cargo even if the area "forbids" it.
PobedaRossia 2y ago
[flagged]

542 points by ingve 2y ago

jamesblonde 2y ago

TLDR; it probably wasn't the russians, most likely a trawler.

Waterluvian 2y ago
This was January 2022. Didn’t the alleged Russian interference happen later, during the invasion of Ukraine?
- defluct 2y ago
  Maybe you're thinking about Nord Stream
  - jhugo 2y ago
    What would the Russian motivation be for blowing that up? They could have just turned off the gas supply.
    - omnibrain 2y ago
      They left one pipe of NS2. It would have been a political victory for Putin with humiliation of the German government if they had switched to this instead of stopping gas imports via NS1&2 completely.
    - luuurker 2y ago
      I don't know who did it, but it helped to increase gas prices and Russia is a seller.
    - doublepg23 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - lamontcg 2y ago
        The Ukrainians are flying drones filled with explosives into Russian refineries and we still don't think it was just the Ukrainians taking out the Russian gas pipeline?
        austhrow743 2y ago
        That's a good reason to think it wasn't Ukraine not that it was. They're in open war with Russia, are openly attacking their resource infrastructure, and are frequently posting excellent high quality footage of it. Taking out the gas pipeline and then not using the attack for propaganda doesn't fit either their situation or their actions.
        lamontcg 2y ago
        The pipeline had the additional complication that it was supplying heating fuel to Europe. Bragging about it to the Germans would have probably been a bad idea.
        Sabinus 2y ago
        That's the thing though, at the time it wasn't supplying gas. Gazprom said it was having 'technical difficulties' (that the German equipment manufacturer denied) and had reduced the flows over time to zero to put pressure on the Europeans through high winter gas prices and low supplies. Your broader point is correct though, admitting to blowing it up would be bad press to any party.
    - generj 2y ago
      The argument I remember goes something like this (and I could be remembering it wrong). They claimed technical problems prevented them from fulfilling the amount of gas required by their contract for NS1 and NS2. Due to sanctions they essentially had to provide gas for free - or at least in exchange for money they were unable to spend or access. The pipe blowing up potentially saved them from having to pay a penalty fee in the contract once the gas hadn’t been moving for X number of days.
      - gjs4786 2y ago
        Why would Russia be concerned about a contract? Reminds me of a story on something like Unsolved Mysteries....lady had her husband killed because she was a christian, and thus, didn't believe in getting a divorce, and wanted to be with another man (his best friend.) And his friend went through with it...
cess11 2y ago
"NRK has previously reported how a Russian trawler crossed the Svalbad cable more than 140 times, and more than a dozen times before the damage occurred in January 2022. The shipowners have denied having anything to do with the damage." The norwegians seem to think it was a russian trawler and that trawler doesn't exclude the possiblity that russians did it.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yeah the Russians also used "trawlers" to hide their recovery operations of KAL007 to hide their mass murder. Trawler does not mean unintentional or not state related.
  - berkes 2y ago
    Wow, the Russians shot down another plane. I never heard of KAL007 and thought MH17 was the first time this happened. Did any other nation states ever shoot down passenger airplanes?
    - arprocter 2y ago
      Full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...
    - yborg 2y ago
      Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 Siberia Airlines Flight 1812
    - dboreham 2y ago
      For completeness: the US navy shot down an Iranian airliner.
      - astro-throw 2y ago
        The "full list" posted earlier has that one on it.
stanislavb 2y ago
A trawler driven by the Russians?
lijok 2y ago
If by "the russians" you mean russian defence, I can guarantee they would use something as inconspicuous as a trawler for the job rather than a combat vehicle
- trhway 2y ago
  For the curious - google “tanker Minerva Julie Nord Stream”. While officially the tanker is Greek, it is tightly connected to Russia. I’d be looking for the key places in international waters and the likes needed to be cut simultaneously to say paralyze Europe banking and other infrastructure and would be checking whether there are Russian (and affiliated like that Minerva company) “trawlers” with a habit of hanging around those places.
dagss 2y ago
This article details how certain russian trawlers criss-crossed a lot over another cable in Norway that broke some time before... ...and then the same trawlers were in the vicinity of this cable in Svalbard when another trawler criss-crossed over it until it broke (In Norwegian but hopefully Google Translate will do an OK job and mainly graphics) https://www.nrk.no/nordland/xl/russiske-tralere-krysset-kabler-i-vesteralen-og-svalbard-for-brudd-1.16007084 https://www.nrk.no/nordland/xl/russiske-tralere-krysset-kabl...
- holoduke 2y ago
  Criss crossing is quite normal behavior btw. I see it all the time here at the North Sea near England.
  - glitchcrab 2y ago
    Sure, but that also makes it an ideal cover story too.
    - staplers 2y ago
      Why would the russians care to have a cover story? They're in an open hot war with the west.
      - austhrow743 2y ago
        They weren't at the time.
      - trompetenaccoun 2y ago
        https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/us/politics/russia-sabotage-campaign-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/us/politics/russia-sabota... It's an open war with Ukraine only so far. And many are not aware of the wider geopolitics of it, they don't know their countries are at war with Russia. Open attacks would scare many of those people and make them more hostile towards the Russian side. As it stands many are more neutral and Putin even has a significant number of fans in the West.
Rebelgecko 2y ago
Does the Russian part of Svalbard depend on the cable for Internet?

