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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 2: A production of iHeart Radio.

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Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.

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Speaker 3: Our colleague Noel is on an adventure, but will be

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Speaker 3: returning shortly.

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Speaker 2: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our

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Speaker 2: super producer, all mission controlled decad Most importantly, you are you.

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Speaker 2: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't

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Speaker 2: want you to know. All praise to the codes, all

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Speaker 2: praise to the cables. The world is full of hidden things,

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Speaker 2: you know, Matt. This is something you and I have

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Speaker 2: been talking about and for a while off air, and

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Speaker 2: I think a hazard. We're both pretty fascinated. We're both

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Speaker 2: pretty excited maybe to explore this today. It's spooky stuff.

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Speaker 2: We've talked before in the past. We did a number

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Speaker 2: of live shows a few years back where we talked

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Speaker 2: about hidden things all around you, right, like hidden languages

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Speaker 2: of the city, facade, buildings, all that stuff. But we

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Speaker 2: never really talked about how some of the biggest hidden

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Speaker 2: things in the world today concern information, not even just

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Speaker 2: like I know when we say information, we all think like, oh,

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Speaker 2: top secret stuff, Oh the aliens are real. But it's

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Speaker 2: more like it's equally important to learn how information is transported,

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Speaker 2: the physical structure that gets it from point A to

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Speaker 2: point Z and beyond. You know, I don't know about you,

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Speaker 2: but for a long time I didn't put much thought

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Speaker 2: into this. I was just like, oh, the modem works

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Speaker 2: or oh the cables out.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I think maybe it has to do with the way

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Speaker 3: our individual apartments and homes are connected to the information hub,

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Speaker 3: like you're talking about ben Uh. For us, it is

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Speaker 3: a cable that is run into a into our house, right,

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Speaker 3: and usually a single cable, whether that's you know, a

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Speaker 3: fiber optic from like AT and T or for a

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Speaker 3: time Google, or you know an exfinity literal like coaxial

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Speaker 3: cable that runs into your house. Like, that's the way

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Speaker 3: we get information, and that's that's the hub. But where

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Speaker 3: does what's that cable connected to? And what what where's

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Speaker 3: the server that has all the information that makes up Reddit?

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Speaker 2: What what is that that tiny tendril that goes into

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Speaker 2: your house? Where does that come from?

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Speaker 4: Right? Capillary?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that capillary, that's a great word for it. Most

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Speaker 2: people who are not in industries related to this don't

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Speaker 2: put too much thought into it. Just make sure it works,

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Speaker 2: call someone if it doesn't. And we all know that

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Speaker 2: if a few things go wrong, people discover this during

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Speaker 2: the pandemic with just your little cable, your life will

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Speaker 2: change for a few days, it will become more complicated.

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Speaker 2: And it turns out that is true on a macro scale.

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Speaker 2: If just a ludicrously cartoonishly small number of things go

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Speaker 2: wrong in the world, the house of communicative cards may

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Speaker 2: collapse entirely. And so tonight's question, how easy would it

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Speaker 2: be to collapse some or all of the global communication network?

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Speaker 2: Here are the facts. I guess before we talk about that,

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Speaker 2: we need to just set up a quick background on

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Speaker 2: communication and codes. In fact, Matt, you and I, when

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Speaker 2: we were working together on this episode, we were thinking

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Speaker 2: we can do codes and code breaking and undersea cables

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Speaker 2: as one thing, and that turned out not to be

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Speaker 2: the case. This isn't even everything about undersea cables, but

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Speaker 2: it's crazy.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, oh for sure.

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Speaker 3: And as we tried to get on here, we attempted

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Speaker 3: to use the system that we generally used to record remotely.

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Speaker 4: I'm at my.

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Speaker 3: House bends at his house, Michig controls in his house,

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Speaker 3: and we get together through our cables and we can

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Speaker 3: see each other and talk to each other and we record.

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Speaker 3: But that system was down when we got on.

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Speaker 4: Guys. Just point that out. Just point that out.

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Speaker 3: We're doing it a different way today. Actually, this is

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Speaker 3: kind of an old school way that we used to

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Speaker 3: do every time. Yeah, but just for a little peek

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Speaker 3: behind the curtain. When something goes down, as you said, Ben,

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Speaker 3: it can really affect things. So a company located somewhere

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Speaker 3: in Israel, their stuff goes down, and now we can't

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Speaker 3: record way over here in Atlanta and New York, sorry, Paul.

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Speaker 2: Yes, or anywhere, because we have used this same platform

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Speaker 2: internationally fairly often in the past, you know, and we

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Speaker 2: are of course immensely astounded and grateful to do something

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Speaker 2: that is essentially is like a high level spell at

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Speaker 2: any other time in history. Right.

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Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, you don't need anything.

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Speaker 3: Just connect to your internet thing and your camera and

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Speaker 3: your microphone and everybody's good to go.

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Speaker 4: That's magic, man.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, but let's let you're right, Ben, let's jump

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Speaker 3: into codes cryptography, sending information way far away, and how

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Speaker 3: do you make sure only your intended person understands what

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Speaker 3: that message is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, cryptography proper the discipline the systematic study of codes

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Speaker 2: and how codes can be created or broken. Weirdly enough,

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Speaker 2: it's a very new science. It only started around one

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Speaker 2: hundred years ago. But it turns out since the dawn

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Speaker 2: of recorded history, people have been trying to communicate with

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Speaker 2: other specific people in a way that doesn't allow outsiders

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Speaker 2: to participate. The first known evidence of cryptography in some

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Speaker 2: kind of form goes all the way back to nineteen

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Speaker 2: hundred BC or BCE, your mileage may vary. There's this

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Speaker 2: chamber in the tomb of a nobleman in Egypt named

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Speaker 2: Nunhotep the Second, and at some point in the creation

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Speaker 2: of this chamber, this burial structure, an unknown scribe whose

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Speaker 2: name is lost to history, started styling on the hieroglyphs.

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Speaker 2: They started writing weird things, just weird insertions of stuff

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Speaker 2: that usually wouldn't go in your funereal writing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. So when we're thinking about codes and

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Speaker 3: attempting to hide something in plain sight like that, because again,

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Speaker 3: any code could potentially be read or received by anyone.

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Speaker 3: As we said, it's only supposed to be deciphered by

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Speaker 3: you know, the intended recipients.

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Speaker 4: Right. So in this case, the.

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Speaker 3: Way that these hieroglyphics were changed, it's almost as if

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Speaker 3: it was it wasn't necessarily hiding a message or something.

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Speaker 3: It was to change the message a little bit, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was to make it pop. And the more

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Speaker 2: I've thought about this since researching it, Matt, the more

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Speaker 2: it reminds me of that halcyon period of the Internet

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Speaker 2: in the early two thousands, where people would write stuff

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Speaker 2: in message boards and they would start putting in random

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Speaker 2: lowercase x's, you know, especially to indicate they were like

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Speaker 2: hardcore or something that would change this message or you know,

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Speaker 2: it could remind you in earlier analog days of notes

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Speaker 2: that children would pass in grade school and they would

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Speaker 2: want their penmanship to have a pop to it. So

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Speaker 2: instead of the dots atop the eye, you get the hearts,

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Speaker 2: you know, and the little smiley face. So maybe this

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Speaker 2: guy was just jusing it up because he loved this

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Speaker 2: Egyptian nobles so much. But to your point, and this

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Speaker 2: is an open question in Egyptology, people are not sure

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Speaker 2: whether this was to again just make the thing seem

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Speaker 2: more formal and fancy and beautiful and intricate, or whether

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Speaker 2: the placement of those symbols, just like the placement of

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Speaker 2: fnord in Illuminatus trilogy, they weren't sure whether it was

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Speaker 2: meant to change the context of what was being written

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Speaker 2: or carved. I guess. And this because it indicates some

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Speaker 2: transformation of the original text, it is the oldest known

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Speaker 2: predecessor of cryptography today. So the other interesting thing here

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Speaker 2: is if you look at most major early civilizations, there

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Speaker 2: is some form of encoding and transmitting information. And we

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Speaker 2: found a great example from ancient Indian civilization, something called

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Speaker 2: the arth Shastra.

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Speaker 4: WHOA, this sounds really interesting.

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Speaker 3: So this is like, this is some kind of secret

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Speaker 3: language that we was used specifically for a spy service.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is uh. And we got this from a

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Speaker 2: great security blog called RedHat dot com. This is this

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Speaker 2: appears to be I should say, some Kissinger level MI

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Speaker 2: I six James bod stuff because the guy who writes

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Speaker 2: it at the time this is three point fifty to

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Speaker 2: two seventy five PCE. He's a prime minister of his state.

