Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: A production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 3: Our colleague Noel is on an adventure, but will be
Speaker 3: returning shortly.
Speaker 2: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 2: super producer, all mission controlled decad Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 2: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 2: want you to know. All praise to the codes, all
Speaker 2: praise to the cables. The world is full of hidden things,
Speaker 2: you know, Matt. This is something you and I have
Speaker 2: been talking about and for a while off air, and
Speaker 2: I think a hazard. We're both pretty fascinated. We're both
Speaker 2: pretty excited maybe to explore this today. It's spooky stuff.
Speaker 2: We've talked before in the past. We did a number
Speaker 2: of live shows a few years back where we talked
Speaker 2: about hidden things all around you, right, like hidden languages
Speaker 2: of the city, facade, buildings, all that stuff. But we
Speaker 2: never really talked about how some of the biggest hidden
Speaker 2: things in the world today concern information, not even just
Speaker 2: like I know when we say information, we all think like, oh,
Speaker 2: top secret stuff, Oh the aliens are real. But it's
Speaker 2: more like it's equally important to learn how information is transported,
Speaker 2: the physical structure that gets it from point A to
Speaker 2: point Z and beyond. You know, I don't know about you,
Speaker 2: but for a long time I didn't put much thought
Speaker 2: into this. I was just like, oh, the modem works
Speaker 2: or oh the cables out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think maybe it has to do with the way
Speaker 3: our individual apartments and homes are connected to the information hub,
Speaker 3: like you're talking about ben Uh. For us, it is
Speaker 3: a cable that is run into a into our house, right,
Speaker 3: and usually a single cable, whether that's you know, a
Speaker 3: fiber optic from like AT and T or for a
Speaker 3: time Google, or you know an exfinity literal like coaxial
Speaker 3: cable that runs into your house. Like, that's the way
Speaker 3: we get information, and that's that's the hub. But where
Speaker 3: does what's that cable connected to? And what what where's
Speaker 3: the server that has all the information that makes up Reddit?
Speaker 2: What what is that that tiny tendril that goes into
Speaker 2: your house? Where does that come from?
Speaker 4: Right? Capillary?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that capillary, that's a great word for it. Most
Speaker 2: people who are not in industries related to this don't
Speaker 2: put too much thought into it. Just make sure it works,
Speaker 2: call someone if it doesn't. And we all know that
Speaker 2: if a few things go wrong, people discover this during
Speaker 2: the pandemic with just your little cable, your life will
Speaker 2: change for a few days, it will become more complicated.
Speaker 2: And it turns out that is true on a macro scale.
Speaker 2: If just a ludicrously cartoonishly small number of things go
Speaker 2: wrong in the world, the house of communicative cards may
Speaker 2: collapse entirely. And so tonight's question, how easy would it
Speaker 2: be to collapse some or all of the global communication network?
Speaker 2: Here are the facts. I guess before we talk about that,
Speaker 2: we need to just set up a quick background on
Speaker 2: communication and codes. In fact, Matt, you and I, when
Speaker 2: we were working together on this episode, we were thinking
Speaker 2: we can do codes and code breaking and undersea cables
Speaker 2: as one thing, and that turned out not to be
Speaker 2: the case. This isn't even everything about undersea cables, but
Speaker 2: it's crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh for sure.
Speaker 3: And as we tried to get on here, we attempted
Speaker 3: to use the system that we generally used to record remotely.
Speaker 4: I'm at my.
Speaker 3: House bends at his house, Michig controls in his house,
Speaker 3: and we get together through our cables and we can
Speaker 3: see each other and talk to each other and we record.
Speaker 3: But that system was down when we got on.
Speaker 4: Guys. Just point that out. Just point that out.
Speaker 3: We're doing it a different way today. Actually, this is
Speaker 3: kind of an old school way that we used to
Speaker 3: do every time. Yeah, but just for a little peek
Speaker 3: behind the curtain. When something goes down, as you said, Ben,
Speaker 3: it can really affect things. So a company located somewhere
Speaker 3: in Israel, their stuff goes down, and now we can't
Speaker 3: record way over here in Atlanta and New York, sorry, Paul.
Speaker 2: Yes, or anywhere, because we have used this same platform
Speaker 2: internationally fairly often in the past, you know, and we
Speaker 2: are of course immensely astounded and grateful to do something
Speaker 2: that is essentially is like a high level spell at
Speaker 2: any other time in history. Right.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, you don't need anything.
Speaker 3: Just connect to your internet thing and your camera and
Speaker 3: your microphone and everybody's good to go.
Speaker 4: That's magic, man.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but let's let you're right, Ben, let's jump
Speaker 3: into codes cryptography, sending information way far away, and how
Speaker 3: do you make sure only your intended person understands what
Speaker 3: that message is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cryptography proper the discipline the systematic study of codes
Speaker 2: and how codes can be created or broken. Weirdly enough,
Speaker 2: it's a very new science. It only started around one
Speaker 2: hundred years ago. But it turns out since the dawn
Speaker 2: of recorded history, people have been trying to communicate with
Speaker 2: other specific people in a way that doesn't allow outsiders
Speaker 2: to participate. The first known evidence of cryptography in some
Speaker 2: kind of form goes all the way back to nineteen
Speaker 2: hundred BC or BCE, your mileage may vary. There's this
Speaker 2: chamber in the tomb of a nobleman in Egypt named
Speaker 2: Nunhotep the Second, and at some point in the creation
Speaker 2: of this chamber, this burial structure, an unknown scribe whose
Speaker 2: name is lost to history, started styling on the hieroglyphs.
Speaker 2: They started writing weird things, just weird insertions of stuff
Speaker 2: that usually wouldn't go in your funereal writing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. So when we're thinking about codes and
Speaker 3: attempting to hide something in plain sight like that, because again,
Speaker 3: any code could potentially be read or received by anyone.
Speaker 3: As we said, it's only supposed to be deciphered by
Speaker 3: you know, the intended recipients.
Speaker 4: Right. So in this case, the.