Waterluvian 2y ago

> The current is used to amplify the fibre optic signals that flow through the 1300km long cables between the peninsula and the Norwegian mainland. This is magic to me. Anyone have a search term I could use to better understand how electricity is used to boost a fibre optic signal?

orlp 2y ago
The optical signal repeaters that are part of the cable every N kilometers need power to do their job.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  Ohh there’s physical electronic repeaters. Okay. I thought this was some sort of electromagnetism witchcraft.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    It’s all witchcraft anyway. I’m not sure what they use exactly, but even photodiodes are pure witchcraft.
  - nbernard 2y ago
    There is still some witchcraft. Look up "optical pumping amplifier" for instance.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    They actually are witchcraft. They amplify the signal directly, without transforming it into electrical signal.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cricalix 2y ago
"Fiber optic amplifier undersea" should do the trick. It's not that the power supply wrapped around/alongside the fiber does anything directly; it's being delivered to amplifiers. There's a hackaday article that's got some history in it.

next_xibalba 2y ago

> The critically important cable that connects Svalbard to the mainland is no thicker than a pinkie finger This is amazing. I wonder how much data per unit of time this is capable of transporting. Wikipedia says "Each segment has a speed of 10 gigabits per second (Gb/s), with a future potential capacity of 2,500 Gbit/s." [1] Wikipedia also notes that NASA helped fund this system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System

Scoundreller 2y ago
I think NASA helped fund it because they wanted more (And more reliable) data to a groundstation on the island, not because this subsea cable is anything special. Fibre optic is great because you can usually add more bandwidth by lighting up another wavelength. The amplifiers don't need to be substituted if the wavelength is within its range.
- _zoltan_ 2y ago
  I've wondered in the past: is there an actual theoretical upper limit based on the physicality of it on the bandwidth of a single fibre link?
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Shannon bound. But it's very large. I don't think we're anywhere close with current DWDM emitter/detector technology.
    - candiddevmike 2y ago
      OS2 single mode fibre is pretty future proof. The transceivers may change, but the underlying cable should last a looong time and can be sliced and diced considerably with WDM (16+ channels AFAIK).
    - cycomanic 2y ago
      Actually we know that a single mode fibre (there would typically quite a lot of them in a cable) can carry around 100 Tb/s in the C band (used by most systems due to amplifier availability) over about 100km. Research systems have reached that limit and commercial systems are not very far off.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

Scoundreller 2y ago

Had a case in Canada where a fisherman ignored the maps and kept picking up a fibre optic line with their fishing gear, and eventually cut it with a saw (twice): (I suspect it was a short-haul line, so carried no electricity for amplifiers) https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2011/2011fc494/2011fc494.html https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2011/2011fc494/2011fc49... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peracomo_Inc_v_TELUS_Communications_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peracomo_Inc_v_TELUS_Communica... > In 2005, however, he managed to pull up the Sunoque I. He did not know what it was but managed to free his anchor > The next year, he again hooked an anchor on the Sunoque I. This time he was able to haul it out of the water and secure it on deck. He made no effort to free it. He deliberately cut the cable in two with an electric saw. A few days later the same thing happened. This time it was much easier to haul the cable out, and he cut it again. > Some weeks later, after the fishing season, while on the dock at Baie-Comeau he noticed a strange looking ship in the area where he usually fished. Later, he saw a photo of the ship in the local newspaper. The accompanying article stated that the cable had been deliberately cut and a search was on for the culprit.

