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Why is that? Undersea cables makes way more sense - the issue is we have maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables. During

Why is that? Undersea cables makes way more sense - the issue is we have maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables. During wartimes this is a complete different story - ships won't be allowed near the lines, and if they do get close they will be destoryed without prior warning. No more anchoring "accidents".

nradov 2y ago
It isn't either/or. Satellites and undersea cables serve different use cases. Cables are great for high bandwidth communications between fixed points but they aren't very useful to mobile military forces and they can't be used for anything beyond communications. We don't have enough ships and patrol aircraft to realistically defend undersea cables outside the littorals. Satellites can serve multiple purposes including communications, navigation, overhead imagery, signals intelligence, weather, etc. They are also vulnerable, but it's possible to launch replacements faster than repairing damaged cables.
zelphirkalt 2y ago
Inofficially Europe is already at war, whether it wants to or not. Maybe someone needs to inofficially keep a close eye on those cables and take inofficial countermeasures against inofficial sabotage acts.
- delusional 2y ago
  No we're not. Nobody in the EU has transitioned to a wartime economy. We are helping out a strategic ally. If Ukraine falls tomorrow an cedes add territory to Russia, the EU is not going to continue fighting, because the war will be over. That of course assumes that Putin stops at Ukraine. The point is that this isn't our war.
  - K0balt 2y ago
    You’re in a zero lot line flat and your neighbors house is on fire. I’d be pretty motivated to help out as well, but I don’t think I’d be quite so cavalier about not being on a wartime footing. Russia has shown repeatedly throughout history that it does not honor international agreements in good faith, and that it sees military adventurism as a legitimate way to expand its borders. After the dust settles on the Ukraine war, if Putin still has the capacity to wage war, he will not likely stop with Ukraine. It is by now obvious that a limited incursion into Poland, for example, will not spark a global thermonuclear war. Ukrainian suffering is both the litmus test and the vaccination against nuclear escalation that Putin needs to contemplate further expansion. Political alignments aside, if I were based in Europe I would be very, very concerned.
    - valval 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - concordDance 2y ago
        Even Botswana and Zambia aren't in the same league: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=chart&country=BWA~ZMB~UKR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
        valval 2y ago
        Frankly Botswana is beating Ukraine in GDP and Zambia in perceived corruption.
        aguaviva 2y ago
        Frankly Botswana is beating Ukraine in GDP Ukraine's GDP is close to 10x that of Botswana, and in the last year has grown 10 percent over that of 2022.
        valval 2y ago
        Try GDP per capita PPP, the measure that matters for average living conditions
        aguaviva 2y ago
        When your first attempt at dropping a random statistic gets blown out of the water -- try shifting the goalposts.
        valval 2y ago
        I bet you had to look it up as well. I bet you had to go out there, and confirm that Ukraine, a country with 15x the population of Botswana, does indeed have a higher GDP. To make your discussions easier and less embarrassing in the future, assume that 100 % of the time when someone speaks of GDP, they're speaking of GDP at purchasing power parity per capita.
  - jyounker 2y ago
    Nine years ago I was in Riga talking with a Latvian friend, and even then she was telling me how Russia was broadcasting separatist propaganda into Latvia While the EU may not be at war with Russia, Russia is already at war with the EU.
    - snowwrestler 2y ago
      Russia is pursuing low stakes, plausibly deniable, minor nuisance actions against the EU and U.S. It does enough to fool itself internally that it has a great enemy in The West, to which it is bravely standing up. The purpose of this is to unite enough of the domestic population to suppress dissent and keep the current regime in power. The reality is that it is actually at war with only one small neighbor, which is going so badly that they have had to import troops from North Korea. Embarrassing. If they actually engaged in war with the EU, more specifically a member of NATO, they would lose quickly. So they stay well back from that line.
  - groby_b 2y ago
    Yes, we are. Outside of Poland, everybody's closing their eyes to it, but war is coming. We might be able to stop it before it becomes a hot war, but the ambition is there, the indicators are there, the opportunity is there. Assume it's a war. (Unless you're German. I guess our national sport is now making excuses for Russia)
    - K0balt 2y ago