Speaker 3: Way that these hieroglyphics were changed, it's almost as if
Speaker 3: it was it wasn't necessarily hiding a message or something.
Speaker 3: It was to change the message a little bit, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was to make it pop. And the more
Speaker 2: I've thought about this since researching it, Matt, the more
Speaker 2: it reminds me of that halcyon period of the Internet
Speaker 2: in the early two thousands, where people would write stuff
Speaker 2: in message boards and they would start putting in random
Speaker 2: lowercase x's, you know, especially to indicate they were like
Speaker 2: hardcore or something that would change this message or you know,
Speaker 2: it could remind you in earlier analog days of notes
Speaker 2: that children would pass in grade school and they would
Speaker 2: want their penmanship to have a pop to it. So
Speaker 2: instead of the dots atop the eye, you get the hearts,
Speaker 2: you know, and the little smiley face. So maybe this
Speaker 2: guy was just jusing it up because he loved this
Speaker 2: Egyptian nobles so much. But to your point, and this
Speaker 2: is an open question in Egyptology, people are not sure
Speaker 2: whether this was to again just make the thing seem
Speaker 2: more formal and fancy and beautiful and intricate, or whether
Speaker 2: the placement of those symbols, just like the placement of
Speaker 2: fnord in Illuminatus trilogy, they weren't sure whether it was
Speaker 2: meant to change the context of what was being written
Speaker 2: or carved. I guess. And this because it indicates some
Speaker 2: transformation of the original text, it is the oldest known
Speaker 2: predecessor of cryptography today. So the other interesting thing here
Speaker 2: is if you look at most major early civilizations, there
Speaker 2: is some form of encoding and transmitting information. And we
Speaker 2: found a great example from ancient Indian civilization, something called
Speaker 2: the arth Shastra.
Speaker 4: WHOA, this sounds really interesting.
Speaker 3: So this is like, this is some kind of secret
Speaker 3: language that we was used specifically for a spy service.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is uh. And we got this from a
Speaker 2: great security blog called RedHat dot com. This is this
Speaker 2: appears to be I should say, some Kissinger level MI
Speaker 2: I six James bod stuff because the guy who writes
Speaker 2: it at the time this is three point fifty to
Speaker 2: two seventy five PCE. He's a prime minister of his state.
Speaker 2: His name's called Teli, so shades a Kissinger, and he
Speaker 2: talks about how his civilization has a well established sophisticated
Speaker 2: espionage service, and he talks about giving assignments to spies
Speaker 2: and operators in what translates to secret writing codes. And
Speaker 2: you know, I guess this is back in the day
Speaker 2: man where they could have done. They could have done
Speaker 2: the BCE version of two Sketchy guys in Fedora's at
Speaker 2: a park asking weird questions as codes. You know, I
Speaker 2: always thought that was so silly, but people really did
Speaker 2: it anyway. So that's history of cryptography, ancient past. It's
Speaker 2: so in Baga Badgers. It's worth exploring when we're talking
Speaker 2: about this off air in a future episode or a
Speaker 2: future series of episodes. And you know, when you think
Speaker 2: of cryptography and code breaking today in the West, at least,
Speaker 2: you probably think about the heroic story of Touring breaking
Speaker 2: the Enigma machine. But the weirdest thing about code breakers
Speaker 2: right now that we need to know is a lot
Speaker 2: outside of touring, a lot of the historically world changing
Speaker 2: heroic acts of code breaking they probably remain classified today.
Speaker 2: And that's because what they did was so important and
Speaker 2: we're part of it. We are all part of it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter if you are a civilian, doesn't matter
Speaker 2: if you're military, doesn't matter if you're on your merry
Speaker 2: way and some other pursuit. If you have an Internet connection,
Speaker 2: you are involved with using codes in your day to
Speaker 2: day life. And you may not realize it, but all
Speaker 2: that streaming video mad, the stream video you and Paul
Speaker 2: and I are using now, all those articles you might read,
Speaker 2: the podcast, the audio books, they originate from somewhere else,
Speaker 2: before they reach that little cable that reaches a modem,
Speaker 2: or before they reach the little before they fly out
Speaker 2: from their server to reach your phone. They come from somewhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're also encrypted. All of that data is encrypted,
Speaker 3: and to end, encryption is the thing now. And even
Speaker 3: if you go to a website or use an app,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter. There's a reason it says HTTPS now
Speaker 3: rather than HTTP, because everything is secured and all those communications.
Speaker 3: It's a must because so many people have access and
Speaker 3: so many people have an understanding of how the system works,
Speaker 3: it's all got to be basically secret.
Speaker 2: And being unable to code, to write some in some
Speaker 2: degree of a computer language, make no mistake, folks. In
Speaker 2: the near future, not being able to do that is
Speaker 2: going to be a lot like being illiterate in the
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds. It's a big deal. And when we talk
Speaker 2: about this great communications web, which you've heard I'm sure
Speaker 2: in countless ted talks folks, it naturally can these images
Speaker 2: of satellite links, you know, Starlink orbital systems. You got
Speaker 2: an eye in the sky that is making sure you
Speaker 2: can watch Eurovision in real time. The truth of the
Speaker 2: matter is not that that does exist. People do use
Speaker 2: that that is on the way, but the vast majority
Speaker 2: of communication on this planet is much more terrestrial. As
Speaker 2: we have foreshadowed here right now, the bulk of global
Speaker 2: communication does not occur in space. It occurs under the ocean.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I wonder if anyone out there has the
Speaker 3: experience I had where a long time ago, I had
Speaker 3: a wealthy family member, you know, like kind of distant
Speaker 3: family member, visited their house. They had this thing that
Speaker 3: I had never seen before as a kid. It was
Speaker 3: satellite television, and it's what you're describing there. Early there
Speaker 3: have been where.
Speaker 4: They had a satellite dish on their.
Speaker 3: Somewhere and it connected up to a literal satellite and
Speaker 3: that's how they were getting the television signal.
Speaker 4: But it happened to be a stormy day that day.
