Samanth Subramanian gives readers a look at the relatively obscure world of undersea internet infrastructure which has remained largely the same since they started laying cables for telegraph traffic. In many cases it’s still the same companies contracted to lay the cables as did the job for the last 50 years.
What struck me was how much concentration there is towards the American tech giants who now have the money to lay their own cabling instead of partnering with governments and other shareholders to get a multi-million (or billion) dollar cable laid across the ocean. Not only is the internet services we used mostly controlled by American interests, the infrastructure across the ocean is also in their hands.
The US even has Team Telcom which will force you to put control centers in the US for cabling that doesn’t even connect the US to any other country if they determine that they want more local control of the internet in other countries.
I was also surprised how fragile the system is. Cables get broken all the time even by boat anchors that may drag across the cable by accident, or by “accident” in the case of multiple Taiwanese cables being cut by Chinese fishing trawlers.
If you want a look at how fragile and American centric our internet infrastructure is, this is a good short read.
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