According to US military officials, Russian spy boats and submarines are operating too close to international internet data cables. The fear that Russia is planning something is so grave that it has gotten the Pentagon's full attention.
Instances of cables getting cut are nothing new. They are actually quite common and ships which carelessly drop their anchors are mostly to blame. But these events are easily mended within days. In the deep, however, these cables are much harder to access and fix should they be severed, Tech Spot reported.
Internet cables are more important today then ever. With an estimated $10 trillion worth of transactions happening each day, the importance of connectivity cannot be stressed enough. Governments--and civilian populations as a whole--also depend on the internet for everything from communications to business to entertainment.
The lofty ambition to sever the US from the rest of the world, however, will prove to be a much more difficult task, the New York Times reported. It would take 15 submarines, one for each intercontinental cable that controls communications going in and out, working in unison, to effectively cut off all communications.
Also, since the US feverishly monitors Russian naval activity, an imminent attack can be predicted. It also does not help that most activity of the US actually have their servers within the country. This makes the US internet system much more robust and difficult to cut off.
It is not sufficient to sever one cable as an automatic reroute would be made to the other 14, soon to be 15, intercontinental internet cables, NPR noted.
Tim Stronge, researcher at TeleGeography which monitors the submarine cable industry, adds, "Let's say some foreign entity, some evil doer, like a James Bond villain, cut every single undersea fiber-optic cable connection to the United States. Well, we do still have satellite."
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