Speaker 3: So this brand new, awesome satellite TV thing they had
Speaker 3: was all scrambled and crappy. You know, I just remember thinking, well,
Speaker 3: that's weird, that doesn't make sense, that's expensive. But you know,
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the major reasons what we're
Speaker 3: talking about today. These undersea cables are so primary, so absolute,
Speaker 3: the absolute backbone to any internet communication, any telecommunication.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, that's a that's a fun memory to men
Speaker 2: because I had I had experience with that sort of
Speaker 2: stuff too, and had the same disconnect on multiple levels,
Speaker 2: like we're paying this much and the weather is the
Speaker 2: weather is our arbiter, the weather basically holds our remote control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it was like the first time having a
Speaker 3: car and on an AM radio station in a thunderstorm
Speaker 3: and going, what the heck is going on?
Speaker 4: Why does it sound so horrible?
Speaker 3: Oh, it's if interference literally in the sky, that's what's happening.
Speaker 3: This isn't great.
Speaker 2: And then it makes you wonder about how many signals
Speaker 2: they're shooting through your physical body. But that's yes story
Speaker 2: for another evening, right that. So, satellites involve some amazing
Speaker 2: human innovation, some astonishing engineering and math, but they're still not,
Speaker 2: as they're not as reliable nor as versatile as the
Speaker 2: established infrastructure, which runs invisible throughout the world's ocean. A
Speaker 2: small army of under sea or subse cables as they're
Speaker 2: called the industry, crosses the world. It makes modern civilization possible,
Speaker 2: and we'll get to it. But just so you know, folks,
Speaker 2: if you see one of these cables, they're not super impressive.
Speaker 2: They look like if Godzilla was a garden hose. They
Speaker 2: look like Mega Godzilla. They look like an armored garden
Speaker 2: hose with some tar leaking out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've heard it described as actually this, this soda can
Speaker 3: I'm holding up is smaller than I guess the girth
Speaker 3: of these cables. Yeah, like a standard soda can is
Speaker 3: basically how big this thing is. And often it's buried
Speaker 3: right sure, like within the ground of the seafloor, at
Speaker 3: least that's how it begins. But then there are portions
Speaker 3: of it where it's going to protrude and you're actually
Speaker 3: just gonna see this cabling running across the ocean floor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 2: This might be helpful to paint the picture for us
Speaker 2: or our fellow conspiracy realist. Okay, no, judgment on anyone.
Speaker 2: But think of your entertainment center or you're you're gaming
Speaker 2: your computer station at your house. You probably have it
Speaker 2: on some sort of furniture maybe, and either way, you
Speaker 2: have a mass of wire connecting things behind that shelf
Speaker 2: or that desk. Now, you may be someone who's super
Speaker 2: into cable management and organizations, so you might have the
Speaker 2: nice little like plastic ties keeping stuff in order. But
Speaker 2: if you're like many people, you got a weird bull
Speaker 2: of spaghetti back there. You got the one cable, the
Speaker 2: tendril of the great communication sphere connecting you to the world.
Speaker 2: Then you got your power cords, your HDMI lines, ethernet,
Speaker 2: et cetera. It can look pretty crazy back there, and
Speaker 2: the ocean is kind of like that. It's definitely going
Speaker 2: to be more like that as time continues, unless there
Speaker 2: is an unprecedented scientific breakthrough, and it's been that way
Speaker 2: for a while. The very first international undersea cable is
Speaker 2: older than modern cryptography.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 2: It was late in August of eighteen fifty eight or
Speaker 2: that's when it became operational, and its whole purpose was
Speaker 2: to send Morse code across the Atlantic. Just beep beep,
Speaker 2: deep deep.
Speaker 3: Deep, Yeah, yeah, well, and there there was a bunch
Speaker 3: of cabling before that that didn't stretch quite that long, right,
Speaker 3: Like they were connecting up smaller land masses across a
Speaker 3: large ocean or sea or you know, whatever body of water.
Speaker 3: It is crazy that in eighteen what is it, seventy one,
Speaker 3: the entire planet except for a couple of small places,
Speaker 3: was connected by this type of cable. So you could
Speaker 3: telegraph pretty much anywhere except for Antarctica.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they know what they did anyway, so the.
Speaker 3: Well, and again smaller masses of land, like smaller island
Speaker 3: systems generally were also very often not fully connected, which
Speaker 3: is which is something that even now, there are places
Speaker 3: that don't have one of these cables running directly to them, right,
Speaker 3: that do have to rely on other systems.
Speaker 4: But like, gosh, if.
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about it now, then pretty much everywhere
Speaker 3: on the planet has one of these undersea cables, at
Speaker 3: least pretty close to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the proximity has increased, it will continue to increase
Speaker 2: as well. And I think you make a fantastic point
Speaker 2: about the disparity of connection. You know, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of places that logistically are just very difficult to
Speaker 2: connect and then, of course the dominant religion of economics
Speaker 2: also gets in the way. So the two big things
Speaker 2: that are determining how this network grows are one geography
Speaker 2: and two the school of thought called economics or the
Speaker 2: financial state. Right, how many coupons can we get for
Speaker 2: doing this? And so these later generations of cable they evolve,
Speaker 2: they start carrying things like telephone, telephone information or telephonic communication.
Speaker 2: And now these humble cables carry pretty much all the information,
Speaker 2: Like you're the vast majority of information. If you get
Speaker 2: it online, it arrives via one of these cables scooting
Speaker 2: at an incredibly fast speed along these tiny glass threads
Speaker 2: thousands of miles long that are just out in the
Speaker 2: open ocean. Maybe they're buried, sometimes they are buried. Sometimes.
Speaker 2: Let's be fair, we're going to explore all kinds of
Speaker 2: statistics regarding this network. There's so much that we're honestly
Speaker 2: not going to get to because you know, Matt and
Speaker 2: I are old school house. Stuff works, guys, So we
Speaker 2: will easily if we're not careful, we will easily spend
Speaker 2: hours just saying, oh, and here's how this works, and oh,
Speaker 2: did you know we're going to get to a lot.