resolutebat 2y ago
TL;DR of the court cases: the fisherman was guilty of damages to the tune of $1.2M, and his insurance cover was voided because his act was so reckless. Funnily enough, the cable owners (Telus) tried to thread the needle of making the owner liable, but not so badly that insurance wouldn't pay for it. The judge didn't buy this, and obviously a sole operator crab boat can't pay over a million in damages (although he did lose his boat), so in the end everybody except the insurance company got screwed.
- cma 2y ago
  Seems like the insurance would still pay but he loses his boat to the insurance company at that point, assuming carrying insurance was part of his fishing license.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Due to problems with moral hazard, insurance generally doesn’t cover anything illegal done intentionally or due to extreme (willful) recklessness/negligence. Hard to argue that wasn’t what the fisherman was doing at the point he was sawing a cable in half using a saw he’s already dredged up several times.

swader999 2y ago

This has sea monster written all over it.

mcswell 2y ago
Alien sea monsters!

mschuster91 2y ago

Let's assume that these incidents actually were accidents, there's still a bigger question open: why is trawler fishing still allowed? Imagine it's not a fiber cable that ends up being crushed by a trawl door... but all the other marine life: Fish can swim away (or not, being the point of getting fished), but plants, corals, bugs? Trawler fishing is devastating for the local ecology, we just don't see the damage - to quote [1], page 16: > Seabed habitats are under significant pressure across European seas from the cumulative impacts of demersal fishing, coastal developments and other activities. Preliminary results from a study presented in SWD(2020) indicate that about 43% of Europe’s shelf/slope area and 79% of the coastal seabed is considered to be physically disturbed, which is mainly caused by bottom trawling. A quarter of the EU’s coastal area has probably lost its seabed habitats. Honestly I'm pretty much in favor of banning trawler fishing and the import of trawler-fished fish into the European Union, even if it's just to protect our fiber links. [1] https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/720778d4-bb17-4248-a5b3-4d5f66fc9e2c_en?filename=com2020_259_final_en.pdf&prefLang=de https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/720778d4-bb17...

steve_adams_86 2y ago
I agree. The more you learn about trawling the less you’ll understand why it’s still permitted in so many places. Where I live it’s cut back dramatically, but the bizarre thing is that it’s strictly permitted in territories where we know rare deep sea glass sponge reefs exist, and once thrived. These reefs are islands of immense diversity and biomass which fed huge numbers of transient species moving through the deep. They were also nurseries for a large number of fish species we commonly fish for. We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little to properly protect the resources they extract from a holistic perspective.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little to properly protect the resources they extract from a holistic perspective. Our fish industry is really well connected politically and the large players exactly know how to play the fiddle, and any attempt to hold the foreign ones accountable with actually working and appropriate measures (it's highly likely that it will take live ammunition or an intentional collision, at least in legally "open" seas) would likely result in WW3.

adolph 2y ago

This reminds me of a story in "Blind Man's Bluff," summary: [Capt James F. Bradley Jr.] was at his office in Naval Intelligence one day at 3 a.m. when the St. Louis native began reflecting on his boyhood life on the Mississippi River. As he later told the authors, he recalled that the river beach was dotted with signs warning, “Cable Crossing — Do Not Anchor,” so a boater would not foul the cable. At that point, he wondered if the Soviets did not have similar signs along their Arctic coasts to prevent their critical cables, including those used by the KGB and the Soviet Northern Fleet, from being damaged. As a result of these ponderings, in 1971 the American submarine Halibut, with its periscope up, slowly and secretly traced the Siberian coast looking for telltale warning signs. The cable signs were found, and American divers put a tap at the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk on Soviet communications. https://stationhypo.com/2021/09/05/remembering-captain-james-f-bradley-jr-usn/ https://stationhypo.com/2021/09/05/remembering-captain-james...