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Speaker 2: His name's called Teli, so shades a Kissinger, and he

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Speaker 2: talks about how his civilization has a well established sophisticated

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Speaker 2: espionage service, and he talks about giving assignments to spies

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Speaker 2: and operators in what translates to secret writing codes. And

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Speaker 2: you know, I guess this is back in the day

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Speaker 2: man where they could have done. They could have done

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Speaker 2: the BCE version of two Sketchy guys in Fedora's at

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Speaker 2: a park asking weird questions as codes. You know, I

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Speaker 2: always thought that was so silly, but people really did

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Speaker 2: it anyway. So that's history of cryptography, ancient past. It's

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Speaker 2: so in Baga Badgers. It's worth exploring when we're talking

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Speaker 2: about this off air in a future episode or a

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Speaker 2: future series of episodes. And you know, when you think

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Speaker 2: of cryptography and code breaking today in the West, at least,

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Speaker 2: you probably think about the heroic story of Touring breaking

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Speaker 2: the Enigma machine. But the weirdest thing about code breakers

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Speaker 2: right now that we need to know is a lot

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Speaker 2: outside of touring, a lot of the historically world changing

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Speaker 2: heroic acts of code breaking they probably remain classified today.

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Speaker 2: And that's because what they did was so important and

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Speaker 2: we're part of it. We are all part of it.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't matter if you are a civilian, doesn't matter

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Speaker 2: if you're military, doesn't matter if you're on your merry

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Speaker 2: way and some other pursuit. If you have an Internet connection,

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Speaker 2: you are involved with using codes in your day to

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Speaker 2: day life. And you may not realize it, but all

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Speaker 2: that streaming video mad, the stream video you and Paul

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Speaker 2: and I are using now, all those articles you might read,

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Speaker 2: the podcast, the audio books, they originate from somewhere else,

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Speaker 2: before they reach that little cable that reaches a modem,

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Speaker 2: or before they reach the little before they fly out

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Speaker 2: from their server to reach your phone. They come from somewhere.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're also encrypted. All of that data is encrypted,

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Speaker 3: and to end, encryption is the thing now. And even

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Speaker 3: if you go to a website or use an app,

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Speaker 3: it doesn't matter. There's a reason it says HTTPS now

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Speaker 3: rather than HTTP, because everything is secured and all those communications.

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Speaker 3: It's a must because so many people have access and

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Speaker 3: so many people have an understanding of how the system works,

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Speaker 3: it's all got to be basically secret.

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Speaker 2: And being unable to code, to write some in some

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Speaker 2: degree of a computer language, make no mistake, folks. In

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Speaker 2: the near future, not being able to do that is

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Speaker 2: going to be a lot like being illiterate in the

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Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds. It's a big deal. And when we talk

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Speaker 2: about this great communications web, which you've heard I'm sure

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Speaker 2: in countless ted talks folks, it naturally can these images

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Speaker 2: of satellite links, you know, Starlink orbital systems. You got

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Speaker 2: an eye in the sky that is making sure you

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Speaker 2: can watch Eurovision in real time. The truth of the

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Speaker 2: matter is not that that does exist. People do use

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Speaker 2: that that is on the way, but the vast majority

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Speaker 2: of communication on this planet is much more terrestrial. As

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Speaker 2: we have foreshadowed here right now, the bulk of global

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Speaker 2: communication does not occur in space. It occurs under the ocean.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I wonder if anyone out there has the

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Speaker 3: experience I had where a long time ago, I had

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Speaker 3: a wealthy family member, you know, like kind of distant

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Speaker 3: family member, visited their house. They had this thing that

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Speaker 3: I had never seen before as a kid. It was

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Speaker 3: satellite television, and it's what you're describing there. Early there

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Speaker 3: have been where.

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Speaker 4: They had a satellite dish on their.

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Speaker 3: Somewhere and it connected up to a literal satellite and

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Speaker 3: that's how they were getting the television signal.

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Speaker 4: But it happened to be a stormy day that day.

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Speaker 3: So this brand new, awesome satellite TV thing they had

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Speaker 3: was all scrambled and crappy. You know, I just remember thinking, well,

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Speaker 3: that's weird, that doesn't make sense, that's expensive. But you know,

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Speaker 3: I think that's one of the major reasons what we're

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Speaker 3: talking about today. These undersea cables are so primary, so absolute,

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Speaker 3: the absolute backbone to any internet communication, any telecommunication.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, that's a that's a fun memory to men

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Speaker 2: because I had I had experience with that sort of

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Speaker 2: stuff too, and had the same disconnect on multiple levels,

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Speaker 2: like we're paying this much and the weather is the

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Speaker 2: weather is our arbiter, the weather basically holds our remote control.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well it was like the first time having a

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Speaker 3: car and on an AM radio station in a thunderstorm

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Speaker 3: and going, what the heck is going on?

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Speaker 4: Why does it sound so horrible?

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Speaker 3: Oh, it's if interference literally in the sky, that's what's happening.

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Speaker 3: This isn't great.

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Speaker 2: And then it makes you wonder about how many signals

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Speaker 2: they're shooting through your physical body. But that's yes story

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Speaker 2: for another evening, right that. So, satellites involve some amazing

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Speaker 2: human innovation, some astonishing engineering and math, but they're still not,

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Speaker 2: as they're not as reliable nor as versatile as the

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Speaker 2: established infrastructure, which runs invisible throughout the world's ocean. A

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Speaker 2: small army of under sea or subse cables as they're

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Speaker 2: called the industry, crosses the world. It makes modern civilization possible,

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Speaker 2: and we'll get to it. But just so you know, folks,

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Speaker 2: if you see one of these cables, they're not super impressive.

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Speaker 2: They look like if Godzilla was a garden hose. They

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Speaker 2: look like Mega Godzilla. They look like an armored garden

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Speaker 2: hose with some tar leaking out.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I've heard it described as actually this, this soda can

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Speaker 3: I'm holding up is smaller than I guess the girth

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Speaker 3: of these cables. Yeah, like a standard soda can is

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Speaker 3: basically how big this thing is. And often it's buried

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Speaker 3: right sure, like within the ground of the seafloor, at

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Speaker 3: least that's how it begins. But then there are portions

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Speaker 3: of it where it's going to protrude and you're actually

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Speaker 3: just gonna see this cabling running across the ocean floor.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I was.

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Speaker 2: This might be helpful to paint the picture for us

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Speaker 2: or our fellow conspiracy realist. Okay, no, judgment on anyone.

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Speaker 2: But think of your entertainment center or you're you're gaming

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Speaker 2: your computer station at your house. You probably have it

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Speaker 2: on some sort of furniture maybe, and either way, you

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Speaker 2: have a mass of wire connecting things behind that shelf

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Speaker 2: or that desk. Now, you may be someone who's super

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Speaker 2: into cable management and organizations, so you might have the

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Speaker 2: nice little like plastic ties keeping stuff in order. But

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Speaker 2: if you're like many people, you got a weird bull

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Speaker 2: of spaghetti back there. You got the one cable, the

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Speaker 2: tendril of the great communication sphere connecting you to the world.

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Speaker 2: Then you got your power cords, your HDMI lines, ethernet,

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Speaker 2: et cetera. It can look pretty crazy back there, and

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Speaker 2: the ocean is kind of like that. It's definitely going

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Speaker 2: to be more like that as time continues, unless there

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Speaker 2: is an unprecedented scientific breakthrough, and it's been that way

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Speaker 2: for a while. The very first international undersea cable is

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Speaker 2: older than modern cryptography.

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Speaker 4: Really.

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Speaker 2: It was late in August of eighteen fifty eight or

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Speaker 2: that's when it became operational, and its whole purpose was

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Speaker 2: to send Morse code across the Atlantic. Just beep beep,

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Speaker 2: deep deep.

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Speaker 3: Deep, Yeah, yeah, well, and there there was a bunch

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Speaker 3: of cabling before that that didn't stretch quite that long, right,

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Speaker 3: Like they were connecting up smaller land masses across a

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Speaker 3: large ocean or sea or you know, whatever body of water.

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Speaker 3: It is crazy that in eighteen what is it, seventy one,

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Speaker 3: the entire planet except for a couple of small places,

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Speaker 3: was connected by this type of cable. So you could

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Speaker 3: telegraph pretty much anywhere except for Antarctica.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they know what they did anyway, so the.

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Speaker 3: Well, and again smaller masses of land, like smaller island

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Speaker 3: systems generally were also very often not fully connected, which

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Speaker 3: is which is something that even now, there are places

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Speaker 3: that don't have one of these cables running directly to them, right,

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Speaker 3: that do have to rely on other systems.

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Speaker 4: But like, gosh, if.

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Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about it now, then pretty much everywhere

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Speaker 3: on the planet has one of these undersea cables, at

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Speaker 3: least pretty close to it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the proximity has increased, it will continue to increase

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Speaker 2: as well. And I think you make a fantastic point

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Speaker 2: about the disparity of connection. You know, there are a

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Speaker 2: lot of places that logistically are just very difficult to

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Speaker 2: connect and then, of course the dominant religion of economics

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Speaker 2: also gets in the way. So the two big things

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Speaker 2: that are determining how this network grows are one geography

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Speaker 2: and two the school of thought called economics or the

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Speaker 2: financial state. Right, how many coupons can we get for

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Speaker 2: doing this? And so these later generations of cable they evolve,

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Speaker 2: they start carrying things like telephone, telephone information or telephonic communication.

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Speaker 2: And now these humble cables carry pretty much all the information,

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Speaker 2: Like you're the vast majority of information. If you get

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Speaker 2: it online, it arrives via one of these cables scooting

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Speaker 2: at an incredibly fast speed along these tiny glass threads

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Speaker 2: thousands of miles long that are just out in the

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Speaker 2: open ocean. Maybe they're buried, sometimes they are buried. Sometimes.