Speaker 3: We just spent twenty one minutes or however long it's
Speaker 3: been on like a page and a half of notes
Speaker 3: that we have on this stuff because I just want
Speaker 3: to talk about it.
Speaker 4: Sorry, so it's so fat.
Speaker 2: Hopefully you find it fascinating too. Uh. And before we
Speaker 2: break for a word from our sponsors, I want to
Speaker 2: set you up with one big conspiratorial question, just you know,
Speaker 2: the heart and soul of stuff they don't want you
Speaker 2: to know. How easy would it be to damage these things?
Speaker 2: Could you topple modern civilization by literally cutting the cord?
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets crazy. Yes, absolutely, there are several
Speaker 2: ways to do this. I'm so glad you asked. But
Speaker 2: before we get into that, let's go let's uh, let's
Speaker 2: Matt maybe like you were saying, let's let's help people
Speaker 2: visualize what this looks like. If you just if you
Speaker 2: had an atlas of undersea cable what would that map be?
Speaker 3: Yes, I would recommend everyone, if you are not driving
Speaker 3: right now, head on over to Submarine Cable map dot
Speaker 3: com and you can actually visualize what the cable systems
Speaker 3: look like. This is all the global cable systems that
Speaker 3: are known to exist. We're assuming by the way, for
Speaker 3: this episode that there are several systems that we can't see,
Speaker 3: and they are not mapped, but these are the official
Speaker 3: ones that exist. Now, if you take a look at
Speaker 3: this map and then you visualize yourself encountering the planet Earth, right,
Speaker 3: this sphere thing, yes, it's a sphere. You encounter this
Speaker 3: sphere thing that has lots of water that appears blue,
Speaker 3: lots of land that appears green and brown, different shades.
Speaker 3: And if you could, if you could see this cabling
Speaker 3: running across the planet, you would you might think, oh,
Speaker 3: this planet is some kind of mixture of biological machinery
Speaker 3: like system.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It almost looks as though these things are maybe using
Speaker 3: the analogy of a human anatomy system. These things are
Speaker 3: all connected and make this planet.
Speaker 4: Alive in some way. I don't know.
Speaker 3: It looks strange. It looks like veins and arteries that
Speaker 3: are connecting different land masses.
Speaker 2: I think of it too, You know, Gaya is cyborg.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting concept, Matt's. It reminds me of a
Speaker 2: nervous system. It reminds me of that beautiful and terrifying
Speaker 2: experiment conducted in Japan where fungi or fungi naturally mapped
Speaker 2: out the train system of Japan, and it does look
Speaker 2: like somewhere the dots of the origin points will make
Speaker 2: it look a little bit like a circuit board. That's
Speaker 2: yea god nuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It reminds me a lot of building my first computer,
Speaker 3: like desktop computer, when I learned how to do that
Speaker 3: long long time ago, with just the cabling inside there
Speaker 3: connecting up various parts of the motherboard to the other components.
Speaker 4: It's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Also, you can see the disparity that dates back all
Speaker 2: the way to the days of the telegraph. There are
Speaker 2: clearly empty areas. The South Pacific is one. You know,
Speaker 2: you go under Africa like once you get once you
Speaker 2: get a few one hundred miles south of South Africa,
Speaker 2: there's nothing, and there's nothing connecting Antarctica yet. Officially, the
Speaker 2: closest would be Puerto Williams in Chile, which is not
Speaker 2: a big tourist destination for a lot of people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And New Zealand is encroaching.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay, and there's you know, of course landlocked countries
Speaker 2: get the short shrift here because there's undersea cable will
Speaker 2: have to go to the surface to reach them. So sorry,
Speaker 2: all stands except for Pakistan.
Speaker 4: But Ben, that's so, that's a great point.
Speaker 3: So for for all this undersea cabling you're looking at,
Speaker 3: if you're looking at the website, there is a crap
Speaker 3: ton of overland cable the same type that connects up
Speaker 3: all the major cities, all the major hubs that have
Speaker 3: data running to them that then get sent out in
Speaker 3: the other cable systems that are you know, some of
Speaker 3: them are still above ground. Yeah, it is uh, whoa,
Speaker 3: that's weird to me out like visualizing all the cable
Speaker 3: that's laid across the planet.
Speaker 2: The reason this is only a submarine cable map is
Speaker 2: because if it was in all the cable map, it
Speaker 2: would be nigh illegible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: That's the I mean, that's it's a great thing because
Speaker 2: it shows us the disparity. It shows us the communications centers,
Speaker 2: and it also shows us in a pretty efficient way,
Speaker 2: it shows us population centers, so and and you know,
Speaker 2: depending on what you're purposes are it also it also
Speaker 2: shows you targets right just so and right now. It's nuts.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you mentioned the secrecy. This is inherently conspiratorial stuff, folks.
Speaker 2: We looked into the work of a lot of analytics firms,
Speaker 2: and one that is the most prominent, gets quoted the
Speaker 2: most often in trade organizations and in popular publications as well,
Speaker 2: is an analyst firm called TeleGeography, and they're they're doing
Speaker 2: some pretty best in class work for the public. As
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty three they said that this year they
Speaker 2: know of five hundred and fifty two existing or planned
Speaker 2: subse cables, with more doubtlessly on the way, and they're
Speaker 2: focusing on subse cables. They have other work that touches
Speaker 2: other forms of communication. But one important note we should
Speaker 2: make is those land cables, which still you know very
Speaker 2: much in existence, they can be a lot harder to trace,
Speaker 2: especially if you get into the interior of a country
Speaker 2: with secrets like the US, Russia or China. So it's
Speaker 2: actually it's actually a little bit easier to find the
Speaker 2: oceanic cables. And we mentioned a little bit. Do we
Speaker 2: want to talk a little bit more about their their cutaway,
Speaker 2: like how they how they look on the inside.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I found a really great image of this too, Ben,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna find it here. I found one on vox
Speaker 3: dot com. This is an article that you can find
Speaker 3: right now titled a map of all the underwater cables
Speaker 3: that connect the Internet, and they've got a cutaway here.