      I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, near a strategic Cold War military base. I still remember seeing the TU-95 “bear” bombers flying overhead being escorted and turned around by our fighter jets. It makes it pretty real when 7 year old me is wondering if this one has any nukes on board, and if this will be the day that they drop. Russia is not to be trusted, imho. They do not honor their international commitments in good faith, and they will expand their territorial claims if they are allowed to do so. Europe, like a frog in a pot, is in peril and they need to take steps to make sure that Russian war fighting capabilities are destroyed through exhaustion in Ukraine. This of course is tragic for Ukraine, because it means that she will be utterly razed in the process. But if Russia prevails or backs down with strength, it will happen again. And again. Russias ability to project force in a strategic way must be destroyed. They are not trustworthy stewards of coercive force.
      - nradov 2y ago
        I don't trust Russia either, but are you certain that's a real memory? I'm not aware of any confirmed incidents in which USSR bombers actually flew within sight of Fairbanks. They routinely tested our defenses but they didn't penetrate that far into US airspace.
        K0balt 2y ago
        I wish I had a photograph. I’ve been told before that this was impossible by others. I’ve also been told by others that were there that yes, it happened. It may not have been , however, an aggressive incursion, I have no way of knowing that part for sure. Having fighters scramble from Eilison was not unusual at all, and when hunting out in that area with my father we saw a few of those. It was pretty distinct from the training and combat training they did, so it wasn’t that hard to distinguish the intentionality and risk tolerance that was reserved for that kind of urgency. Anecdotally, I’m pretty darn sure that I saw a bear flying overhead just a few miles east-southeast of Fairbanks. I watched it be turned by 3 F4 phantoms. I was with my father and a few of his friends, as well as my brother that would have been 13 at the time. Everyone there remembers the event, and it was talked about for days in Fairbanks, we even had a subsequent training the next week in my elementary school on survival in the event of a nuclear attack lol. Perhaps it was some kind of clandestine fuckery, perhaps it was an authorized flight, or perhaps it would have been to embarrassing / inflammatory to make it an event of record? I’m sure the answers are quietly sitting somewhere in a musty filing box.
  - weweersdfsd 2y ago
    The truth is that Russia has been making war preparations for a long time, also within the EU. In Finland even during the "good years" (between fall of the Soviet Union and Georgian war) Russian businessmen kept buying property that made zero financial sense, but was located close to strategic infrastructure or military bases.
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  Europe is not at war with another nuclear power, no. Ukraine is at war and Europe is giving support to Ukraine as that's aligned with its interest. This support is neither unconditional nor total and doesn't include going to war with Russia.
greenavocado 2y ago
We are at war. The United States guided an ATACMS missile into Russian territory yesterday. Imagine the absurdity of if China put missiles on the Mexican border and guided them into missile storage facilities 186 miles inside the border.
- NovemberWhiskey 2y ago
  I think you'll find the ATACMS missile guided itself, based on inertial navigation and satellite positioning data. If your argument is that the United States guided the missile because the US provides GPS, that's a pretty flimsy argument.
  - greenavocado 2y ago
    Ukraine would have folded within a few weeks without the weapons systems of the combined Western nations. The Biden administration has given Kyiv permission to use U.S.-supplied missiles in Russian territory in a major escalation that now threatens nuclear war due to the first use doctrine updates. A few hours ago reports of UK Storm Shadow missiles being fired into Russian territory emerged. The West is at war.
    - avereveard 2y ago
      By that logic every dictator t72 field trip would make Russia participant in that local war... Absolutely absurd statement. Siria civil war would see Russia waging war on Russia since their equipment was in both hands. What a contrived statement that the arm provider is at war itself.
    - maximilianburke 2y ago
      The passive voice is doing a lot of work here. Who is now threatening nuclear war?
- jeltz 2y ago
  As far as we know Ukraine both put them there and guided the missiles. Please provide proof otherwise.
amiga386 2y ago
> maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables. I'd like to see your version of maritime law that doesn't allow freely roaming over important cables. Your country's enemies would gladly drop cables totally encircling you and say "uh uh uh, important cables!" if you tried to leave your perimeter
- thejazzman 2y ago
  This assumes people are very stupid, no? Like, as if they wouldn't know what was happening and just had to let it happen? I realize US politics may suggest otherwise but I can't imagine the military is just gonna stand by and entertain such a farce..
  - amiga386 2y ago
    I think you therefore agree with my reductio ad absurdum argument against the GP's claim. Changing maritime law to prohibit free roaming over "important cables" would be a farce. Therefore, the absence of such a law is not "the issue"
hex4def6 2y ago
The exercise left for the reader is to choose two countries that are not adjacent, and try to plot a path between them without crossing an undersea cable: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
- cperciva 2y ago
  Looks like you can get between Costa Rica and El Salvador without crossing any cables.