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Speaker 2: Let's be fair, we're going to explore all kinds of

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Speaker 2: statistics regarding this network. There's so much that we're honestly

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Speaker 2: not going to get to because you know, Matt and

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Speaker 2: I are old school house. Stuff works, guys, So we

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Speaker 2: will easily if we're not careful, we will easily spend

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Speaker 2: hours just saying, oh, and here's how this works, and oh,

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Speaker 2: did you know we're going to get to a lot.

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Speaker 3: We just spent twenty one minutes or however long it's

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Speaker 3: been on like a page and a half of notes

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Speaker 3: that we have on this stuff because I just want

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Speaker 3: to talk about it.

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Speaker 4: Sorry, so it's so fat.

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Speaker 2: Hopefully you find it fascinating too. Uh. And before we

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Speaker 2: break for a word from our sponsors, I want to

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Speaker 2: set you up with one big conspiratorial question, just you know,

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Speaker 2: the heart and soul of stuff they don't want you

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Speaker 2: to know. How easy would it be to damage these things?

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Speaker 2: Could you topple modern civilization by literally cutting the cord?

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Speaker 2: Here's where it gets crazy. Yes, absolutely, there are several

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Speaker 2: ways to do this. I'm so glad you asked. But

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Speaker 2: before we get into that, let's go let's uh, let's

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Speaker 2: Matt maybe like you were saying, let's let's help people

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Speaker 2: visualize what this looks like. If you just if you

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Speaker 2: had an atlas of undersea cable what would that map be?

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Speaker 3: Yes, I would recommend everyone, if you are not driving

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Speaker 3: right now, head on over to Submarine Cable map dot

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Speaker 3: com and you can actually visualize what the cable systems

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Speaker 3: look like. This is all the global cable systems that

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Speaker 3: are known to exist. We're assuming by the way, for

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Speaker 3: this episode that there are several systems that we can't see,

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Speaker 3: and they are not mapped, but these are the official

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Speaker 3: ones that exist. Now, if you take a look at

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Speaker 3: this map and then you visualize yourself encountering the planet Earth, right,

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Speaker 3: this sphere thing, yes, it's a sphere. You encounter this

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Speaker 3: sphere thing that has lots of water that appears blue,

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Speaker 3: lots of land that appears green and brown, different shades.

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Speaker 3: And if you could, if you could see this cabling

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Speaker 3: running across the planet, you would you might think, oh,

358
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Speaker 3: this planet is some kind of mixture of biological machinery

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Speaker 3: like system.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: It almost looks as though these things are maybe using

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Speaker 3: the analogy of a human anatomy system. These things are

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Speaker 3: all connected and make this planet.

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Speaker 4: Alive in some way. I don't know.

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Speaker 3: It looks strange. It looks like veins and arteries that

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Speaker 3: are connecting different land masses.

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Speaker 2: I think of it too, You know, Gaya is cyborg.

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Speaker 2: That's really interesting concept, Matt's. It reminds me of a

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Speaker 2: nervous system. It reminds me of that beautiful and terrifying

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Speaker 2: experiment conducted in Japan where fungi or fungi naturally mapped

371
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Speaker 2: out the train system of Japan, and it does look

372
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Speaker 2: like somewhere the dots of the origin points will make

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Speaker 2: it look a little bit like a circuit board. That's

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Speaker 2: yea god nuts.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. It reminds me a lot of building my first computer,

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Speaker 3: like desktop computer, when I learned how to do that

377
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Speaker 3: long long time ago, with just the cabling inside there

378
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Speaker 3: connecting up various parts of the motherboard to the other components.

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Speaker 4: It's fascinating.

380
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Speaker 2: Also, you can see the disparity that dates back all

381
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Speaker 2: the way to the days of the telegraph. There are

382
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Speaker 2: clearly empty areas. The South Pacific is one. You know,

383
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:22,080
Speaker 2: you go under Africa like once you get once you

384
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Speaker 2: get a few one hundred miles south of South Africa,

385
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Speaker 2: there's nothing, and there's nothing connecting Antarctica yet. Officially, the

386
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Speaker 2: closest would be Puerto Williams in Chile, which is not

387
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Speaker 2: a big tourist destination for a lot of people.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

389
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Speaker 3: Yeah, And New Zealand is encroaching.

390
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Speaker 2: Yeah okay, and there's you know, of course landlocked countries

391
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:52,640
Speaker 2: get the short shrift here because there's undersea cable will

392
00:24:52,880 --> 00:24:55,919
Speaker 2: have to go to the surface to reach them. So sorry,

393
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Speaker 2: all stands except for Pakistan.

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Speaker 4: But Ben, that's so, that's a great point.

395
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Speaker 3: So for for all this undersea cabling you're looking at,

396
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Speaker 3: if you're looking at the website, there is a crap

397
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Speaker 3: ton of overland cable the same type that connects up

398
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Speaker 3: all the major cities, all the major hubs that have

399
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Speaker 3: data running to them that then get sent out in

400
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Speaker 3: the other cable systems that are you know, some of

401
00:25:22,040 --> 00:25:27,119
Speaker 3: them are still above ground. Yeah, it is uh, whoa,

402
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:30,639
Speaker 3: that's weird to me out like visualizing all the cable

403
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Speaker 3: that's laid across the planet.

404
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Speaker 2: The reason this is only a submarine cable map is

405
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Speaker 2: because if it was in all the cable map, it

406
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Speaker 2: would be nigh illegible.

407
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Speaker 4: Yeah, but.

408
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 2: That's the I mean, that's it's a great thing because

409
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 2: it shows us the disparity. It shows us the communications centers,

410
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:53,960
Speaker 2: and it also shows us in a pretty efficient way,

411
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Speaker 2: it shows us population centers, so and and you know,

412
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 2: depending on what you're purposes are it also it also

413
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:08,160
Speaker 2: shows you targets right just so and right now. It's nuts.

414
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Speaker 2: I'm glad you mentioned the secrecy. This is inherently conspiratorial stuff, folks.

415
00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:17,280
Speaker 2: We looked into the work of a lot of analytics firms,

416
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:20,159
Speaker 2: and one that is the most prominent, gets quoted the

417
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:26,880
Speaker 2: most often in trade organizations and in popular publications as well,

418
00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:32,280
Speaker 2: is an analyst firm called TeleGeography, and they're they're doing

419
00:26:32,320 --> 00:26:35,720
Speaker 2: some pretty best in class work for the public. As

420
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:39,680
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty three they said that this year they

421
00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 2: know of five hundred and fifty two existing or planned

422
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:48,760
Speaker 2: subse cables, with more doubtlessly on the way, and they're

423
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:52,439
Speaker 2: focusing on subse cables. They have other work that touches

424
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 2: other forms of communication. But one important note we should

425
00:26:56,080 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 2: make is those land cables, which still you know very

426
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:03,119
Speaker 2: much in existence, they can be a lot harder to trace,

427
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:07,760
Speaker 2: especially if you get into the interior of a country

428
00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:13,120
Speaker 2: with secrets like the US, Russia or China. So it's

429
00:27:13,119 --> 00:27:16,719
Speaker 2: actually it's actually a little bit easier to find the

430
00:27:16,760 --> 00:27:20,720
Speaker 2: oceanic cables. And we mentioned a little bit. Do we

431
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:24,280
Speaker 2: want to talk a little bit more about their their cutaway,

432
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:26,920
Speaker 2: like how they how they look on the inside.

433
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I found a really great image of this too, Ben,

434
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 3: I'm gonna find it here. I found one on vox

435
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:37,360
Speaker 3: dot com. This is an article that you can find

436
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:40,160
Speaker 3: right now titled a map of all the underwater cables

437
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 3: that connect the Internet, and they've got a cutaway here.

438
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 4: Oh they pulled it from Wikipedia.

439
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:51,160
Speaker 2: The Wikipedia cutaway. Okay, look, Wikipedia is not a solid source,

440
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:55,560
Speaker 2: let's be honest. But the cutaway from Wikipedia in this

441
00:27:55,720 --> 00:28:00,439
Speaker 2: case is legit. Like the diagram is, you've got a

442
00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 2: bunch of coating, so you've got a polyethylene insulator, copper sheathing.

443
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 2: Inside of that, you've got steel wires for rigidity and

444
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 2: frankly for armor, and then you've got inside of all

445
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:17,399
Speaker 2: that little matroshkadal you've got the optical fibers in a

446
00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 2: silicon gel's. It's very weird because when I'm describing it, it

447
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,359
Speaker 2: makes me think of layered pastries. But one thing the

448
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:30,919
Speaker 2: cutaways may not show is, you know, like you were

449
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:33,199
Speaker 2: talking about the fact that they may be buried a

450
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 2: little bit, and the fact that they're coated with tar

451
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:36,679
Speaker 2: pretty often.

452
00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and we found it.

453
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 3: In a couple of different sources that the cabling size

454
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 3: differs because some of them describe them as a garden hose,

455
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 3: so you imagine the I don't know the diameter of

456
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 3: a garden hose or the diameter again of a soda can,

457
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:57,160
Speaker 3: standard sized, wide mouthed soda can, and I guess there

458
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 3: are just different sizes because but we didn't even talk

459
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:04,800
Speaker 3: about this yet. Right now on this planet, there are

460
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 3: only four companies that are the major manufacturers, the manufacturers

461
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:12,600
Speaker 3: and layers of this type of cable.