Speaker 4: Oh they pulled it from Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: The Wikipedia cutaway. Okay, look, Wikipedia is not a solid source,
Speaker 2: let's be honest. But the cutaway from Wikipedia in this
Speaker 2: case is legit. Like the diagram is, you've got a
Speaker 2: bunch of coating, so you've got a polyethylene insulator, copper sheathing.
Speaker 2: Inside of that, you've got steel wires for rigidity and
Speaker 2: frankly for armor, and then you've got inside of all
Speaker 2: that little matroshkadal you've got the optical fibers in a
Speaker 2: silicon gel's. It's very weird because when I'm describing it, it
Speaker 2: makes me think of layered pastries. But one thing the
Speaker 2: cutaways may not show is, you know, like you were
Speaker 2: talking about the fact that they may be buried a
Speaker 2: little bit, and the fact that they're coated with tar
Speaker 2: pretty often.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and we found it.
Speaker 3: In a couple of different sources that the cabling size
Speaker 3: differs because some of them describe them as a garden hose,
Speaker 3: so you imagine the I don't know the diameter of
Speaker 3: a garden hose or the diameter again of a soda can,
Speaker 3: standard sized, wide mouthed soda can, and I guess there
Speaker 3: are just different sizes because but we didn't even talk
Speaker 3: about this yet. Right now on this planet, there are
Speaker 3: only four companies that are the major manufacturers, the manufacturers
Speaker 3: and layers of this type of cable.
Speaker 2: And they're not the people who own the cable necessarily,
Speaker 2: they're not the people who run the information. They're the
Speaker 2: creators and installers.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and let's just go through the really quickly.
Speaker 3: You can look all of these up. In the United States,
Speaker 3: there's a thing called SubCom. You can check out their website.
Speaker 3: It was on it earlier. It's interesting, it's fascinating. There
Speaker 3: in Japan there's the NEC Corporation. In France there's al
Speaker 3: Kattel Submarine Networks. And in China there's a company called
Speaker 3: HMN Tech. And these are pretty much these are the
Speaker 3: big players at.
Speaker 2: Least, and some of them are older than others, but
Speaker 2: everybody does business with them because you know, they have
Speaker 2: it's a supply and demand, you know, I mean, there
Speaker 2: are only so many games in town, and these things,
Speaker 2: these four companies and these cables, they're still using some
Speaker 2: old tech, some old tactics, some old processes. They lay
Speaker 2: the ships that lay this cable essentially do it the
Speaker 2: same way people lay telegraph cable back in the mid
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds. And some cable makers, like SubCom. Interesting fact
Speaker 2: about them, they actually evolved from an old rope manufacturing
Speaker 2: company that made rope and just happened to have a
Speaker 2: factory next to a deep water port. So that's history.
Speaker 2: Hinges on such small things. And like you said, these
Speaker 2: cables are not all created equal. This summer faster than others,
Speaker 2: better at transmitting more information more consistently. They're taking lessons
Speaker 2: learned from previous function issues. And there's a great article
Speaker 2: on cnet by guy a journalist named Stephen Shankland, and
Speaker 2: he points out that the fastest transatlantic cable out there
Speaker 2: right now is built is funded by Microsoft Meta, the
Speaker 2: tech giants. This thing alone can carry four hundred tera
Speaker 2: bits of data per second, and Shanklin points out that
Speaker 2: for comparison, not to make everybody feel bad about your
Speaker 2: own gaming rig, four hundred terabytes of data per second
Speaker 2: is four hundred thousand times faster than your home broadband,
Speaker 2: even if you have the highest end service available to
Speaker 2: the public.
Speaker 3: Well That's good because I'm only assuming that there are
Speaker 3: four hundred thousand people using the Internet every second they
Speaker 3: would connect that cable. There's probably millions of people at
Speaker 3: any given second using that cable, and I guess they
Speaker 3: only need a certain amount, you know, a percentage of
Speaker 3: that huge capacity every second. But good golly, I don't know.
Speaker 3: We need to get that thing even bigger. We need
Speaker 3: bigger cables.
Speaker 2: Man, Let's turn the ocean into one big cable. What
Speaker 2: could go wrong? Yeah, so it's let's go back to
Speaker 2: TeleGeography because I was I was impressed with there's stuff.
Speaker 2: There's one quote from an analyst there, Alan Maldon, who
Speaker 2: gets quoted in multiple conversations about this, and he does
Speaker 2: a good job of emphasizing me. He says, the whole
Speaker 2: network of undersea cables is the lifeblood of the economy.
Speaker 2: It's how we're sending emails and phone calls and YouTube
Speaker 2: videos and financial transactions. And that last one, I don't know.
Speaker 2: He's just outlining the public stuff. He's not talking about
Speaker 2: other factors that may come into play. I think you're
Speaker 2: naily to Matt the idea of sharing a ride. Basically,
Speaker 2: there's this big global subway and everything that you send
Speaker 2: or receive. Hops on the train with strangers.
Speaker 3: Oh, some of those strangers on that train, I don't know,
Speaker 3: might make you nervous. Everybody's everybody's fine on the train.
Speaker 3: If you're somebody might make you nervous, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, So, once upon a time, this was
Speaker 2: primarily the domain of like state powers working with telecom
Speaker 2: industry players. Right mo Bell lays a new wire or
Speaker 2: new cable, et cetera, et cetera. But of course we've
Speaker 2: already mentioned them. The new kids on the block are
Speaker 2: are the tech bros, the tech empires, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon,
Speaker 2: those four primarily, but many others. They've got money to
Speaker 2: play and they won in the game there. What was
Speaker 2: that term? There's a term we learned from hyperscalers. They're
Speaker 2: called in the industry because of all the money that
Speaker 2: they have put into play here.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh for sure, let's talk about it.
