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Earlier this week, an article in New York Times captured the world’s imagination with the prospect of secret Russian submarines possessing the ability to sabotage undersea communication cables (with perhaps Marko Ramius at the helm, pictured above). While it is a bit of a Hollywood scenario, it is still an interesting one to consider, although, as we’ll see, perhaps an unrealistic one, despite the temptation to exaggerate the risk.
Submarine cable cuts occur with regularity and the cable repair industry has considerable experience dealing with these incidents. However, the vast majority of these failures are the result of accidents occurring in relatively shallow water, and not due to a deliberate actor intending to maximize downtime. There is enormous capacity and resiliency among the cables crossing the Atlantic (the subject of the New York Times article), so to even make a dent, a saboteur would need to take out numerous cables in short order.
A mass telecom sabotage event involving the severing of many submarine cables (perhaps at multiple hard-to-reach deep-water locations to complicate repairs) would be profoundly disruptive to international communications — Internet or otherwise. For countries like the U.S. with extensive local hosting, the impact Continue reading