462
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 2: And they're not the people who own the cable necessarily,

463
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 2: they're not the people who run the information. They're the

464
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:21,400
Speaker 2: creators and installers.

465
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and let's just go through the really quickly.

466
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 3: You can look all of these up. In the United States,

467
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 3: there's a thing called SubCom. You can check out their website.

468
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 3: It was on it earlier. It's interesting, it's fascinating. There

469
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:41,160
Speaker 3: in Japan there's the NEC Corporation. In France there's al

470
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 3: Kattel Submarine Networks. And in China there's a company called

471
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:51,000
Speaker 3: HMN Tech. And these are pretty much these are the

472
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:51,920
Speaker 3: big players at.

473
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 2: Least, and some of them are older than others, but

474
00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:01,560
Speaker 2: everybody does business with them because you know, they have

475
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:05,040
Speaker 2: it's a supply and demand, you know, I mean, there

476
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:09,600
Speaker 2: are only so many games in town, and these things,

477
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:15,280
Speaker 2: these four companies and these cables, they're still using some

478
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:21,080
Speaker 2: old tech, some old tactics, some old processes. They lay

479
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 2: the ships that lay this cable essentially do it the

480
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 2: same way people lay telegraph cable back in the mid

481
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds. And some cable makers, like SubCom. Interesting fact

482
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 2: about them, they actually evolved from an old rope manufacturing

483
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,040
Speaker 2: company that made rope and just happened to have a

484
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:44,840
Speaker 2: factory next to a deep water port. So that's history.

485
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 2: Hinges on such small things. And like you said, these

486
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 2: cables are not all created equal. This summer faster than others,

487
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:58,640
Speaker 2: better at transmitting more information more consistently. They're taking lessons

488
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:03,760
Speaker 2: learned from previous function issues. And there's a great article

489
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 2: on cnet by guy a journalist named Stephen Shankland, and

490
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 2: he points out that the fastest transatlantic cable out there

491
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 2: right now is built is funded by Microsoft Meta, the

492
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:21,280
Speaker 2: tech giants. This thing alone can carry four hundred tera

493
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 2: bits of data per second, and Shanklin points out that

494
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 2: for comparison, not to make everybody feel bad about your

495
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:33,320
Speaker 2: own gaming rig, four hundred terabytes of data per second

496
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:37,720
Speaker 2: is four hundred thousand times faster than your home broadband,

497
00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 2: even if you have the highest end service available to

498
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:41,440
Speaker 2: the public.

499
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 3: Well That's good because I'm only assuming that there are

500
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 3: four hundred thousand people using the Internet every second they

501
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 3: would connect that cable. There's probably millions of people at

502
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 3: any given second using that cable, and I guess they

503
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 3: only need a certain amount, you know, a percentage of

504
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 3: that huge capacity every second. But good golly, I don't know.

505
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 3: We need to get that thing even bigger. We need

506
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 3: bigger cables.

507
00:32:11,680 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 2: Man, Let's turn the ocean into one big cable. What

508
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:19,880
Speaker 2: could go wrong? Yeah, so it's let's go back to

509
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 2: TeleGeography because I was I was impressed with there's stuff.

510
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 2: There's one quote from an analyst there, Alan Maldon, who

511
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:31,640
Speaker 2: gets quoted in multiple conversations about this, and he does

512
00:32:31,680 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 2: a good job of emphasizing me. He says, the whole

513
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:37,320
Speaker 2: network of undersea cables is the lifeblood of the economy.

514
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 2: It's how we're sending emails and phone calls and YouTube

515
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 2: videos and financial transactions. And that last one, I don't know.

516
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:48,320
Speaker 2: He's just outlining the public stuff. He's not talking about

517
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:52,480
Speaker 2: other factors that may come into play. I think you're

518
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:56,880
Speaker 2: naily to Matt the idea of sharing a ride. Basically,

519
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:03,240
Speaker 2: there's this big global subway and everything that you send

520
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:06,400
Speaker 2: or receive. Hops on the train with strangers.

521
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 3: Oh, some of those strangers on that train, I don't know,

522
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:15,800
Speaker 3: might make you nervous. Everybody's everybody's fine on the train.

523
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 3: If you're somebody might make you nervous, That's what I'm saying.

524
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 2: Right right, right, So, once upon a time, this was

525
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 2: primarily the domain of like state powers working with telecom

526
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 2: industry players. Right mo Bell lays a new wire or

527
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 2: new cable, et cetera, et cetera. But of course we've

528
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:39,800
Speaker 2: already mentioned them. The new kids on the block are

529
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:45,720
Speaker 2: are the tech bros, the tech empires, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon,

530
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 2: those four primarily, but many others. They've got money to

531
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 2: play and they won in the game there. What was

532
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:56,120
Speaker 2: that term? There's a term we learned from hyperscalers. They're

533
00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 2: called in the industry because of all the money that

534
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 2: they have put into play here.

535
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:05,960
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh for sure, let's talk about it.

536
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 3: These guys, these hyperscalers, the Metas and Amazons and the

537
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:14,120
Speaker 3: Googles and the Microsoft, they're responsible for two thirds of

538
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 3: all of that cable traffic.

539
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:18,279
Speaker 4: Oh you know what, it's making me think of?

540
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 2: What's that do you remember.

541
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:22,880
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm gonna blank on it.

542
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:27,280
Speaker 3: I think it was Ted Stevens or some other senator

543
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 3: a long time ago. They made this comment publicly about

544
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:35,680
Speaker 3: a series of tubes and the tubes are getting clogged

545
00:34:35,719 --> 00:34:37,719
Speaker 3: and all this other stuff. It was something to do

546
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 3: with that neutrality.

547
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:40,359
Speaker 4: God, that's been a while, but you're right.

548
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:41,600
Speaker 2: It was Ted Stevens.

549
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:44,040
Speaker 4: It was Ted Stevens, bing bing bing.

550
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:46,359
Speaker 3: I get a bingo thing for me. Sorry, my brain

551
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 3: doesn't generally work like this. But he got ridiculed for

552
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 3: calling the Internet a series of tubes or a tubes

553
00:34:56,560 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 3: they could get clogged, right, But really, if you visual

554
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:04,800
Speaker 3: this way, at least the international interconnectivity that becomes the Internet,

555
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:05,760
Speaker 3: that is the Internet.

556
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:07,640
Speaker 4: Maybe he wasn't that far off.

557
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 2: He really wasn't. You know. These are when you go

558
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:18,640
Speaker 2: down to the nitty gritty, we're talking about physical capability, right, Yeah,

559
00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:23,400
Speaker 2: even in the so called cloud. Guess what that rides

560
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:25,319
Speaker 2: the subway too, you know what I mean?

561
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:27,320
Speaker 4: It's tube traffic.

562
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:30,879
Speaker 2: Yes, it very much is. And the like you said,

563
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:34,319
Speaker 2: are our big dogs on the tech side. Are two

564
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 2: thirds of that traffic now easy and they are increasing.

565
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:41,880
Speaker 2: Analysts say they're surging and their share of the traffic

566
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:45,880
Speaker 2: each and every calendar year. This means essentially more people

567
00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:50,200
Speaker 2: and more businesses are doing more stuff that needs a

568
00:35:50,280 --> 00:35:53,920
Speaker 2: ride on the on the information subway. So just like

569
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 2: when a city grows and you get a lot of

570
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:58,280
Speaker 2: people moving in and there are more and more cars

571
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 2: on the highway, you have to invest in maintaining and

572
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 2: repairing the existing roads or expanding them. Yeah, you also

573
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 2: have to expand them, and then you also have to

574
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 2: build entirely new roads. And if you don't, then your

575
00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:15,000
Speaker 2: city's going to be in a lot of trouble very soon.

576
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:18,640
Speaker 2: For anybody who's played sim City, all right whatever.

577
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 4: Or Atlanta traffic or.

578
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:24,799
Speaker 2: Atlanta traffic's not a game. But I do feel like

579
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:27,920
Speaker 2: I'm playing it now because we're driving back into our office.

580
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, So congratulations to everybody in Atlanta traffic

581
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:34,719
Speaker 2: who is driving like they've already made their peace with

582
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 2: God or whatever. I forgot about it.

583
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:41,920
Speaker 3: Man, when there is a vehicle in front of the

584
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:46,920
Speaker 3: vehicle in front of you, riding on that person's tail

585
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 3: doesn't do anything.

586
00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:52,800
Speaker 2: It's just not a And I, uh, yeah, I've already

587
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 2: been racking up more Atlanta war stories. I did. I

588
00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:01,600
Speaker 2: did find, you know, used to struggle with road rage map,

589
00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 2: but I did find a new tactic that I think

590
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 2: is helpful and instructive to everybody involved. Since we're an

591
00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:11,400
Speaker 2: audio show, this might not make sense, but if you

592
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:13,680
Speaker 2: were in a traffic heavy area and you have to

593
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:16,320
Speaker 2: drive around people who are still kind of like learning

594
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:19,200
Speaker 2: about themselves in their car and all around them.