Speaker 3: These guys, these hyperscalers, the Metas and Amazons and the
Speaker 3: Googles and the Microsoft, they're responsible for two thirds of
Speaker 3: all of that cable traffic.
Speaker 4: Oh you know what, it's making me think of?
Speaker 2: What's that do you remember.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm gonna blank on it.
Speaker 3: I think it was Ted Stevens or some other senator
Speaker 3: a long time ago. They made this comment publicly about
Speaker 3: a series of tubes and the tubes are getting clogged
Speaker 3: and all this other stuff. It was something to do
Speaker 3: with that neutrality.
Speaker 4: God, that's been a while, but you're right.
Speaker 2: It was Ted Stevens.
Speaker 4: It was Ted Stevens, bing bing bing.
Speaker 3: I get a bingo thing for me. Sorry, my brain
Speaker 3: doesn't generally work like this. But he got ridiculed for
Speaker 3: calling the Internet a series of tubes or a tubes
Speaker 3: they could get clogged, right, But really, if you visual
Speaker 3: this way, at least the international interconnectivity that becomes the Internet,
Speaker 3: that is the Internet.
Speaker 4: Maybe he wasn't that far off.
Speaker 2: He really wasn't. You know. These are when you go
Speaker 2: down to the nitty gritty, we're talking about physical capability, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: even in the so called cloud. Guess what that rides
Speaker 2: the subway too, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: It's tube traffic.
Speaker 2: Yes, it very much is. And the like you said,
Speaker 2: are our big dogs on the tech side. Are two
Speaker 2: thirds of that traffic now easy and they are increasing.
Speaker 2: Analysts say they're surging and their share of the traffic
Speaker 2: each and every calendar year. This means essentially more people
Speaker 2: and more businesses are doing more stuff that needs a
Speaker 2: ride on the on the information subway. So just like
Speaker 2: when a city grows and you get a lot of
Speaker 2: people moving in and there are more and more cars
Speaker 2: on the highway, you have to invest in maintaining and
Speaker 2: repairing the existing roads or expanding them. Yeah, you also
Speaker 2: have to expand them, and then you also have to
Speaker 2: build entirely new roads. And if you don't, then your
Speaker 2: city's going to be in a lot of trouble very soon.
Speaker 2: For anybody who's played sim City, all right whatever.
Speaker 4: Or Atlanta traffic or.
Speaker 2: Atlanta traffic's not a game. But I do feel like
Speaker 2: I'm playing it now because we're driving back into our office.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, So congratulations to everybody in Atlanta traffic
Speaker 2: who is driving like they've already made their peace with
Speaker 2: God or whatever. I forgot about it.
Speaker 3: Man, when there is a vehicle in front of the
Speaker 3: vehicle in front of you, riding on that person's tail
Speaker 3: doesn't do anything.
Speaker 2: It's just not a And I, uh, yeah, I've already
Speaker 2: been racking up more Atlanta war stories. I did. I
Speaker 2: did find, you know, used to struggle with road rage map,
Speaker 2: but I did find a new tactic that I think
Speaker 2: is helpful and instructive to everybody involved. Since we're an
Speaker 2: audio show, this might not make sense, but if you
Speaker 2: were in a traffic heavy area and you have to
Speaker 2: drive around people who are still kind of like learning
Speaker 2: about themselves in their car and all around them.
Speaker 3: And they know laws about keeping to the right if
Speaker 3: you're going slow, sure.
Speaker 2: And if they're out of blinker fluid or whatever, the
Speaker 2: best way, in my opinion, the best thing I've found
Speaker 2: is that yelling and people doesn't work. You know, Flipping
Speaker 2: the bird is just sort of juvenile. What I like
Speaker 2: to do is point at the person, laugh and then
Speaker 2: give them a thumbs down. And that is so much better,
Speaker 2: and it really does it really does work. I think
Speaker 2: it's humorous and appropriate.
Speaker 4: Do the gladiator thing.
Speaker 3: You point at them and then give them a sideways
Speaker 3: finger and then it kind of tilts one way or
Speaker 3: the other and then goes down.
Speaker 2: Hey, and keep it a positive. Sometimes I give people
Speaker 2: a thumbs up too, but you have to be careful
Speaker 2: to make sure that's not sarcastic anyway. That's different we
Speaker 2: got a car episode coming up. It's a doozy, but
Speaker 2: right now, that car and traffic analogy I think is
Speaker 2: pretty apt because it is a crowded city, it is
Speaker 2: growing right by any metric, and the trend will accelerate.
Speaker 2: We've got a couple returning guests in tonight's episode. One
Speaker 2: would be the shady consultancy McKenzie. They are in addition
Speaker 2: to being shady, they're pretty accurate with a lot of
Speaker 2: their stuff when it serves their purpose to be so.
Speaker 2: And they said that undersea cable links are going to
Speaker 2: grow at an economy of scale. Already reached that part,
Speaker 2: so the Internet hopefully will get faster for everyone, prices
Speaker 2: will hopefully get lower. We'll see about that. And then
Speaker 2: they said this will all lead to like a four
Speaker 2: percent boost in global employment a seven percent boost in
Speaker 2: economic activity. It sounds like a win win if everybody
Speaker 2: can behave sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, everybody's gonna make so much money. Wait four companies,
Speaker 3: and then I guess the telecommunications companies after that will
Speaker 3: make a lot of money. At that same outfit you found,
Speaker 3: ben TeleGeography projects that ten billion dollars is going to
Speaker 3: be spent on new subse cables from this year twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three for the next two years twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: and that's global ten billion dollars is going to be
Speaker 3: spent on laying new stuff and also spent on repairing,
Speaker 3: you know, issues that happened to the cables and maintaining
Speaker 3: those systems and that those that's mostly going to be
Speaker 3: handled by those four big companies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, because again they're the only ones in town.
Speaker 2: And it's kind of like Semiconductor Foundries billion manufacturing base.
Speaker 2: There's a pretty tall milkshake. It's tough order this time.
Speaker 4: We didn't even talk about ben.