nradov 2y ago

It isn't either/or. Satellites and undersea cables serve different use cases. Cables are great for high bandwidth communications between fixed points but they aren't very useful to mobile military forces and they can't be used for anything beyond communications. We don't have enough ships and patrol aircraft to realistically defend undersea cables outside the littorals. Satellites can serve multiple purposes including communications, navigation, overhead imagery, signals intelligence, weather, etc. They are also vulnerable, but it's possible to launch replacements faster than repairing damaged cables.

zelphirkalt 2y ago

Inofficially Europe is already at war, whether it wants to or not. Maybe someone needs to inofficially keep a close eye on those cables and take inofficial countermeasures against inofficial sabotage acts.

delusional 2y ago
No we're not. Nobody in the EU has transitioned to a wartime economy. We are helping out a strategic ally. If Ukraine falls tomorrow an cedes add territory to Russia, the EU is not going to continue fighting, because the war will be over. That of course assumes that Putin stops at Ukraine. The point is that this isn't our war.
- K0balt 2y ago
  You’re in a zero lot line flat and your neighbors house is on fire. I’d be pretty motivated to help out as well, but I don’t think I’d be quite so cavalier about not being on a wartime footing. Russia has shown repeatedly throughout history that it does not honor international agreements in good faith, and that it sees military adventurism as a legitimate way to expand its borders. After the dust settles on the Ukraine war, if Putin still has the capacity to wage war, he will not likely stop with Ukraine. It is by now obvious that a limited incursion into Poland, for example, will not spark a global thermonuclear war. Ukrainian suffering is both the litmus test and the vaccination against nuclear escalation that Putin needs to contemplate further expansion. Political alignments aside, if I were based in Europe I would be very, very concerned.
  - valval 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - concordDance 2y ago
      Even Botswana and Zambia aren't in the same league: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=chart&country=BWA~ZMB~UKR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
      - valval 2y ago
        Frankly Botswana is beating Ukraine in GDP and Zambia in perceived corruption.
        aguaviva 2y ago
        Frankly Botswana is beating Ukraine in GDP Ukraine's GDP is close to 10x that of Botswana, and in the last year has grown 10 percent over that of 2022.
        valval 2y ago
        Try GDP per capita PPP, the measure that matters for average living conditions
        aguaviva 2y ago
        When your first attempt at dropping a random statistic gets blown out of the water -- try shifting the goalposts.
        valval 2y ago
        I bet you had to look it up as well. I bet you had to go out there, and confirm that Ukraine, a country with 15x the population of Botswana, does indeed have a higher GDP. To make your discussions easier and less embarrassing in the future, assume that 100 % of the time when someone speaks of GDP, they're speaking of GDP at purchasing power parity per capita.
- jyounker 2y ago
  Nine years ago I was in Riga talking with a Latvian friend, and even then she was telling me how Russia was broadcasting separatist propaganda into Latvia While the EU may not be at war with Russia, Russia is already at war with the EU.
  - snowwrestler 2y ago
    Russia is pursuing low stakes, plausibly deniable, minor nuisance actions against the EU and U.S. It does enough to fool itself internally that it has a great enemy in The West, to which it is bravely standing up. The purpose of this is to unite enough of the domestic population to suppress dissent and keep the current regime in power. The reality is that it is actually at war with only one small neighbor, which is going so badly that they have had to import troops from North Korea. Embarrassing. If they actually engaged in war with the EU, more specifically a member of NATO, they would lose quickly. So they stay well back from that line.
- groby_b 2y ago
  Yes, we are. Outside of Poland, everybody's closing their eyes to it, but war is coming. We might be able to stop it before it becomes a hot war, but the ambition is there, the indicators are there, the opportunity is there. Assume it's a war. (Unless you're German. I guess our national sport is now making excuses for Russia)
  - K0balt 2y ago
    I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, near a strategic Cold War military base. I still remember seeing the TU-95 “bear” bombers flying overhead being escorted and turned around by our fighter jets. It makes it pretty real when 7 year old me is wondering if this one has any nukes on board, and if this will be the day that they drop. Russia is not to be trusted, imho. They do not honor their international commitments in good faith, and they will expand their territorial claims if they are allowed to do so. Europe, like a frog in a pot, is in peril and they need to take steps to make sure that Russian war fighting capabilities are destroyed through exhaustion in Ukraine. This of course is tragic for Ukraine, because it means that she will be utterly razed in the process. But if Russia prevails or backs down with strength, it will happen again. And again. Russias ability to project force in a strategic way must be destroyed. They are not trustworthy stewards of coercive force.
    - nradov 2y ago
      I don't trust Russia either, but are you certain that's a real memory? I'm not aware of any confirmed incidents in which USSR bombers actually flew within sight of Fairbanks. They routinely tested our defenses but they didn't penetrate that far into US airspace.
      - K0balt 2y ago
        I wish I had a photograph. I’ve been told before that this was impossible by others. I’ve also been told by others that were there that yes, it happened. It may not have been , however, an aggressive incursion, I have no way of knowing that part for sure. Having fighters scramble from Eilison was not unusual at all, and when hunting out in that area with my father we saw a few of those. It was pretty distinct from the training and combat training they did, so it wasn’t that hard to distinguish the intentionality and risk tolerance that was reserved for that kind of urgency. Anecdotally, I’m pretty darn sure that I saw a bear flying overhead just a few miles east-southeast of Fairbanks. I watched it be turned by 3 F4 phantoms. I was with my father and a few of his friends, as well as my brother that would have been 13 at the time. Everyone there remembers the event, and it was talked about for days in Fairbanks, we even had a subsequent training the next week in my elementary school on survival in the event of a nuclear attack lol. Perhaps it was some kind of clandestine fuckery, perhaps it was an authorized flight, or perhaps it would have been to embarrassing / inflammatory to make it an event of record? I’m sure the answers are quietly sitting somewhere in a musty filing box.
- weweersdfsd 2y ago
  The truth is that Russia has been making war preparations for a long time, also within the EU. In Finland even during the "good years" (between fall of the Soviet Union and Georgian war) Russian businessmen kept buying property that made zero financial sense, but was located close to strategic infrastructure or military bases.
RandomThoughts3 2y ago
Europe is not at war with another nuclear power, no. Ukraine is at war and Europe is giving support to Ukraine as that's aligned with its interest. This support is neither unconditional nor total and doesn't include going to war with Russia.