595
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 3: And they know laws about keeping to the right if

596
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:23,480
Speaker 3: you're going slow, sure.

597
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:25,960
Speaker 2: And if they're out of blinker fluid or whatever, the

598
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:29,240
Speaker 2: best way, in my opinion, the best thing I've found

599
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:33,120
Speaker 2: is that yelling and people doesn't work. You know, Flipping

600
00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:35,840
Speaker 2: the bird is just sort of juvenile. What I like

601
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 2: to do is point at the person, laugh and then

602
00:37:39,600 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 2: give them a thumbs down. And that is so much better,

603
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:50,239
Speaker 2: and it really does it really does work. I think

604
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:52,759
Speaker 2: it's humorous and appropriate.

605
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:54,239
Speaker 4: Do the gladiator thing.

606
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 3: You point at them and then give them a sideways

607
00:37:57,040 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 3: finger and then it kind of tilts one way or

608
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 3: the other and then goes down.

609
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 2: Hey, and keep it a positive. Sometimes I give people

610
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:07,600
Speaker 2: a thumbs up too, but you have to be careful

611
00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 2: to make sure that's not sarcastic anyway. That's different we

612
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 2: got a car episode coming up. It's a doozy, but

613
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:17,000
Speaker 2: right now, that car and traffic analogy I think is

614
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 2: pretty apt because it is a crowded city, it is

615
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 2: growing right by any metric, and the trend will accelerate.

616
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 2: We've got a couple returning guests in tonight's episode. One

617
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:36,800
Speaker 2: would be the shady consultancy McKenzie. They are in addition

618
00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 2: to being shady, they're pretty accurate with a lot of

619
00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 2: their stuff when it serves their purpose to be so.

620
00:38:42,520 --> 00:38:48,799
Speaker 2: And they said that undersea cable links are going to

621
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:51,759
Speaker 2: grow at an economy of scale. Already reached that part,

622
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:56,239
Speaker 2: so the Internet hopefully will get faster for everyone, prices

623
00:38:56,360 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 2: will hopefully get lower. We'll see about that. And then

624
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:02,680
Speaker 2: they said this will all lead to like a four

625
00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 2: percent boost in global employment a seven percent boost in

626
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:12,080
Speaker 2: economic activity. It sounds like a win win if everybody

627
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 2: can behave sure.

628
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:18,880
Speaker 3: I mean, everybody's gonna make so much money. Wait four companies,

629
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 3: and then I guess the telecommunications companies after that will

630
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:25,960
Speaker 3: make a lot of money. At that same outfit you found,

631
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:30,239
Speaker 3: ben TeleGeography projects that ten billion dollars is going to

632
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:34,000
Speaker 3: be spent on new subse cables from this year twenty

633
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,160
Speaker 3: twenty three for the next two years twenty twenty five,

634
00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 3: and that's global ten billion dollars is going to be

635
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 3: spent on laying new stuff and also spent on repairing,

636
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 3: you know, issues that happened to the cables and maintaining

637
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 3: those systems and that those that's mostly going to be

638
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 3: handled by those four big companies.

639
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:58,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, because again they're the only ones in town.

640
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 2: And it's kind of like Semiconductor Foundries billion manufacturing base.

641
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 2: There's a pretty tall milkshake. It's tough order this time.

642
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:08,320
Speaker 4: We didn't even talk about ben.

643
00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:11,799
Speaker 3: You can't physically get a human down there to work

644
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:13,960
Speaker 3: on the cables. Still, I send a repair person.

645
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:15,480
Speaker 2: Not yet you.

646
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 3: I mean seriously, when you lay the stuff, it's a

647
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:20,680
Speaker 3: trawler that you have to drop down that doesn't have

648
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 3: any biological material on it. It's just a machine and

649
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 3: it lays the cable. Then when one breaks or you're

650
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:28,640
Speaker 3: laying a new one, you do the same thing. Because

651
00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:32,320
Speaker 3: humans don't exist at those depths.

652
00:40:33,239 --> 00:40:37,480
Speaker 2: None have been proven to exist for very long at all.

653
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 2: So this sounds great for business. Again, when when if

654
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 2: possible and the monopoly of companies or the small oligarchy

655
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:51,319
Speaker 2: of companies that are able to do this or making

656
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 2: money hand over a fist right and they're doing their

657
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 2: best work. But around the world, despite all this good stuff,

658
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 2: cables aren't increased concern for pretty much everybody who thinks

659
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:05,600
Speaker 2: about them for more than a few minutes. They are fragile,

660
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,680
Speaker 2: they're incredibly important. That means if you want to attack someone,

661
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 2: these cables are a fantastic target. You can kind of

662
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:17,719
Speaker 2: see where we're going with this. Welcome to a new

663
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:22,719
Speaker 2: theater of the continuing war. A lot of journalists have

664
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:26,800
Speaker 2: pointed out the attack or the sabotage of the nord

665
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 2: Stream one and two gas pipelines, and look, put morals

666
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 2: and ethics and your favorite teams aside, just look at

667
00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 2: the logistics. That's a difficult operation. It's easy for us

668
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 2: to sit somewhere and read about it and say, well,

669
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:48,759
Speaker 2: you know, just go to a part where nobody's hanging

670
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:50,839
Speaker 2: out and blow it up. But there's a lot going

671
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:53,400
Speaker 2: into that. Because people have their eyes on those pipelines.

672
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 2: It's way easier. Even with remote parts of the seabed,

673
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 2: it's way easier to just cut the garden nose.

674
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:10,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to see through you know, miles of water. Sure,

675
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:15,719
Speaker 3: you know whatever, it's hard to see that stuff. And

676
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:18,319
Speaker 3: you know, and that is weird to think about, ben

677
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:21,800
Speaker 3: because there is a ton of surveillance under the water

678
00:42:21,920 --> 00:42:24,800
Speaker 3: when it comes to like hubs where.

679
00:42:24,640 --> 00:42:25,880
Speaker 4: These cables are laid.

680
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 3: But they are huge swaths of them that are just

681
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:34,319
Speaker 3: cable under like barely underneath the surface, and it's just

682
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 3: there and nobody's watching.

683
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:37,239
Speaker 4: You know.

684
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 3: Again, we're talking hundreds of feet thousands of feet of

685
00:42:41,520 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 3: cable that are exposed that if you knew where to

686
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:48,800
Speaker 3: go and just dropped something a little heavy and sharp

687
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 3: under the ocean floor, not even explosive, no, literally sharp.

688
00:42:55,920 --> 00:43:01,479
Speaker 2: And former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev spoot some people when

689
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 2: he said, yeah, these subc cables their fair game in

690
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:08,480
Speaker 2: a conflict.

691
00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:10,440
Speaker 4: Why irrational international waters?

692
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:12,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, he seemed kind of irritated. He was like, why

693
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 2: wouldn't what come on? Man? Do you even war? And

694
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 2: if you then you start looking at this is something

695
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:23,319
Speaker 2: that's kind of the heart of the show here. Want

696
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 2: to look at the choke points, want to look at

697
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:31,440
Speaker 2: the conspiracies that will naturally blossom in this environment. Take Taiwan,

698
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:36,360
Speaker 2: the archipelago of Taiwan. It has twenty seven subse cable

699
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:42,440
Speaker 2: connections right now. If and this is just if you

700
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 2: were someone who had an opinion about the future of

701
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 2: Taiwan and you wanted to impose your will or your

702
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:56,360
Speaker 2: opinion about the future, then you want to you would

703
00:43:56,360 --> 00:43:58,840
Speaker 2: start with the cables. That's one of the one of

704
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 2: the things you would do if your operation goes hot.

705
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:05,560
Speaker 3: And one thing to keep in mind, we're talking about

706
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 3: severing these cables. These companies can repair a broken cable,

707
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,360
Speaker 3: let's say, or a missing piece of cable in hours.

708
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:18,759
Speaker 3: It's potentially possible to repair something within hours, but it's

709
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 3: also more likely that it's going to take a lot

710
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:25,440
Speaker 3: longer than that, right, And if one of these cables

711
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 3: is attacked, it would probably be strategically timed to where

712
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 3: communications are cut off to you know, a specific place

713
00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:39,480
Speaker 3: like a Taiwan, let's say, and then and then another

714
00:44:39,560 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 3: type of attack would occur. So it's almost like it's

715
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:45,440
Speaker 3: almost like turning the lights off, right if you're just

716
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 3: putting the whole thing on a house and it's a

717
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 3: home intruder and they cut the lights and we're in

718
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:50,400
Speaker 3: a scary movie.

719
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 4: That's the first thing they do.

720
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:54,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get into some systems theory here too, but

721
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:58,880
Speaker 2: think of like a physical DDoS attack. That's really that's

722
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 2: what you can do. Overload the system due to the

723
00:45:02,840 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 2: relatively high number due to a couple of calculations, which

724
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:10,879
Speaker 2: we're going to allude to, but for the sake of everybody,

725
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:14,800
Speaker 2: we're probably not going to do the actual calculation slash

726
00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 2: math on air. But you can play along at home

727
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 2: and tell us what you think. Of course, so even

728
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:25,360
Speaker 2: another returning guest, shady one at that in q TEL,

729
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 2: is worried about the possibility of cables becoming a theater

730
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:32,000
Speaker 2: in the next war.