Speaker 3: You can't physically get a human down there to work
Speaker 3: on the cables. Still, I send a repair person.
Speaker 2: Not yet you.
Speaker 3: I mean seriously, when you lay the stuff, it's a
Speaker 3: trawler that you have to drop down that doesn't have
Speaker 3: any biological material on it. It's just a machine and
Speaker 3: it lays the cable. Then when one breaks or you're
Speaker 3: laying a new one, you do the same thing. Because
Speaker 3: humans don't exist at those depths.
Speaker 2: None have been proven to exist for very long at all.
Speaker 2: So this sounds great for business. Again, when when if
Speaker 2: possible and the monopoly of companies or the small oligarchy
Speaker 2: of companies that are able to do this or making
Speaker 2: money hand over a fist right and they're doing their
Speaker 2: best work. But around the world, despite all this good stuff,
Speaker 2: cables aren't increased concern for pretty much everybody who thinks
Speaker 2: about them for more than a few minutes. They are fragile,
Speaker 2: they're incredibly important. That means if you want to attack someone,
Speaker 2: these cables are a fantastic target. You can kind of
Speaker 2: see where we're going with this. Welcome to a new
Speaker 2: theater of the continuing war. A lot of journalists have
Speaker 2: pointed out the attack or the sabotage of the nord
Speaker 2: Stream one and two gas pipelines, and look, put morals
Speaker 2: and ethics and your favorite teams aside, just look at
Speaker 2: the logistics. That's a difficult operation. It's easy for us
Speaker 2: to sit somewhere and read about it and say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, just go to a part where nobody's hanging
Speaker 2: out and blow it up. But there's a lot going
Speaker 2: into that. Because people have their eyes on those pipelines.
Speaker 2: It's way easier. Even with remote parts of the seabed,
Speaker 2: it's way easier to just cut the garden nose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to see through you know, miles of water. Sure,
Speaker 3: you know whatever, it's hard to see that stuff. And
Speaker 3: you know, and that is weird to think about, ben
Speaker 3: because there is a ton of surveillance under the water
Speaker 3: when it comes to like hubs where.
Speaker 4: These cables are laid.
Speaker 3: But they are huge swaths of them that are just
Speaker 3: cable under like barely underneath the surface, and it's just
Speaker 3: there and nobody's watching.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Again, we're talking hundreds of feet thousands of feet of
Speaker 3: cable that are exposed that if you knew where to
Speaker 3: go and just dropped something a little heavy and sharp
Speaker 3: under the ocean floor, not even explosive, no, literally sharp.
Speaker 2: And former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev spoot some people when
Speaker 2: he said, yeah, these subc cables their fair game in
Speaker 2: a conflict.
Speaker 4: Why irrational international waters?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he seemed kind of irritated. He was like, why
Speaker 2: wouldn't what come on? Man? Do you even war? And
Speaker 2: if you then you start looking at this is something
Speaker 2: that's kind of the heart of the show here. Want
Speaker 2: to look at the choke points, want to look at
Speaker 2: the conspiracies that will naturally blossom in this environment. Take Taiwan,
Speaker 2: the archipelago of Taiwan. It has twenty seven subse cable
Speaker 2: connections right now. If and this is just if you
Speaker 2: were someone who had an opinion about the future of
Speaker 2: Taiwan and you wanted to impose your will or your
Speaker 2: opinion about the future, then you want to you would
Speaker 2: start with the cables. That's one of the one of
Speaker 2: the things you would do if your operation goes hot.
Speaker 3: And one thing to keep in mind, we're talking about
Speaker 3: severing these cables. These companies can repair a broken cable,
Speaker 3: let's say, or a missing piece of cable in hours.
Speaker 3: It's potentially possible to repair something within hours, but it's
Speaker 3: also more likely that it's going to take a lot
Speaker 3: longer than that, right, And if one of these cables
Speaker 3: is attacked, it would probably be strategically timed to where
Speaker 3: communications are cut off to you know, a specific place
Speaker 3: like a Taiwan, let's say, and then and then another
Speaker 3: type of attack would occur. So it's almost like it's
Speaker 3: almost like turning the lights off, right if you're just
Speaker 3: putting the whole thing on a house and it's a
Speaker 3: home intruder and they cut the lights and we're in
Speaker 3: a scary movie.
Speaker 4: That's the first thing they do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get into some systems theory here too, but
Speaker 2: think of like a physical DDoS attack. That's really that's
Speaker 2: what you can do. Overload the system due to the
Speaker 2: relatively high number due to a couple of calculations, which
Speaker 2: we're going to allude to, but for the sake of everybody,
Speaker 2: we're probably not going to do the actual calculation slash
Speaker 2: math on air. But you can play along at home
Speaker 2: and tell us what you think. Of course, so even
Speaker 2: another returning guest, shady one at that in q TEL,
Speaker 2: is worried about the possibility of cables becoming a theater
Speaker 2: in the next war.
Speaker 3: You remember in q tel, right, those are the guys
Speaker 3: that put money into stuff that the CIA and the
Speaker 3: FBI and other intelligence agencies in the US want them
Speaker 3: to put money into. What But they're nonprofit, right, But
Speaker 3: they are CIA backed, but they do good stuff. But
Speaker 3: also the NSA is involved.
Speaker 4: It's weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, every government agency you have ever had a problem
Speaker 2: with outside of the IRS is involved within qtel.
Speaker 3: Do some searches are in q tel and Facebook.
Speaker 2: Check out our episode before the cables go So anyway,
Speaker 2: do check it out. The current president of in q Tel,
Speaker 2: there's a guy named Steve Bauscher, and he said, quote,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of talk these days about how space
Speaker 2: is the next contested domain, but I think undersea is
Speaker 2: going to be very much a contested domain. Those are
Speaker 2: going to be targets in any sort of get this
Speaker 2: met kinetic conflict, which is just like, look, in qtel
Speaker 2: is a heavy player. They do a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: Kinetic conflict is kind of to me a non helpful euphemism.
