Beyond hacking: Underseas internet cables.

at Instapundit, Austin Bay links to some stories about Russia and underseas internet cables.

but of course it's not just Russia:

in 2006, an earthquake took out some cables south of Taiwan, and we were offline for weeks but couldn't find out why, since the newspapers and cable networks ignored the problem.

The cables left were limited, so I guess private internet was not prioritized, but it affected businesses: Not just here, but also in India, where their internet slowed since most of their traffic had to be re-routed via Europe for weeks.

And of course, now that China has taken over the sealanes in the West Philippine sea (thanks to Obama pressuring PNoy not to fight them militarily when they started dredging up the sea floor to build artificial islands off our coast) guess what else they could block by being there?

from an article at Realcleardefense (12-4-17) about China trying to put internet cables to connect their illegal islands to the mainland, but it includes this fact:

Undersea cables have been described as Taiwan’s Achilles’ heel. In the event of a conflict across the Taiwan Strait, the cables will be prime Chinese targets: cutting them will cripple Taiwan’s international communications.

And the damage wouldn’t be confined to Taiwan. There are at least 10 international submarine cables between Taiwan and Asia–Pacific countries. Damaging Taiwan’s cables would disrupt international business and financial markets, leading to severe economic effects on regional countries, including Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and Australia.

Submarine cables in Asia. (TeleGeography)

so if China destroys the internet cables in the West Philippine sea, they will affect Australia and India too. Don't forget India...

and all those cables in the Mediterranean are also vulnerable to simple terrorism.


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update: Related item for reading later:

StrategyPage on China's long term strategy.