731
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 3: You remember in q tel, right, those are the guys

732
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:40,719
Speaker 3: that put money into stuff that the CIA and the

733
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:43,719
Speaker 3: FBI and other intelligence agencies in the US want them

734
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:47,880
Speaker 3: to put money into. What But they're nonprofit, right, But

735
00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:51,239
Speaker 3: they are CIA backed, but they do good stuff. But

736
00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 3: also the NSA is involved.

737
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:53,440
Speaker 4: It's weird.

738
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:58,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, every government agency you have ever had a problem

739
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:03,360
Speaker 2: with outside of the IRS is involved within qtel.

740
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 3: Do some searches are in q tel and Facebook.

741
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:15,320
Speaker 2: Check out our episode before the cables go So anyway,

742
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:18,960
Speaker 2: do check it out. The current president of in q Tel,

743
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:22,480
Speaker 2: there's a guy named Steve Bauscher, and he said, quote,

744
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:24,720
Speaker 2: there's a lot of talk these days about how space

745
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 2: is the next contested domain, but I think undersea is

746
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:31,799
Speaker 2: going to be very much a contested domain. Those are

747
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:34,319
Speaker 2: going to be targets in any sort of get this

748
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 2: met kinetic conflict, which is just like, look, in qtel

749
00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:40,760
Speaker 2: is a heavy player. They do a lot of stuff.

750
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:48,160
Speaker 2: Kinetic conflict is kind of to me a non helpful euphemism.

751
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 2: We all know what you're talking about.

752
00:46:51,320 --> 00:46:53,719
Speaker 3: See what you really got to bring inertia into this,

753
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:56,360
Speaker 3: you know, like, is it at rest or does it

754
00:46:56,440 --> 00:46:58,720
Speaker 3: want to stay there? Or is it already moving?

755
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 4: What kind of can energy was applied to this war?

756
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And I guess before we go too far

757
00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:09,359
Speaker 2: down the undersea rabbit hole, we do have to make

758
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 2: a note. The reason, Matthew, you and I are talking

759
00:47:12,560 --> 00:47:14,920
Speaker 2: so much about the fragility of these cables is that

760
00:47:14,960 --> 00:47:18,359
Speaker 2: there does not have to be a conspiracy, nor sabotage,

761
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:21,880
Speaker 2: nor an active war or terrorism for these things to

762
00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 2: get screwed up. To the point of you mentioned about

763
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 2: just dropping something heavy and sharp, Yeah, that happens all

764
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 2: the time because storms hit the ocean and ships are

765
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,719
Speaker 2: all over the ocean and they drop their anchor and

766
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:39,759
Speaker 2: storm blows them and the anchor just pulls the cable out.

767
00:47:40,160 --> 00:47:42,320
Speaker 3: God, dang it, we got another cable.

768
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 2: What No, we're here for the tuna. Anyway. Eighty five

769
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:51,359
Speaker 2: percent of cuts and damage the cable currently comes from

770
00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 2: fishing equipment and anchors. And then there are natural disasters

771
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:58,719
Speaker 2: that occur like you mentioned Pacific islands often which only

772
00:47:58,719 --> 00:48:02,200
Speaker 2: have one connecting cable. Tonga is a great example. Volcanic

773
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:07,080
Speaker 2: eruption screws up the cable. They lost communication for weeks.

774
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 2: It was a double plus on good situation. So even

775
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:14,400
Speaker 2: in times of piece, just like you said with the

776
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:18,480
Speaker 2: road analogy, you have to constantly maintain this stuff, improve it,

777
00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:21,840
Speaker 2: check on it. It's all very expensive, and that's just

778
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:24,480
Speaker 2: to keep it running, not to make it better at all.

779
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:29,600
Speaker 2: That's just to keep this kind of jury rig contraption. Going.

780
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:36,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think about ac companies or car manufacturers or no, no,

781
00:48:36,239 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 3: not car manufacturers, car dealerships. We just talked about this, Ben.

782
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:45,280
Speaker 3: A car dealership makes a lot of money selling cars,

783
00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:47,880
Speaker 3: but not the bulk of their money. Most of the

784
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 3: money at a major car dealership is made through maintenance,

785
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:57,000
Speaker 3: through the maintenance of vehicles it sells, and signing somebody

786
00:48:57,000 --> 00:48:59,839
Speaker 3: into a contract to only get their car worked on

787
00:48:59,880 --> 00:49:02,319
Speaker 3: in that place where they bought their car. That's the

788
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 3: trick like, and it's kind of the same with these

789
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 3: companies on cable, right, they're going to make most of

790
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:10,360
Speaker 3: their money fixing the stuff that they've already built.

791
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:17,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hate that. We both know that from experience, now,

792
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:21,200
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. What a bummer. Anyway, So warranties,

793
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:26,480
Speaker 2: that's another good episode. So it's there's another problem here.

794
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:29,920
Speaker 2: This stuff is an excellent target for war or excuse me,

795
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:34,839
Speaker 2: cough cough, kinetic conflicts cough cough, because just like spy satellites,

796
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:39,319
Speaker 2: it's incredibly difficult, if not operationally impossible, to keep the

797
00:49:39,400 --> 00:49:43,239
Speaker 2: location of these things secret if powerful forces really want

798
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 2: to know. Now, you as the public, if you're listening

799
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,480
Speaker 2: and you're a civilian, you can see all kinds of

800
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:52,480
Speaker 2: maps like SubCom and they'll usually have some caveat like

801
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:57,839
Speaker 2: location is approximate or something. The location is not approximate.

802
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:01,319
Speaker 2: For a lot of the big players they know, right,

803
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:04,680
Speaker 2: and some state governments that might be beefed up with

804
00:50:04,719 --> 00:50:06,960
Speaker 2: each other. Are also in a position where they can

805
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 2: force the tech bros to tell them everything legally right,

806
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:19,160
Speaker 2: and geography decides everything on this planet. Subsea cable routes

807
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:21,560
Speaker 2: are no exception. That's where we got to talk about

808
00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:25,400
Speaker 2: something that I think fascinates both of us. Batt the

809
00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:28,720
Speaker 2: cart to take the traffic analogy. One of the biggest

810
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:30,800
Speaker 2: traffic jams is in Egypt.

811
00:50:31,560 --> 00:50:34,399
Speaker 4: Yeah, I never would have expected this.

812
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 3: Check out the article the most Vulnerable Place on the Internet.

813
00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:43,319
Speaker 3: It's written by Matt Burgess for Wired and November two.

814
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:49,239
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, pretty up to speed even now.

815
00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:53,720
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there are six cables that Matt Burgess points

816
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 3: out that are concentrated through the Red Sea and they

817
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,360
Speaker 3: actually go over the land in Egypt. If you go

818
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:01,160
Speaker 3: to that same way website we told you about before

819
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:04,040
Speaker 3: the map, you can actually see where they go over

820
00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:09,560
Speaker 3: land in Egypt. And that's what we call a choke point.

821
00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:14,000
Speaker 2: Why Ben, well, Matt, we call it a choke point

822
00:51:14,080 --> 00:51:20,799
Speaker 2: because if you wanted to, Okay, seventeen percent of all

823
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:24,280
Speaker 2: the Internet traffic in the world goes along these cables.

824
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:30,520
Speaker 2: It passes through Egypt, and this is due to geography

825
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:34,200
Speaker 2: without some sci Fi level Terrafor me, there's no way

826
00:51:34,200 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 2: to get rid of this choke point.

827
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:40,839
Speaker 3: There's not, and you can again it is striking if

828
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:43,279
Speaker 3: you pull out on that map, then you zoom in

829
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:48,080
Speaker 3: towards Egypt, kind of the northeast side of Egypt. You

830
00:51:48,120 --> 00:51:51,319
Speaker 3: see where all of those cables it's like you're talking about,

831
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,120
Speaker 3: it's like a cable tie is wrapped around them.

832
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 4: It's nuts.

833
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:58,560
Speaker 3: And that's just before they go over land in Egypt

834
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 3: while heading to the northwest.

835
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:05,399
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And let's go back to wired. I love

836
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:08,960
Speaker 2: the word citing this one. So Matt Burgess says, passing

837
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:13,560
Speaker 2: through the Red Sea and across Egypt is the shortest

838
00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:18,719
Speaker 2: primarily underwater route between Asia and Europe. And you can

839
00:52:18,760 --> 00:52:22,320
Speaker 2: take some of these cables across land, but it's generally

840
00:52:22,360 --> 00:52:23,840
Speaker 2: going to be safer for them to be at the

841
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:28,120
Speaker 2: bottom of the sea because it's tougher to disrupt them

842
00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:30,439
Speaker 2: or compromise them, which we'll talk about later.

843
00:52:30,440 --> 00:52:32,759
Speaker 4: A man, do you talk about compromising these things?

844
00:52:32,840 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll come up at the end, right. So every

845
00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:40,359
Speaker 2: other possible route in this area is a logistical pain

846
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:43,239
Speaker 2: in the butt. If you look at the south pull

847
00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:46,200
Speaker 2: up that Matt Matt mentioned earlier. Then you'll see cables

848
00:52:46,239 --> 00:52:49,320
Speaker 2: can pass around Africa under sea, but they're much longer,

849
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:52,240
Speaker 2: you know. It's like the old maritime days of sailing

850
00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 2: around the cape. And if you go to the north,

851
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:57,960
Speaker 2: you'll see there's only one cable that travels above Russia.

