20 ms·
It's worth mentioning that cable breakages happen quite often; globally about 200 times per year [1] and the article itself mentions that just last year, two ot
by staplung 2y ago
It's worth mentioning that cable breakages happen quite often; globally about 200 times per year [1] and the article itself mentions that just last year, two other cables and a gas pipeline were taken out by an anchor. The Gulf of Finland is evidently quite shallow. From what I understand, cable repair ships are likely to use ROVs for parts of repair jobs but only when the water is shallow so hopefully they can figure out whether the damage looks like sabotage before they sever the cable to repair it. Of course, if you're a bad actor and want plausible deniability, maybe you'd make it look like anchor damage or, deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables.
Cable repairs are certainly annoying and for the operator of the cable, expensive. However, they are usually repaired relatively quickly. I'd be more worried if many more cables were severed at the same time. If you're only going to break one or two a year, you might as well not bother.
1: https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea-deep-repair-ships https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...
- Etheryte 2y agoThis is a misleading framing. The two cables last year were not taken out by an anchor as an accident, it was literally a ship putting down its anchor just before the cable and then dragging it over the cable. In other words, sabotage. There's no point in trying to color any of this with rose tinted glasses when it's clear who's done it and why.
- gorbachev 2y ago[flagged]
- dgfitz 2y agoWhen “coincidences” like this percolate up to the general public, I think it is in fact noteworthy.
- burkaman 2y agoThere is strong circumstantial evidence (https://www.politico.eu/article/balticconnector-damage-likely-to-be-intentional-finnish-minister-says-china-estonia/ https://www.politico.eu/article/balticconnector-damage-likel...) and an open Estonian investigation. None of us know whether or not there is direct evidence that has not been made public.
- SiempreViernes 2y agoStrong circumstantial evidence == minister said “I'm not the sea captain. But I would think that you would notice that you're dragging an anchor behind you for hundreds of kilometers”.
- gorbachev 2y agoSo no evidence then at all. It's just speculation.
- xp84 2y ago[flagged]
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoDon’t trust the Je… eh, Russians. I’m not sure whether you are serious with that xenophobic comment.
- theGeatZhopa 2y agodid you just say JEHOVAH? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnn2aGVcCEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnn2aGVcCEc
- olivermuty 2y agoDon’t trust the Russians has been safe doctrine in europe for several decades. Bandit state.
- sabbaticaldev 2y agoSame is said about the english, spanish, french, dutch colonizers, still didn’t pay for wreaking the world in their favor.
- Sabinus 2y agoBut for the French they all got rid of their colonies. Russia's historical land empire lives on, and the breakup of their most recent greater one is mourned by their current leader. Lets have some perspective.
- sabbaticaldev 2y agogreat example, the french. Still encrusted north of brazil and calling themselves part of the Amazon. you really should have some perspective
- 2y ago
- gmerc 2y agoAt certain odds, statistical likelihood is evidence
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- brnt 2y agoAs is usually the case, before a crime is investigated. Hence investigations, good detectives, good hunches, etc.
- bashwizard 2y agoAnd then there's common sense. Something most people seems to lack.
- qingcharles 2y agoThey just released a statement saying it is sad that they have to be suspicious that it is, perhaps, sabotage: https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/-/2685132 https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/-/2685132
- account42 2y agoOh no, the EU is gasp deeply concerned.
- SiempreViernes 2y agoHave you filed your observations of the ships anchor at sea to the authorities? Because it does sound strange, if you indeed have a witness to this, that they dropped and then hoisted their anchors to damage infrastructure four times that day: > Swedish-Estonian telecoms cable at 1513 GMT, then over the Russian cable at around 2020 GMT, the [Balticconnector gas pipeline] at 2220 GMT and a Finland-Estonia telecoms line at 2349 GMT. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-telecoms-cable-damaged-last-month-just-before-nearby-baltic-gas-2023-11-07/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-telecoms-ca...