greenavocado 2y ago

We are at war. The United States guided an ATACMS missile into Russian territory yesterday. Imagine the absurdity of if China put missiles on the Mexican border and guided them into missile storage facilities 186 miles inside the border.

NovemberWhiskey 2y ago
I think you'll find the ATACMS missile guided itself, based on inertial navigation and satellite positioning data. If your argument is that the United States guided the missile because the US provides GPS, that's a pretty flimsy argument.
- greenavocado 2y ago
  Ukraine would have folded within a few weeks without the weapons systems of the combined Western nations. The Biden administration has given Kyiv permission to use U.S.-supplied missiles in Russian territory in a major escalation that now threatens nuclear war due to the first use doctrine updates. A few hours ago reports of UK Storm Shadow missiles being fired into Russian territory emerged. The West is at war.
  - avereveard 2y ago
    By that logic every dictator t72 field trip would make Russia participant in that local war... Absolutely absurd statement. Siria civil war would see Russia waging war on Russia since their equipment was in both hands. What a contrived statement that the arm provider is at war itself.
  - maximilianburke 2y ago
    The passive voice is doing a lot of work here. Who is now threatening nuclear war?
jeltz 2y ago
As far as we know Ukraine both put them there and guided the missiles. Please provide proof otherwise.

amiga386 2y ago

> maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables. I'd like to see your version of maritime law that doesn't allow freely roaming over important cables. Your country's enemies would gladly drop cables totally encircling you and say "uh uh uh, important cables!" if you tried to leave your perimeter

thejazzman 2y ago
This assumes people are very stupid, no? Like, as if they wouldn't know what was happening and just had to let it happen? I realize US politics may suggest otherwise but I can't imagine the military is just gonna stand by and entertain such a farce..
- amiga386 2y ago
  I think you therefore agree with my reductio ad absurdum argument against the GP's claim. Changing maritime law to prohibit free roaming over "important cables" would be a farce. Therefore, the absence of such a law is not "the issue"

hex4def6 2y ago

The exercise left for the reader is to choose two countries that are not adjacent, and try to plot a path between them without crossing an undersea cable: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

cperciva 2y ago
Looks like you can get between Costa Rica and El Salvador without crossing any cables.