Guardian article (Feb 5, 2024), "Houthi-linked Telegram channel published a map of the cables running along the bed of the Red Sea. The image was accompanied by a message: “There are maps of international cables connecting all regions of the world through the sea. It seems that Yemen is in a strategic location, as internet lines that connect entire continents – not only countries – pass near it.”
- "How can these be repaired? Can it even be done safely? Insurance of operating a specialized boat in these waters? (paraphrasing)"
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- "[Flag Telecom founder and telecoms entrepreneur Sunil Tagare] also posted that no cable ship provider was willing to provide repairs in the area and that insurance companies would cancel policies for cable ships attempting to operate in Yemeni waters. Again, DCD hasn’t been able to confirm these claims."
After watching a pirate vs coalition documentary, you can imagine the cartoonish dollar signs in the eyes of the insurance for piracy industry. Only one person would speak on camera. Loosely quoted “we increased our profits by 35% this year after insuring ships in the gulf of Aden.” Interviewer what would happen if the pirates stopped >> “we would not be very happy about it”.
It costs about 20k per ship for insurance. Armed/unarmed militia onboard security is quite expensive though and they didn’t quote a price. I’m sure they can work it out with the coalition, insurance, and workmen for all the risks involved.
I don’t know if anyone here realizes how valuable these cables are. Satellite time is incredibly expensive. Using other undersea cable routes is bad because now you are in a situation where bandwidth limitations may come into play but mainly lack of alternatives if those remaining cables have issues. I wouldn’t say it’s common to have issues but it is not uncommon.
last quote of the documentary per pirate leader “we are considering going back to the old ways of cutting throats”.
I'm not entirely clear why state acts can't be called "terrorism"; examples would include the Libyan Lockerbie bombing, the French bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, and the Russian Salisbury poisoning incident.
The UK terror legislation (which is .. not great) defines it as "for a political purpose". Which is actually a reasonable distinction vs regular crime.
This should provoke swift, hard, and overwhelming reactions from G7 countries. The undersea cables have to be inviolate or we'll see this happen all the time, with major negative impacts to internet stability and effective international commerce.
The only de-escalatory move right now is to do both - step on Israel hard to show that it's not about that, and step on Yemen harder to show that Thou Shalt Not Fuck With This Particular Thing As Activism.
Our support for this genocide puts the rest of the world in an impossible place and we shouldn't expect traditional international norms to remain unbroken if we're going through with it.
Four underwater communications cables between Saudi Arabia and Djibouti have been struck out of commission in recent months...
Most of the immediate harm will be absorbed by the Gulf states and India, Globes said.
This is in the Middle East and may or may not be related to the war in Gaza.
I'm like the worst possible person to do this because I tend to not follow The News and I expect someone to get very upset with me for it. But I will say the world needs peace in the Middle East more than I understood. There is -- or was -- critical infrastructure running through there and this is potentially a big deal globally.
And that does not mean I am advocating some kind of intervention from other countries. Please don't put words in my mouth in that regard. I'm just saying the ongoing issues there are apparently now becoming a global problem in ways that likely most people would not have predicted.
How is that related? It also happened a week ago, while this is new. Houthis cause as much havoc as they want, presumably to someday get a decent deal at the negotiating table.
Considering how we arrived at this point (Houthis threatening and attacking trade and communications), I would say the US government's obvious inability to rein in its ally (Israel) despite having a huge amount of leverage demonstrates a pretty weak administration.
Feeble is precisely the right word to describe US pressure on Israel. Saying "We've asked them" over and over again just doesn't cut it. It's weak and everyone can see that.
This latest middle east crisis has been hugely damaging to US moral and diplomatic credibility.
America has very little leverage over Israel. The money/etc that America gives to Israel is motivated by the religious convictions of Americans (evangelical protestants particularly, but not exclusively.). This support isn't conditional on Israel behaving itself and any politician who cuts Israel off will have a very difficult time getting reelected. This effectively makes America's financial and material support for Israel closer to tribute than leverage, since politically speaking it's not practical to turn off the spigot.
The silver lining is that unconditional support for Israel correlates with age; the Americans who support Israel no matter what are slowly but surely aging out of the political equation. In one or two more generations the situation may be very different, which if I had to guess, is why Israel wants complete the annexation of Gaza sooner rather than later.
This couldn't further from the truth. The U.S. has enormous leverage over Israel, via the massive foreign assistance it has provided since 1948.