- Aloisius 2y ago> it was literally a ship putting down its anchor just before the cable and then dragging it over the cable I don't understand. That's how I'd expect most accidents to happen. Someone decides to anchor too close to an undersea cable, the anchor fails to hold and the drifting ship drags the anchor over the cable damaging it. I'm not saying it wasn't sabotage, but there needs to be something a bit more than that. Source: have dragged anchors - thankfully never near undersea cables
- roenxi 2y agoI can only upvote. How does the anchor come into contact with the cable if not by that exact sequence of steps? The ship isn't sailing through the Gulf with its anchor down, it has to go near the cable, drop anchor then drag. Otherwise the cable and anchor will not interact. This is the only way an accident could happen (almost).
- Loudergood 2y agoThe problem comes when most of these cables land right at major ports.
- lrasinen 2y agoNew New Polar Bear (the Nov 2023 case) was definitely sailing down the Gulf with its anchor down. Estonian defense minister stated at the time there are drag tracks in the seabed for "over 185 km". (Source: https://www.hs.fi/maailma/art-2000010015226.html https://www.hs.fi/maailma/art-2000010015226.html)
- Maxion 2y agoThe case last year with the gas pipeline, the Chinese / Russian owned left Kaliningrad, and then while sailing, dropped its anchor before the pipeline and cable, and then dragged it over them, and then raised it. It was apparently accidental, yet both the Chinese and Russians didn't want the crew interviewed, the Estonian and the Finnish authorities both shrugged and didn't really care, and the Estonian energy prices were severly impacted for ~9 months. IMO very very likely sabotage, and brushed under the rug in fear of Russian escalation.
- randomcarbloke 2y agothe culprits have been getting chased around the north sea for the past two months suspected of attempting to perpetrate the same in other locations.
- stoperaticless 2y agoWell, you never know 100%. There is a small (really small) chance it was an accident. Just like there is a small chance that Al Capone was innocent man. (But really, it clearly has “Russia” written all over it)
- pelasaco 2y agojust to be honest, the Pipelines explosion, had "Russia" written all over it, except after investigation, and a possible culprit, i.e not Russia, then nobody wanted to discuss about it anymore. I think the hysteria is too high, people are thirsty for War, looks like..
- mciancia 2y ago> people are thirsty for War, looks like Russians, yes
- vasco 2y agoI wish I lived in a world where it's so easy to know who is good and who is evil and to pinpoint them so well.
- peutetre 2y agoYou do. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not an ambiguous war. Russia is plainly in the wrong.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoYeah. Lot of Russian Apologist. Russia invades Ukraine -> It is Biden's fault, he ordered it. Russia actually invading and killing -> It was NATO's fault for discussing admission. Like, Russia is actually 'doing the bad things'.
- pelasaco 2y ago
- a2800276 2y ago> when it's clear who's done it and why. Is it though? From my understanding it's clearly sabotage, but who's responsible is open to some debate. Compare to NordStream, it's still not officially determined who's responsible.
- lynx23 2y ago> officially determined who's responsible Becuase they are afraid to figure out the truth. It might not fit the propaganda narrative.
- oneshtein 2y agoFUD
- account42 2y agoIt's still not officially made public who's responsible.
- wedesoft 2y agoThere has been an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diver. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Nord-Stream-Arrest-warrant-for-suspect-from-Ukraine-9834590.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Nord-Stream-Arrest-warrant-for-...
- castigatio 2y agoBut this person is just speaking the truth - I worked for an ISP with cable landing stations. These cables went down several times a year due to physical damage of non nefarious kinds. It's not obvious that this malicious. It certainly might be but it's not a slam dunk.
- ajuc 2y agoYeah and if you shoot someone and they die it might be an unrelated heart attack.
- castigatio 2y agoDo you not understand probability? Or are you just suffering from confirmation bias?
- gruez 2y agoYeah but in this case, we don't know whether the guy in question actually got shot, only that he died. In that case it's premature to assume "this is murder".
- ajuc 2y agoChinese ship starting from Russian port went to sea, dropped the anchor just before the cables, dragged it over the cables, went away. Haven't reported anything. Declined requests to explain themselves. Sorry but it's bullshit.
