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

Re:In Soviet Russia..

[fyngyrz]

Pretty sharp remark. Wire you bothering us? There's no connection to the story, so conduct yourself accordingly, Sparky.

Traditional conspiracy breeding ground

[Jugalator]

I think there's the traditional conspiracy breeding ground at work here: lack of knowledge. I understand that can surely come off as a "high horse" opinion, so I might add that I also lacked this knowledge, more specifically in that cable cuts are this common. I think there's nothing wrong in admitting this; the problem starts when "lack of knowledge" turn into "ignorance".

Anyway, when media started reporting these cables being damaged at around the same times, the only newsworthy thing was really the coincidence, not that cables were being damaged. While at the same time, the public reading these stories (and quite likely the journalists themselves) thought that even the cable cuts themselves were uncommon ("why would this otherwise be reported as news?"), and now there was so many of them too! Apply the extra confusion on when the "fifth" cut took place, and you have the conspiracies floating around as they do now. I think it's still even commonly reported that Iran has been harmed a lot, neglecting the wide scale trouble Asia has got from this.

So all in all, from reading up on these things and being willing to be influenced by facts, I've pretty much discarded these conspiracy theories and think it's all just a widespread problem for many more regions than Iran, and also looks like a coincidence on top of that.

"Only" 4 cuts?

[kaos07]

I like how the article summary attempts to put us all at ease by remarking there have "only" been 4 cuts, as opposed to 5. It then tries to further reassure us by claiming there's a cut somewhere around the world every three days. Be that as it may, we have four cuts in the same vicinity affected the same countries, in the same week and there were no ships in the area. Ships are, of course, the major cause for accidental cable cuts.

So it all may be a big coincidence. But we should not forget that while 4 cuts in the same area in the same week IS slightly suspicious, this is heightened by the fact they were in an area (The Middle East; specifically Iran) which has been topical for a while due to the extreme and occasionally vitriolic levels of rhetoric spouted by both Western leaders and Middle-Eastern leaders. In addition to this, the cuts occurred during the week Iran was to launch its new Oil Bourse which was to trade oil using non-dollar currencies such as the Euro.

So yes, it could be a coincidence but there are a few strange factors. I don't think it's a good idea as of yet to immediately pronounce these cuts are a "conspiracy" or an "accident" because there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Specifically, what actually caused the cuts? Because of this I'm wary of articles coming out so soon declaring everything is okay, it's not a conspiracy.

It almost seems like a form of placation.

right.....

[djupedal]

"'I think that this is more along the lines of coincidence.'"

And I think an 'abandoned' 5-ton anchor found at one of the cut sites, when no ships were reported in the area, is _not_ along the lines of coincidence...

"Try this one..." SNIP
Egypt! Damn!
"nope...that's not it"
"okok....cut this one!" SNIP
Dubai?! Dang!
"Don't worry, we'll get it soon - cut this other one!" SNIP
Iran?!!! Finally! "Ok, good work, let's go home!"

Re:Every three days?

[Yetihehe]

And yet the cables are laid in what seems to be busy shipping channels in easy anchor reach?

Cities with a port are typically big cities with many people. If you have cables in wilderness, how would you get techies there? How would you find those willing to work far from civilization? You would also need to connect endpoints in wilderness to something on land (typically, to big cities where there are backbone endpoints).

Re:Every three days?

[Nutria]

Somewhere I saw a map of submarine cable routes and many of them follow coastlines. It must be much cheaper to lay cable in water, despite the cost of repairs.

There are many cables that run around Africa. Many parts of Africa are (to say the least) politically volatile, making it dangerous to lay the cable, and vulnerable to blackmail (pay us $$$ or we cut the cable). Also, laying it over desert, mountains, jungle, etc is obviously highly difficult. Riding on a ship, paying out cable is much simpler and cheaper.

I'm sure that the same technical challenges apply in southern Asia.

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.

If a conspiracy, here is the likely motive

[spun]

Disruption of the planned opening of the Iranian Oil Bourse this week. Suspicious, the Iranians were about to start trading oil in Euros on the 11th. That would send the dollar into a tailspin and all but destroy the US's already shaky credit rating in the rest of the world.

It wouldn't take much to disrupt trading. This also explains why the cuts were reported so widely. It's a message to would be Euro oil traders: the US is simply not going to allow this to happen. We will do anything it takes to disrupt non-dollar trade in oil. The dollar must remain the world's reserve currency if our economic house of cards is to remain standing. The Iranian Oil Bourse is potentially more damaging to the US than an Iranian nuke.