if a bad actor were to cut all of these cables really bad things would happen.
I remember when one got cut by a ship anchor and it screwed up the internet for the country it connected to for the months it took to fix.
if you were to cut each one in several places in deep water they might not even be able to fix it
Not as bad as you might think. One of the strengths of the Internet is that there are multiple pathways that data packets can take. Cut an Atlantic line joining North America and Europe, and the traffic will be rerouted to another cable from North America to South America to Africa to Europe.