- nbman102 2y agoIf this wasn't an accident, given the recent Biden escalation that allows ATACMS strikes in Kursk in could mean two things: 1) Russia hastily retaliated, which is out of character. You can accuse Russia of many things, but not of retaliating instantly (against the West, in Ukraine they probably do). 2) False flag in order to drum up pro-war sentiment in the West. If Biden escalates in the last weeks of his presidency, presumably to make it more difficult for Trump to negotiate, why would Russia take the bait and escalate? It does not make any sense.
- numeric83 2y ago"Escalate"? Allowing Ukraine to use the weapons it has to strike back at an aggressor in order to mitigate or reduce said aggressors ability to continue attacking is ... "escalation"? I don't think so. If anything artificial limits have been placed on Ukraine that are not placed on other nations (or in some cases proscribed terrorist organisations) purchasing or being "gifted" weapons. Whether those weapons are from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia, RoK, whoever.
- scrps 2y agoThere are sadly a lot of Chamberlains these days with the wool pulled over their eyes.
- air3y 2y agoYes. Weapons hitting places deep inside Russia that haven't been hit before is escalation. Whether one favors the act or not isn't how a step is considered as escalation. Now the Russians might or might not take steps that the other side considers escalation.
- numeric83 2y agoUkraine has been hitting targets "deep" inside Russia for a long time now - further than ATACMS or the export Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG can reach. Whether Ukraine use their own weapons or those purchased/gifted from others seems irrelevant. This is Russia saying "we can hit you with weapons provided by other nations, but you cannot be allowed to hit us likewise" - it's pathetic. As for what Russia may do, they've been told publicly and privately by multiple nations: from the U.S., UK, and France, even China and India to wind their necks in with regard any nuclear escalation. However, they are very adept at asymmetric responses, and Putin has already said he would consider arming groups with anti-"western" sympathies - he probably already has.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pvaldes 2y agoSame procedure this time https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/chinese-ship-investigated-over-sabotaged-baltic-sea-internet-cables/ar-AA1uqDFu https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/chinese-ship-investigat...
- ValentinA23 2y agoA 1 in 36 million chance for three breaks in one day. https://mathb.in/80217 https://mathb.in/80217
- gleenn 2y agoThat's assuming independence. I'm not ruling out sabotage but the world is often not fully independent. A storm or an anchor both may affect multiple cables if they're in generally the same area which would definitely make the probability far more likely than those stated. (edit typo)
- ValentinA23 2y agoIndeed ! https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/lithuania-sweden-subsea-cable-cut-was-10m-from-severed-finnish-german-cable/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/lithuania-sweden-... >Lithuania-Sweden subsea cable cut, was 10m from severed Finnish-German cable
- lrasinen 2y agoI don't buy that number (no source is attributed to it), or rather, I don't believe there's a single incident causing this. The C-Lion1 cable is predominantly North-East - South-West whereas the BCS cable is NW-SE. They do meet, but the C-Lion1 operator Cinia says their cable broke about 700 km from Helsinki, east of the southern tip of the Öland island. That's easily over 150 km south from where the cables meet. Also, C-Lion1 was reported broken at 4m, and the BCS cable at 10am the previous day.
- froh 2y agothe contrast with independent random events is exactly the point of the comment you've replied to, isn't it?
- jeltz 2y agoThe grandparent comment is total nonsense which sounds smart but is not. Damages from accidents are not independently random either. Or do you think it is virtually impossible that 140 people die on the same airliner? It is likely the same ship cut both either by accident or intentionally. I am leaning towards sabotage but that two cables were cut means very little.
- Findecanor 2y agoI watched a rep from the operators of the cable claim that this particular cable is pretty tough, and anything other than deliberate sabotage would be very unlikely.
- MasterYoda 2y agoThe last time it happened, the Russian ship had also been seen unnaturally going back and forth over the cable where the damage occurred. These damages do not happen by themselves. Considering the current international situation and the fact that it happened in a short time in several places unnaturally in a limited region, the Baltic Sea, you have to be very naive if you do not see this as probable sabotage.
- amelius 2y agoDo we have some kind of time-of-flight system that can find out exactly where a cable damage occurred, the instant that it occurs?
