Posted on 10/26/2015 8:11:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The presence of Russian submarines and spy ships near undersea cables carrying most global Internet communications has U.S. officials concerned that Russia could be planning to sever the lines in periods of conflict, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
The Times said there was no evidence of cable cutting but that the concerns reflected increased wariness among U.S. and allied officials over growing Russian military activity around the world.
The newspaper quoted naval commanders and intelligence officials as saying they were monitoring significantly greater Russian activity along the cables' known routes from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and waters closer to the United States.
“It would be a concern to hear any country was tampering with communication cables; however, due to the classified nature of submarine operations, we do not discuss specifics,”
U.S. Navy spokesman Commander William Marks told the Times.
Last month, the United States closely monitored the Russian spy ship Yantar, which equipped with two self-propelled deep-sea submersible craft, cruised off the U.S. East Coast toward Cuba, where one cable lands near the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, according to the Times.
Naval officials said the ship and the submersible craft were capable of cutting cables miles (km) deep beneath the sea, the Times said.
While cables are frequently cut by ship anchors or natural disasters and then quickly repaired, Pentagon officials are concerned that the Russians seem to be looking for vulnerabilities at much greater depths where cable breaks are harder to locate and repair, the paper said.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Maybe I’m slow, but how would this not disadvantage Russia just as much as anyone else?
I’m surprised. I really thought much internet and phone communications nowadays went through satellites. I thought the Trans Atlantic cable was so 20th century. I stand corrected.
They wouldn’t have to break them now, just plant
remote control mines on them for use at a time of
their choosing.
Don’t tell me the cloud’s not in the sky.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/tech/gallery/internet-undersea-cables/
With this and a few air bursts over the United States we’ll all be back in the stone age. (Actually, that would imply a certain level of survival skill. We can’t chip arrow heads or hunt buffalo.)
Both activities are regulated by Fedzilla and probably carry the death penalty. I haven’t really kept track of the million pages of laws in the last couple years.
I am surprised too.
Next it will be asteroids.
How many years have there been undersea communication cables? One hundred by now???
This stuff plays out month in and month out for years. It just makes good news for today.
1858, Ireland to Newfoundland.
Almost all internet traffic is carried via fiber optic cables undersea and over land. A small fraction is carried by satellites and microwave.
Not sure but in asking around, if those cables were fiber optic then you couldn’t tap them, then too, copper wire is only good for 33,000 feet before the bandwidth fails or something something.
35,786 km is the ‘about’ distance of geosynchronos satellites. 299792 km/s is how fast light travels. So looks like a 250ms round trip packet. Not including losses. So yea, that’s slow for people playing twitch games or even moderately paced mmorpgs but still fast enough for huge amounts of data otherwise.
You can go that way, but the lag/speed/reliability for satellite internet will really bog you down. It's much faster using fiber optics.
Not to mention, if the weather gets bad, your speed can bog down, just like it does if you are watching Direct TV/Dish during a bad thunderstorm. The residential internet satellite providers have to use accelerator programs to make the net work faster.
Cut the ones outsourcing work to India.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.