Undersea Cable Cut Circumstances Examined

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired has a good review of all the recent undersea cable cuts and why it's suspicious, but unlikely to be a conspiracy. So far, there are only four cut cables (the 'fifth' was weeks ago) in two different locations. Of course, a cable is damaged once every three days, on average, and there are 25 ships that do nothing but repair them. While the timing and locations are a little odd, Iran has been online the whole time, even if some of their routers weren't, and none of the conspiracy theories really add up. In a recent interview, TeleGeography Analyst Eric Schoonover said, 'I think that this is more along the lines of coincidence.'"

Comments

Proof of Concept?

[BobMcD]

While the timing and locations are a little odd, Iran has been online the whole time, even if some of their routers weren't, and none of the conspiracy theories really add up. In my line of work, that's called a 'Proof of Concept'. You make a significant enough impact to verify that your idea is sound, without actually impacting production at all. You gain invaluable insight when you do these, as there is nothing quite like the really real world for testing.

In this particular example, were it such a PoC, we learned a minimum of:

1) How quickly the media took the story
2) What the public's reaction to the news was
3) What kind of response to expect from those impacted by the cuts
4) (Possibly) What kinds of cuts are more effective than others
5) (Possibly) What behaviors are deemed suspicious, and what gets labeled as 'normal'

There are probably quite a few more, as well.

The coolest part is, even if it was a giant coincidence, most of the above can be learned anyway. This would lead me to believe that we can expect to see more of this in the future.