fbdab103 2y ago
Is it possible to tap fiber-optic cables without the owner getting wise? Even if you could tap modern cables, I assume everything is now encrypted and carries so much bandwidth that it becomes possible to sample the interesting intelligence.
- dooglius 2y ago
  Normal fiber optic can be tapped surreptitiously[0]. There are a number of companies that sell anti-intrusion tech, but it's hard to say which side is winning with respect to what governments can do. [0] https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/06149809-Optical_Fiber_Tapping_Methods__and_Precautions.pdf https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/06149809-Optical_...
- gravescale 2y ago
  This is one of those ones where my instinct is "no": not only would you have to not cause an interruption or reflection that the break detection TDR systems could see, and crack any encryption, and sample what you want from the Tbps, all from a small box under the sea, but also you have to somehow get that data out and back to base, again from under the (mostly radio-opaque) sea and halfway around the world, all without even a whisper of a clue to the tappees. Then I remember how far ahead the likes of the NSA and NRO are compared to what we're familiar with, and become rather less sure. The Orion satellites have 100m radio dishes, and were first launched in the 90s. Two Hubble-like telescopes were so old hat that they were donated to NASA in 2012. Considering that the NRO is so secrecy-oriented that its very existence was classified until 1992 (it went 11 years completely undetected, and leaked via a New York Times article in 1971 and an accidental entry in a budget report in 1973) and no mission since 1972 is declassified, this says a lot about how much further on they are. Then again, if unattended taps were installed on cables, you'd also expect them to occasionally be found when lifting cables for repair. And they'd be so advanced that it might be worth lifting an entire cable to check for and acquire such a tap. Which means the tappers would think twice about putting one in, if they could then lose it.

Kon-Peki 2y ago

What, no mention that the Norwegian police use evidence markers with inches printed on them? That company sells them with CM markers.

rwmj 2y ago
[flagged]
- tadfisher 2y ago
  That line of thinking ultimately leads to the conclusion that trust is impossible. If you cannot trust the Norwegian police to produce accurate information, then you must trust the media. If you can't trust the media, then you have to trust strangers on the Internet. If you can't trust strangers on the Internet, you have to trust your friends and family. But what if they're informed by the corrupt police, media, or Internet commenters? Can you even trust yourself? Apply this logic elsewhere, and you cannot trust social institutions; for example, your local human services department when they come to warn you about your domicile being unfit for human habitation. Next, you can't trust the medical profession after you've been involuntarily committed to a mental institution after threatening the local schoolchildren (although we all know you were only warning them about the coming danger). You can't trust the state medical authority to regulate the medication that is used to treat paranoid schizophrenia. Now you're stuck in a padded room, unable to move your arms to scratch that incessant itch on your nose, pleading with your caretakers to just listen to reason, open their eyes to the truth. All you wanted to do was alert the world to the alarming fact that the United States obviously staged evidence that someone intentionally cut an undersea communications cable to Svalbard, Norway on the 7th of January, 2022.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    You're not making a logical argument against the reasoning, you're just saying that a logical argument, ignoring probability at every level, leaves you helpless. Trusting things isn't a solution, it's a cop-out. Instead of a magic formula, you take things on a case-by-case basis, examining sources and possible motives of those sources, looking at past experience with them for hints. This sounds like work because it is. It's very easy to just accept what you're told, but it's not heroic or even reasonable. > All you wanted to do was alert the world to the alarming fact that the United States obviously staged evidence that someone intentionally cut an undersea communications cable to Svalbard, Norway on the 7th of January, 2022. Meanwhile, the United States government is like "that line of thinking ultimately leads to the conclusion that trust is impossible."

anonymousiam 2y ago

Historically, there's been a lot of mischief with the cables. https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/new-us-spy-sub-built-for-seabed-war-with-china/ https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/new-us-spy-sub-built-for-seabe...

debo_ 2y ago

Whoever named the time-traveling, world-saving X-Man from the future "Cable" was oddly prescient. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(character) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(character)

throwup238 2y ago

> Initially, the police stated that they believed the damages were caused by human activity. Later on, the investigation was dropped, due to lack of evidence.... > Several experts with extensive experience with submarine cables and installations have assessed the images for NRK. Their judgement is that the damage to the Svalbard fiber was due to the cables being crushed. Finally evidence that Godzilla is real!

tailspin2019 2y ago

I’m probably being really slow but I couldn’t really work out what the pictures are actually showing. I see a bunch of yellow cables and some with steel sheathing - I’m not really sure what I’m looking at? Are all those cables laid together or are these photos of just one actual cable that has been fully pulled up and coiled?

db48x 2y ago
Yes, that must be the coil of cable after they had started pulling it off of the seabed. The steel armoring is supposed to be a bunch of steel wires tightly wound around the cable, to protect it from damage.

