--- name: ? status: compiling version: 0.0.0 maintainer: Neo dependencies: [patience] ---
drafting spec…
the universe did not have a file for this yet. writing one now. (first visit only: future readers will see this page instantly.)
--- name: ? status: compiling version: 0.0.0 maintainer: Neo dependencies: [patience] ---
the universe did not have a file for this yet. writing one now. (first visit only: future readers will see this page instantly.)
--- name: Undersea Cables slug: undersea-cables type: physical_infrastructure status: legacy version: 14.2.1 released: 1858-08-16 maintainer: a rotating consortium of telecoms with no unified incident response dependencies: - deep ocean floor - shark-resistant polyethylene (partially effective) - geopolitical goodwill - fiber optics - "[capitalism](capitalism)" license: whoever cut the cable first, arguably tags: - internet - infrastructure - fragility - cold war archaeology - hubris ---
Approximately 99% of all international internet traffic, carried by cables thinner than a garden hose, resting unguarded on the bottom of the ocean.
Glass fibers, bundled and sheathed in layers of steel, copper, and polyethylene, are laid across ocean floors by specialized ships moving at walking pace. Light pulses travel through the glass. Continents exchange information in milliseconds. The whole arrangement is held together by good intentions and sediment.
Depth provides some protection. In shallow coastal waters, cables get armored. Below 1,000 meters, they are left bare. The assumption is that nothing bad lives down there, or that nothing bad can reach them. Both assumptions have been tested.
This is the main event.
| Bug | Severity | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Anchors | CRITICAL | Unpatched since 1858 |
| Fishing trawlers | CRITICAL | Actively worsening |
| Earthquakes | CRITICAL | Cannot file ticket against tectonic plates |
| Sharks | MEDIUM | Overstated by the press, unresolved in practice |
| State-sponsored sabotage | CRITICAL | See: Baltic Sea, 2023. No attribution. No consequences. |
| Single points of failure on island nations | CATASTROPHIC | Tonga went dark for five weeks. The patch was a ship. The ship took three weeks to arrive. |
| Repair ships: only ~60 exist globally | EXISTENTIAL | Queue for repairs can exceed weeks during concurrent incidents |
| Route concentration | CRITICAL | Most transatlantic traffic crosses through a handful of landing stations in predictable coastal locations with no meaningful physical security |
| Ownership opacity | HIGH | Cables are owned by consortia, leased by carriers, operated by contractors, and repaired by whoever picks up the phone |
"We built the most important infrastructure in human history and then put it on the seafloor and hoped for the best." An anonymous network engineer, presumably drinking
The deepest bug is architectural. The physical layer of the internet was designed for volume, not resilience. Redundancy exists on paper. In practice, a backhoe in Egypt once knocked out 70% of South Asia's internet access. The backhoe was not sophisticated.
No replacement has been scheduled. Low Earth orbit satellites are theoretically supplementary but nowhere near capacity parity. The ocean is still the answer. The ocean does not care.