852
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 2: It's street name, the Polar Express. Love it, but it's

853
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:04,560
Speaker 2: just not practical for what we need stuff to do.

854
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:07,760
Speaker 2: And if you try to do alternative roots, which people

855
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:10,120
Speaker 2: have been trying to do for years and years now,

856
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:16,520
Speaker 2: then you run into the second problem economy or war. Syria, Iraq, Iran,

857
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:21,640
Speaker 2: Afghanistan aka the Graveyard of Empires. That's not a place

858
00:53:21,680 --> 00:53:23,240
Speaker 2: where you want to run a cable.

859
00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:27,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, I but the old conspira brain is doing something here, Ben.

860
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 2: Oh what you got cooking?

861
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:38,680
Speaker 3: Where has the US been focusing their kinetic efforts in

862
00:53:38,719 --> 00:53:39,760
Speaker 3: those areas?

863
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:40,719
Speaker 1: Yeah?

864
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:45,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh gosh, they are resource rich, aren't they? And

865
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:47,279
Speaker 2: of course the Strait of hor Moves is its own

866
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 2: little story to be told. That's a really good point, Matt.

867
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:53,440
Speaker 2: Now you're in my head about it, okay. And so

868
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:55,279
Speaker 2: they go through the red seat, right, we've got to

869
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 2: get back to those countries and the Grand aims in

870
00:53:58,600 --> 00:54:01,919
Speaker 2: a future episode. The Red Sea is not perfect by

871
00:54:01,960 --> 00:54:04,799
Speaker 2: any means for this sort of stuff, because the Red

872
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 2: Sea is big. It's a sea, but it's shallow, and

873
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:13,080
Speaker 2: that means it's way easier to get down there and

874
00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:16,359
Speaker 2: get up to some grimlin shenanigans. As a matter of fact,

875
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:20,239
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, the Egyptian Navy arrested three people who

876
00:54:20,239 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 2: were doing just that. They were like, Oh, these cables

877
00:54:22,680 --> 00:54:25,520
Speaker 2: aren't that far away. Let's get frigging kinetic.

878
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 4: Let's see what happens. Sneep. It's way harder than a

879
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:31,240
Speaker 4: little snip.

880
00:54:32,719 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's pretty crazy. If you look at that map,

881
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:40,200
Speaker 3: you can see where there are vulnerabilities, minor choke points

882
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:44,759
Speaker 3: that exist across the planet, places where if you had

883
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:48,279
Speaker 3: bad intentions, you could do some serious damage to the

884
00:54:48,320 --> 00:54:50,960
Speaker 3: connectivity of large swaths of land.

885
00:54:51,239 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 2: Very quickly as well. Yeah, so Egypt TWA and those

886
00:54:54,680 --> 00:54:58,240
Speaker 2: are just two examples of a trend that continues across

887
00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:02,800
Speaker 2: the globe. And yet the system itself does have redundancy.

888
00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:08,239
Speaker 2: Like obviously, the people who run companies as smart as

889
00:55:08,280 --> 00:55:11,280
Speaker 2: tech empires are not going to say, yeah, one cable,

890
00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:16,040
Speaker 2: that's fine, because they are so used to people losing

891
00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:18,600
Speaker 2: their minds when the Internet goes out, So not even

892
00:55:18,719 --> 00:55:22,200
Speaker 2: like a I kid you not not even like worried

893
00:55:22,239 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 2: about saboteurs or war. They're worried about their customer service

894
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:30,880
Speaker 2: departments getting overwhelmed. So they have multiple cables or space

895
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:34,160
Speaker 2: on multiple cables because they need that redundancy. If one

896
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:38,799
Speaker 2: thing goes out, then they have another route hopefully and

897
00:55:38,840 --> 00:55:40,760
Speaker 2: they have a lot of redundancy. Or it's very smart.

898
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 2: That's how you want a system to be built. But

899
00:55:43,160 --> 00:55:47,400
Speaker 2: some countries like Tongas still just have the one connecting cable.

900
00:55:47,960 --> 00:55:50,839
Speaker 2: And if you're one of those four companies that you mentioned, Matt,

901
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:54,440
Speaker 2: when something goes wrong, they have the ability to pinpoint

902
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:58,040
Speaker 2: where the cut occurs so they can isolate it. But

903
00:55:58,719 --> 00:56:01,600
Speaker 2: they often have to get a government permit because these

904
00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:04,440
Speaker 2: are cables that go across nations, they have to get

905
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:07,239
Speaker 2: a government permit to operate. So a repair can take

906
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:10,680
Speaker 2: two weeks on average, but if anything else goes wrong

907
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:15,680
Speaker 2: during that time, the repair window automatically extends. Like in

908
00:56:15,719 --> 00:56:21,040
Speaker 2: the wake of Fukushima, one repair took two months. Yeah,

909
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:24,400
Speaker 2: and that means if we think in terms of system analysis,

910
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:27,959
Speaker 2: to your earlier point. You if you are a bad

911
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:30,400
Speaker 2: faith actor, if you are an attacker, you have some

912
00:56:30,520 --> 00:56:34,319
Speaker 2: advantages depending on your goal. Like the Taiwanese example we're

913
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:37,759
Speaker 2: talking about, So they have twenty seven cables, and if

914
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:41,520
Speaker 2: they wanted to cut off if the if China or

915
00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:44,800
Speaker 2: some other attacker just for the sake of argument, wanted

916
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:49,480
Speaker 2: to cut off Taiwan and cripple them in advance of

917
00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 2: a physical war, they would just need to overwhelm the

918
00:56:52,640 --> 00:56:56,560
Speaker 2: repair capabilities. For they cut the twenty seven cables at

919
00:56:56,560 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 2: once as close to as close to simultaneously as possible,

920
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:03,600
Speaker 2: just like in Breaking Bad spoiler where Walter White has

921
00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:06,000
Speaker 2: all those people killed within two minutes at the prison.

922
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:07,359
Speaker 2: Just do that.

923
00:57:08,560 --> 00:57:12,440
Speaker 3: Well, what if you had what if the strategy was

924
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:15,960
Speaker 3: to have a dedicated connection from a different angle that

925
00:57:16,000 --> 00:57:19,800
Speaker 3: didn't require those cables to connect to the interior systems.

926
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 3: Then you cut the exterior systems so communications can't go

927
00:57:24,520 --> 00:57:27,080
Speaker 3: out or come in from other parts of the world,

928
00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:31,680
Speaker 3: but you could still connect to the systems via the land. Right,

929
00:57:32,480 --> 00:57:37,840
Speaker 3: there's potential there to basically take everyone off guard by

930
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:41,880
Speaker 3: breaking most communications but still being able to function within

931
00:57:42,040 --> 00:57:46,760
Speaker 3: systems at the same time while while they're disconnected. That's

932
00:57:46,800 --> 00:57:51,040
Speaker 3: really creepy because you're talking about like financial hits. You're

933
00:57:51,040 --> 00:57:56,600
Speaker 3: talking about stuff that could cripple systems without any kinetic maneuvers.

934
00:57:57,280 --> 00:58:01,520
Speaker 2: Yes, asymmetric warfare one hundred percent. This is an excellent

935
00:58:01,520 --> 00:58:03,520
Speaker 2: example of it. I like your scenario too.

936
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:06,959
Speaker 3: I don't well that scenario at all.

937
00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:12,240
Speaker 2: I think it's intellectually simulating. So there's all I guess

938
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:15,200
Speaker 2: I have to say that too, right, so you know

939
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:18,640
Speaker 2: what happens then, Really, even if you're not putting boots

940
00:58:18,680 --> 00:58:22,439
Speaker 2: on the ground, you're extending that repair window, right and

941
00:58:22,480 --> 00:58:25,000
Speaker 2: that and as we know, a lot can change within

942
00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:27,640
Speaker 2: a month or two, so you've gone now you've gone

943
00:58:27,640 --> 00:58:31,000
Speaker 2: from two weeks to maybe months on the outside. And

944
00:58:31,600 --> 00:58:37,720
Speaker 2: there's also the ability for industrial espionage terrorism in the

945
00:58:37,760 --> 00:58:41,840
Speaker 2: corporate front, very like Shadow Run terrorism. If do you

946
00:58:41,840 --> 00:58:47,080
Speaker 2: remember that game Shadow Run? Yeah? Shadow Runs amazing. Okay,

947
00:58:47,160 --> 00:58:51,480
Speaker 2: So it's it's a it's a little tricky if you're

948
00:58:51,520 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 2: one of those cats because of the redundancy of cable,

949
00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:57,919
Speaker 2: the difficulty of reaching them all at once. You want

950
00:58:57,960 --> 00:59:00,640
Speaker 2: to do a war of a thousand cuts. So the

951
00:59:00,680 --> 00:59:03,960
Speaker 2: cost benefit, which we're not going to do in depth

952
00:59:04,120 --> 00:59:07,640
Speaker 2: is this. Most breaks in the cables occur in shallow

953
00:59:07,680 --> 00:59:10,800
Speaker 2: water because that's where most of the boat traffic is

954
00:59:10,920 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 2: likely to hit them with an anchor. Those also get

955
00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:17,800
Speaker 2: repaired much more quickly, much more easily. So you would

956
00:59:17,880 --> 00:59:20,080
Speaker 2: want to eat the cost of getting out in the

957
00:59:20,200 --> 00:59:24,640
Speaker 2: deep deep water cutting cables at the most inaccessible places,

958
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:29,000
Speaker 2: which requires some specific equipment, so you would probably want

959
00:59:29,040 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 2: to be careful about how you procure that. This raises

960
00:59:32,160 --> 00:59:35,440
Speaker 2: your effort, but it also massively increases the amount of

961
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:38,320
Speaker 2: effort someone has to undertake to repair it. There are

962
00:59:38,360 --> 00:59:42,320
Speaker 2: only a few companies that can do this. It's again

963
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:46,960
Speaker 2: an intellectually fascinating game, and it's probably best for us

964
00:59:47,000 --> 00:59:48,320
Speaker 2: not to do the math on air.