jorisboris 2y ago

We once booked a night on Rebak Island, next to Langkawi, Malaysia. The day before our arrival I receive a call that a boat somehow broke the water pipe which lies on the bottom between Rebak and Langkawi, cutting the island off from fresh water, and whether I wanted to rebook to another hotel. Not sure what the moral of the story is, but it kinda fitted the context :)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bimguy 2y ago

Ah excellent, fishermen not only destroying the ocean but also the infrastructure of countries. When will peoples appetite for destroying the ocean be qualled?

bjornasm 2y ago
There might be things that point towards this not being totally by accident.
- bimguy 2y ago
  Despite people downvoting me I did read the article. I don't assume this is all fisherman since that Chinese boat mentioned seems to be conveniently taking out cables and the Chinese gov is not responding to their investigation requests. Still doesn't change the fact that fishing operations destroy the ocean floors, a simple amount of research can confirm this.

cjrp 2y ago

Russian trawlers going back and forth in that area… https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514 https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514

the_gipsy 2y ago
While this looks alarming and makes an engaging tweet, I have no idea how regular trawling patterns look like. They might circle around fishing spot.
- mgoetzke 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - HenryBemis 2y ago
    Plausible deniability because it works. As for the fishermen in that boat.. yeah.. totally innocent fishermen, and on that very spot they hit a 'school' of that one fish they were looking for, so they are fishing this 'school' and nothing else sinister going on keep walking (omitting commas on purpose)
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Dave Barry made a similar observation about antismoking PSAs, objecting to one that had someone throw a diseased lung on a table. He pointed out that you could present any random internal organ and it would look just as bad: "This is what will happen to you if you keep smoking. Look! A perfectly healthy goat kidney!"
  - iopq 2y ago
    I think what had a big impact on me is they show both a healthy lung and a smoker's lung
    - Shrezzing 2y ago
      This was the big one for me too. The juxtaposed healthy versus unhealthy lungs resemble an uncooked chicken versus a roast chicken which was left in the oven for 30 minutes more than necessary. https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_28724349.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&width=990&quality=65&enable=upscale https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_28724349.jpg?crop...

bjornasm 2y ago

Just in case why people are wondering why cutting of internet for an arctic island is a big deal. What many might not know is that Svalbard is home to the northernmost satellite station in the world. It is just one of two stations that can communicate with polar orbiting satellites each day. ESA and NASA as well as other civilian organisations are present there, and the station communicates with well over a hundred satellites, and are pretty vital for much of the satellites that look back at us.

mgoetzke 2y ago
Time for a Starlink backup then
- sunbum 2y ago
  That's not how satellites work.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    Starlink can act as a backup for the ground station utilizing the laser links.
    - chtitux 2y ago
      Maybe just use Starlink from the satellites, so we don't rely on a specific ground station. Starlink Ground Station Network is global, spread in many different countries and look more resilient than a single one.
      - tedivm 2y ago
        That would require replacing all the satellites with new ones capable of doing that, which doesn't seem feasible. Starlink also doesn't have great coverage of the polar regions.
        2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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mortb 2y ago

What kind of international law can we expect in the future? A law that is constantly broken by various maleficent actors? Of course we've heard them complain that the current order is run by the west and harmful to others. What are the alternatives? A hundred cables?

bell-cot 2y ago
"constantly broken by various maleficent actors" is a pretty good description of the past of international law. There is no reason to expect the future to be any different.
ThalesX 2y ago
> According to Johnson the US has never endorsed the ICC because it's a "direct affront to our own sovereignty. [...] We don't put any international body above American sovereignty and Israel doesn't do that either," he added. God I have developed such a distaste for political opinions. Everyone thinks they're right and everyone sees the various maleficent actors in others. [0] https://www.jpost.com/international/article-802290 https://www.jpost.com/international/article-802290
mrguyorama 2y ago
"Real" international law would require a sovereign international government that is more powerful than any singular nation. You need to construct an entity that both the US and China make themselves fully subservient to. Good luck.

sschueller 2y ago

"anchor or a trawl is dragged across it" At this point this seems to be the most common cause of see cable damage. I guess the captains decide that it's worth dumping the anchor in a storm to protect the cargo even if the area "forbids" it.

PobedaRossia 2y ago

[flagged]