- 0points 2y ago> and the article itself mentions that just last year, two other cables and a gas pipeline were taken out by an anchor Yes, by a chinese ship that dragged around a huge anchor over the seafloor of whole baltic ocean, widley suspected to be ordered by Russia to do so. This is in no way a reasonable argument for "shit happens".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- belter 2y ago"Germany’s defense minister says damage to 2 Baltic data cables appears to be sabotage" - https://apnews.com/article/germany-finland-baltic-data-cables-sabotage-russia-12082dcc129d04e417d15d3f1b24add7 https://apnews.com/article/germany-finland-baltic-data-cable...
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoEnglish isn't my first language, but isn't "appears to be" inconclusive? It is or it isn't, "appears to be" is still too vague for my liking.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago"Appears to be", in English, generally means "on first look/glance." It runs very close to "I believe such and such." If I asked you for an answer to a math question, then you showed me the answer with how you got there, on a very quick glance I might say: "That appears to be correct." It could mean they've seen more evidence to make that assessment, or are basing that assessment on the same evidence we have. Regardless, "appears to be" is hedging in the absence of certainty.
- mettamage 2y agoI love this about HN culture. HN culture, in general, feels really patient, empathic and knowledgeable :)
- pdabbadabba 2y agoThis is right. But I'd add that the fact that the speaker is the German defense minister adds an additional layer of meaning. Ordinarily such a person would not be expected to give such an initial assessment without careful consideration.
- holowoodman 2y agoCorrect. To add context from a German source (https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/ostsee-datenkabel-pistorius-100.html https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/ostsee-datenkabel-p...): > Bundesverteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius vermutet im Fall von zwei in der Ostsee beschädigten Kabeln zur Datenübertragung eine vorsätzliche Aktion durch Dritte. Man müsse davon ausgehen, dass es sich um Sabotage handle, sagte er am Rande eines Treffens mit seinen EU-Amtskollegen in Brüssel. Beweise dafür gebe es bislang aber nicht. Er betonte: "Niemand glaubt, dass diese Kabel aus Versehen durchtrennt worden sind." > Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius assumes the case of to damaged baltic sea data cables to be the intentional action of a third party. One should assume it to be sabotage, he said while at a meeting with EU colleagues in Brusseles. Proof, however, is not available yet. He emphasized: "Nobody believes that those cables were cut by accident." So while carefully not saying anything definitive and firm, he very strongly hints in the direction of sabotage.
- dheera 2y ago> deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables Can we not make the cables resistant to this? Like if someone drags an anchor over a cable, it instantly locates the break based on time-of-flight over the cable and instantly dispatches a drone from the nearest shoreline to spray nasty sticky shit all over the ship?
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoDoesn't need to be a drone, there should be coast guard etc of all neighbouring countries nearby that can dispatch a plane. That said, radar systems and sattelites should be active at all times too keeping track of every ship on there, especially if they don't have a transponder active.
- holowoodman 2y agoCables can be buried and ploughed into the sea floor. This is usually done in the shallow last miles when approaching a landing on a coast, because there the risk for damage due to anchors, fishermen and other human activity is far higher. However, sometimes the ground can be unsuitable, and burying is expensive, so this isn't done for the whole length.
- ajross 2y agoRight. It's indeed worth pointing out that while this certainly looks like Russian terrorism, it's really fairly bad terrorism, all things considered, and not particularly hard or expensive to mitigate. It's basically a "Putin tax" on the industrial democracies in the reason. I don't see how this helps Russia at all, honestly. Putin has a real shot, given the state of US politics, at salvaging something approximating a "victory" in Ukraine and getting back to peacetime economics. Why rock the boat?
- nosianu 2y ago> it's really fairly bad terrorism The goal at this stage is not the outcome of some minor outage, but signaling that they are prepared and ready to go ahead with major acts of sabotage. This is the local thugs smashing some furniture in your store as a warning.
- radiator 2y agoYou offered nothing to support the theory that Russia is behind this. This reminds me of the Nordstream sabotage, when many jumped to accuse Russia even though that made no sense at all. Perhaps wait for the official investigations. If they like what they discover this time, they might publish it.
- fracus 2y agoIf cables break organically about 200 times a year then I'd think a bad actor breaking a cable to send a message would be a tear in the rain.