965
00:59:48,800 --> 00:59:52,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's not do the math, because you could develop,

966
00:59:52,800 --> 00:59:56,080
Speaker 3: let's say, a brand new type of submarine that gets

967
00:59:56,320 --> 01:00:01,080
Speaker 3: introduced in the past couple of months than just andre same.

968
01:00:01,320 --> 01:00:05,680
Speaker 3: Maybe that submarine has some quiet technology that is literally

969
01:00:05,760 --> 01:00:08,920
Speaker 3: a heavy, sharp thing that you could drag across the

970
01:00:08,960 --> 01:00:12,480
Speaker 3: ocean floor. That's all you would need to do, especially

971
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:15,080
Speaker 3: if that submarine was very quiet and difficult to.

972
01:00:15,080 --> 01:00:21,080
Speaker 2: Detect, Especially if that submarine actually worked, which is up

973
01:00:21,080 --> 01:00:21,560
Speaker 2: for debate.

974
01:00:21,880 --> 01:00:22,720
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true.

975
01:00:22,920 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 2: I know, but but yes, you're making a beautiful point.

976
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:31,840
Speaker 2: That's a problem. That's asymmetrical warfare, classic textbook. You know,

977
01:00:32,280 --> 01:00:36,160
Speaker 2: if you have an enemy who outperforms economically or in

978
01:00:36,240 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 2: terms of infrastructure, you don't have to waste untold billions

979
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:43,040
Speaker 2: of dollars trying to catch up with them. You can

980
01:00:43,080 --> 01:00:45,760
Speaker 2: spend a lot less money just to break the thing

981
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:50,960
Speaker 2: they made, which is we live in interesting times. And

982
01:00:51,400 --> 01:00:53,480
Speaker 2: like I said, you know, we knew we were not

983
01:00:53,520 --> 01:00:56,800
Speaker 2: going to get to everything here. We've only explored the

984
01:00:56,800 --> 01:00:59,360
Speaker 2: physical dangers. We do want to do that plot twist

985
01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:02,360
Speaker 2: you mentioned as well, Matt. We both alluded to. We

986
01:01:02,440 --> 01:01:05,920
Speaker 2: have not talked about puzzle palace level compromise of data

987
01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:08,479
Speaker 2: and the cables, which is happening. We have not talked

988
01:01:08,480 --> 01:01:14,280
Speaker 2: about interception or the insertion interposition of purposely misleading information.

989
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:18,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, these are fiber optic cables. You can split off

990
01:01:18,640 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 3: fiber optic cables and duplicate the data. The United States

991
01:01:23,240 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 3: figured out how to do that a while ago. Remember

992
01:01:25,960 --> 01:01:29,080
Speaker 3: what we talked about that one, and they went, let's

993
01:01:29,120 --> 01:01:30,160
Speaker 3: just look at all the data.

994
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:31,040
Speaker 4: Where can we plug in?

995
01:01:31,200 --> 01:01:33,760
Speaker 3: Oh, look, we can just plug in to the literal

996
01:01:34,600 --> 01:01:37,640
Speaker 3: pipes and duplicate the pipes and see everything.

997
01:01:37,800 --> 01:01:39,920
Speaker 4: I'm using the phrase pipes on purpose.

998
01:01:39,960 --> 01:01:42,200
Speaker 2: Okay, and we want to keep it a secret, So

999
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:47,160
Speaker 2: let's make sure this skyscraper doesn't have any windows. That way,

1000
01:01:47,240 --> 01:01:49,800
Speaker 2: no one can look in and it won't seem suspicious.

1001
01:01:50,400 --> 01:01:52,800
Speaker 4: Oh, the Long Lines building. Check it out.

1002
01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:56,880
Speaker 3: It's in Manhattan and it's really creepy. Can I really

1003
01:01:56,960 --> 01:01:58,240
Speaker 3: quick shout out before we end here?

1004
01:01:58,320 --> 01:01:58,680
Speaker 4: Ben?

1005
01:01:59,160 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 3: Somebody named Johnny Harris, awesome reporter, journalist. He's got a

1006
01:02:03,720 --> 01:02:06,880
Speaker 3: great YouTube channel. That's the way I interact with his content.

1007
01:02:07,360 --> 01:02:09,920
Speaker 3: He made a video not long ago in August titled

1008
01:02:09,960 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 3: Submarine Cables and the Rise of Mass Surveillance. If you

1009
01:02:13,360 --> 01:02:17,439
Speaker 3: are interested in the surveillance side of this, we would

1010
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:18,919
Speaker 3: highly recommend checking that out.

1011
01:02:19,240 --> 01:02:22,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to highlight at the end of

1012
01:02:22,600 --> 01:02:29,200
Speaker 2: your one. Maybe it's just a restatement here. It's short

1013
01:02:29,320 --> 01:02:32,960
Speaker 2: term effective to cut these cables as an act of

1014
01:02:34,360 --> 01:02:39,640
Speaker 2: kinetic conflict. Is long term effective and arguably more intelligent

1015
01:02:40,160 --> 01:02:45,040
Speaker 2: to compromise the cables, because if you are playing the

1016
01:02:45,080 --> 01:02:47,440
Speaker 2: cat and mouse of espionage, or if you're on the

1017
01:02:47,520 --> 01:02:50,760
Speaker 2: road to a hot war, then you don't want people

1018
01:02:50,880 --> 01:02:53,880
Speaker 2: to know that you have an ear to the ground

1019
01:02:53,960 --> 01:02:57,680
Speaker 2: on them, so you would never tell people. Then you

1020
01:02:57,800 --> 01:03:01,960
Speaker 2: compromise the cables all to say, I imagine a small

1021
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:06,080
Speaker 2: handful of manufacturers and installers. I imagine they get a

1022
01:03:06,080 --> 01:03:10,560
Speaker 2: lot of interesting meetings, you know what I mean. And

1023
01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:14,200
Speaker 2: you have to wonder what their social media is like. Anyway,

1024
01:03:14,520 --> 01:03:18,040
Speaker 2: these are the genuine concerns. It turns out that human

1025
01:03:18,080 --> 01:03:21,840
Speaker 2: beings haven't changed all that much since that unknown scribe

1026
01:03:21,920 --> 01:03:26,080
Speaker 2: decided to jush up the hieroglyphs. So what happens next?

1027
01:03:26,520 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 2: What do you think, folks? Is this critical infrastructure going

1028
01:03:30,080 --> 01:03:33,880
Speaker 2: to be targeted the way that power plants are being

1029
01:03:33,920 --> 01:03:36,920
Speaker 2: targeted in the US now, which just sort of faded

1030
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:40,160
Speaker 2: from the news but is definitely still happening. We can't

1031
01:03:40,160 --> 01:03:42,600
Speaker 2: wait to hear your thoughts. Find us online while the

1032
01:03:42,640 --> 01:03:49,720
Speaker 2: cables still run Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, x naed, Twitter, and

1033
01:03:49,800 --> 01:03:53,240
Speaker 2: if you don't care for that, you can always always

1034
01:03:53,280 --> 01:03:54,400
Speaker 2: give us a phone call.

1035
01:03:55,240 --> 01:03:59,840
Speaker 3: Yes, our number is one eight three three std WYT.

1036
01:04:00,840 --> 01:04:03,320
Speaker 3: You've got three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname and

1037
01:04:03,520 --> 01:04:05,280
Speaker 3: let us know if we can use your message and

1038
01:04:05,360 --> 01:04:08,560
Speaker 3: voice on the air. It's that simple. If you want

1039
01:04:08,560 --> 01:04:11,280
Speaker 3: to send us a bunch of information. If you need

1040
01:04:11,360 --> 01:04:14,480
Speaker 3: an undersea cable to get us stuff, why not instead

1041
01:04:14,560 --> 01:04:16,200
Speaker 3: send us a good old fashioned email.

1042
01:04:16,400 --> 01:04:39,200
Speaker 2: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

1043
01:04:39,400 --> 01:04:41,480
Speaker 3: Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production

1044
01:04:41,600 --> 01:04:46,120
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1045
01:04:46,200 --> 01:04:49,439
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.