Its politicians may be too spineless, too hoodwinked by decades of extremist propaganda over all these decades -- or in the cases of evangelicals, blinded by their own religious delusions; or (in the case of most) just too self-interested and apathetic -- to make use of this leverage. But there is no question that this leverage exists.
and by doing so, spread the resources that would've been devoted to ukraine thinner. And by proxy, take attention away from china's regional ambitions.
It's clear that these events aren't happening in isolation.
The USA hasn't had any of that for decades. The illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq in 2003 was the beginning of the end of the worlds' tolerance for American exceptionalism. The only ones who don't seem to understand this, are Americans.
Speaking of which, if they imposed a limit of 70, would anyone bat an eye other than the two guys nobody wants in office?
There’s a minimum age, why not a maximum? Seems like an opportunity to handle this right now as both deeply unpopular front runners would be made ineligible.
I personally don’t mind Joe Biden, he at least comes across as genuine. But I think an opportunity to guarantee both candidates ineligible could be a win for both parties. (But of course both sides think they can win with their guy so they probably aren’t interested.)
Americans under the age of 70 who are in politics are too crazy to get elected as POTUS (and this really says something with Trump being the bar for craziness), and non-crazy under-70 people are too smart to pursue a career in American politics.
As far as I can tell, Biden is only doing the job because he loves the country and doesn't want it going down in flames with another Trump presidency, and there's honestly no better and electable candidates available on the Dem side (which has long been a problem with Dems anyway; Obama was a big aberration here in that he actually had a lot of charisma and likability).
So yes, I agree the US seems to have a systemic inability to choose better candidates.
Biden is not really the U.S. President at the moment. He is a wooden puppet that signs and says anything that his handlers put in front of him - and that too with extreme difficulty. The U.S. presidency is currently held by a small, powerful governing cabal that consists of folks like Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan along with warmongers like Victoria Nuland. (and her husband - Robert Kagan acting behind the scenes)
This right here is why there is a divide the size of the Grand Canyon in America. Some will see it as obvious satire, some are 100% convinced this is the truth. When did we reach the point that the same text can be read as fact or satire with such strong conviction that the dress being blue and black (no, it's white and gold!) would seem like compromise?
I always thought this would make a good movie. Parody both sides so hard each thinks you are "representing their views" while the opposing side thinks it's a comedy.
I can't see why the internet would reset us to the the bronze age. I think what they're saying is it's more likely to reset us to similar state to when the internet wasn't common-place, ie, the 80s.
I should've clarified - my memory is that even in the 80s the 'internet' wasn't that fundamentally-critical to typical daily behaviour. Heck, even the WWW took a while to roll into relevance.
Not a chance, the changes wrought by the industrial revolution would not be undone so easily. Removing the internet from society would not change what people already know how to do and what is possible to do; other methods of exchanging that knowledge (schools/books/etc) would be rapidly re-emphasized. It might even cause a reversal of the compency crisis as people wouldn't have the rest of the internet to distract them from their studies...
Realistically however, attacking some undersea cables isn't a threat to the existence of the internet anyway. Even if you could split THE internet into many national/regional networks, that would still be sufficient for most industrial and economic needs. More expensive and robust links could connect these regional networks where truly needed.
The US is special in being able to build and sustain huge tech companies. But the most important (internet or otherwise) services for anyones' economy don't require such huge companies.
Not saying that the loss worldwide free communication wouldn't be painful, but I think it would be as painful for both the providers and the consumers of services.
Guardian article (Feb 5, 2024), "Houthi-linked Telegram channel published a map of the cables running along the bed of the Red Sea. The image was accompanied by a message: “There are maps of international cables connecting all regions of the world through the sea. It seems that Yemen is in a strategic location, as internet lines that connect entire continents – not only countries – pass near it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/05/houthis-may-sa...
MEMRI publishes word for word quote of above with screenshots of Telegram group (Dec 24, 2023).
https://www.memri.org/jttm/veiled-threat-telegram-channels-l...
Today (Feb 26, 2024) @Netblocks posts screenshot of drop in traffic.
https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1762115571376685524
Sunil Tagare - Founder & CEO, OpenCables (Feb 25, 2024)
How can these be repaired? Can it even be done safely? Insurance of operating a specialized boat in these waters? (paraphrasing)
https://twitter.com/tagaresunil/status/1761859936617959443