From: Wilson@nowhere.invalid   
      
   https://rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/shady-stuff-is-ha   
   pening-underwater   
      
   You’re reading this essay thanks to the ocean. The "cloud" is actually   
   underwater. Over 95% of internet data, your emails, bank transfers and   
   ChatGPT queries, travel through a network of roughly 400 fiber-optic   
   cables resting on the seabed. Over 90% of everything you own, from the   
   phone in your pocket to the shoes on your feet to the fuel in your car,   
   arrived by sea.   
      
   Last December Ukraine launched an underwater drone named the "Sub Sea   
   Baby," which sank a $400 million Russian submarine. A piece of hardware   
   that cost less than a nice car destroyed a strategic asset worth nearly   
   half a billion dollars. That’s how a country with effectively no navy   
   (Ukraine) has forced the world’s third-largest Navy (Russia) to retreat   
   from its own home base in the Black Sea.   
      
   Ukraine "hacked" a robot navy together, taking what were essentially jet   
   skis and packing them with explosives. Swarms of these $20,000 drones   
   hunt in packs, disabling billion-dollar warships and even shooting down   
   fighter jets.   
      
   Any future conflict between the US and China (which I think is unlikely)   
   won’t be decided by aerial drones. It won’t even be decided by advanced   
   fighter jets, which have a short leash of around 600 miles. Ocean drones   
   have no boundaries. Satellite internet turns the middle of the ocean   
   from a communications dead zone into a high-speed network.   
      
   You try to call family to see what’s going on, and the line is dead.   
   This nightmare scenario happened to 14,000 people on the Matsu Islands   
   near Taiwan. Chinese vessels cut their subsea cables, plunging the   
   island into a digital blackout for a week. The global web of underwater   
   internet cables is long enough to stretch to the moon and back twice.   
   They are vulnerable. Taiwan had its internet cables cut nearly 30 times   
   in recent years. Data pipelines in the Baltic Sea have been severed too.   
   This is 21st-century sabotage.   
      
   America’s Big Tech giants, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, now   
   account for more than 70% of new underwater data cables. Meta is   
   currently building the world’s longest submarine cable. Project   
   Waterworth will span 31,000 miles and will cost $10 billion. If you’re   
   going to spend billions to build the underwater backbone of the AI   
   economy, you’re also going to spend to protect it.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)