Speaker 2: We all know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: See what you really got to bring inertia into this,
Speaker 3: you know, like, is it at rest or does it
Speaker 3: want to stay there? Or is it already moving?
Speaker 4: What kind of can energy was applied to this war?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And I guess before we go too far
Speaker 2: down the undersea rabbit hole, we do have to make
Speaker 2: a note. The reason, Matthew, you and I are talking
Speaker 2: so much about the fragility of these cables is that
Speaker 2: there does not have to be a conspiracy, nor sabotage,
Speaker 2: nor an active war or terrorism for these things to
Speaker 2: get screwed up. To the point of you mentioned about
Speaker 2: just dropping something heavy and sharp, Yeah, that happens all
Speaker 2: the time because storms hit the ocean and ships are
Speaker 2: all over the ocean and they drop their anchor and
Speaker 2: storm blows them and the anchor just pulls the cable out.
Speaker 3: God, dang it, we got another cable.
Speaker 2: What No, we're here for the tuna. Anyway. Eighty five
Speaker 2: percent of cuts and damage the cable currently comes from
Speaker 2: fishing equipment and anchors. And then there are natural disasters
Speaker 2: that occur like you mentioned Pacific islands often which only
Speaker 2: have one connecting cable. Tonga is a great example. Volcanic
Speaker 2: eruption screws up the cable. They lost communication for weeks.
Speaker 2: It was a double plus on good situation. So even
Speaker 2: in times of piece, just like you said with the
Speaker 2: road analogy, you have to constantly maintain this stuff, improve it,
Speaker 2: check on it. It's all very expensive, and that's just
Speaker 2: to keep it running, not to make it better at all.
Speaker 2: That's just to keep this kind of jury rig contraption. Going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think about ac companies or car manufacturers or no, no,
Speaker 3: not car manufacturers, car dealerships. We just talked about this, Ben.
Speaker 3: A car dealership makes a lot of money selling cars,
Speaker 3: but not the bulk of their money. Most of the
Speaker 3: money at a major car dealership is made through maintenance,
Speaker 3: through the maintenance of vehicles it sells, and signing somebody
Speaker 3: into a contract to only get their car worked on
Speaker 3: in that place where they bought their car. That's the
Speaker 3: trick like, and it's kind of the same with these
Speaker 3: companies on cable, right, they're going to make most of
Speaker 3: their money fixing the stuff that they've already built.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hate that. We both know that from experience, now,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. What a bummer. Anyway, So warranties,
Speaker 2: that's another good episode. So it's there's another problem here.
Speaker 2: This stuff is an excellent target for war or excuse me,
Speaker 2: cough cough, kinetic conflicts cough cough, because just like spy satellites,
Speaker 2: it's incredibly difficult, if not operationally impossible, to keep the
Speaker 2: location of these things secret if powerful forces really want
Speaker 2: to know. Now, you as the public, if you're listening
Speaker 2: and you're a civilian, you can see all kinds of
Speaker 2: maps like SubCom and they'll usually have some caveat like
Speaker 2: location is approximate or something. The location is not approximate.
Speaker 2: For a lot of the big players they know, right,
Speaker 2: and some state governments that might be beefed up with
Speaker 2: each other. Are also in a position where they can
Speaker 2: force the tech bros to tell them everything legally right,
Speaker 2: and geography decides everything on this planet. Subsea cable routes
Speaker 2: are no exception. That's where we got to talk about
Speaker 2: something that I think fascinates both of us. Batt the
Speaker 2: cart to take the traffic analogy. One of the biggest
Speaker 2: traffic jams is in Egypt.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I never would have expected this.
Speaker 3: Check out the article the most Vulnerable Place on the Internet.
Speaker 3: It's written by Matt Burgess for Wired and November two.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, pretty up to speed even now.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there are six cables that Matt Burgess points
Speaker 3: out that are concentrated through the Red Sea and they
Speaker 3: actually go over the land in Egypt. If you go
Speaker 3: to that same way website we told you about before
Speaker 3: the map, you can actually see where they go over
Speaker 3: land in Egypt. And that's what we call a choke point.
Speaker 2: Why Ben, well, Matt, we call it a choke point
Speaker 2: because if you wanted to, Okay, seventeen percent of all
Speaker 2: the Internet traffic in the world goes along these cables.
Speaker 2: It passes through Egypt, and this is due to geography
Speaker 2: without some sci Fi level Terrafor me, there's no way
Speaker 2: to get rid of this choke point.
Speaker 3: There's not, and you can again it is striking if
Speaker 3: you pull out on that map, then you zoom in
Speaker 3: towards Egypt, kind of the northeast side of Egypt. You
Speaker 3: see where all of those cables it's like you're talking about,
Speaker 3: it's like a cable tie is wrapped around them.
Speaker 4: It's nuts.
Speaker 3: And that's just before they go over land in Egypt
Speaker 3: while heading to the northwest.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And let's go back to wired. I love
Speaker 2: the word citing this one. So Matt Burgess says, passing
Speaker 2: through the Red Sea and across Egypt is the shortest
Speaker 2: primarily underwater route between Asia and Europe. And you can
Speaker 2: take some of these cables across land, but it's generally
Speaker 2: going to be safer for them to be at the
Speaker 2: bottom of the sea because it's tougher to disrupt them
Speaker 2: or compromise them, which we'll talk about later.
Speaker 4: A man, do you talk about compromising these things?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll come up at the end, right. So every
Speaker 2: other possible route in this area is a logistical pain
Speaker 2: in the butt. If you look at the south pull
Speaker 2: up that Matt Matt mentioned earlier. Then you'll see cables
Speaker 2: can pass around Africa under sea, but they're much longer,
Speaker 2: you know. It's like the old maritime days of sailing
Speaker 2: around the cape. And if you go to the north,
Speaker 2: you'll see there's only one cable that travels above Russia.
Speaker 2: It's street name, the Polar Express. Love it, but it's
Speaker 2: just not practical for what we need stuff to do.
Speaker 2: And if you try to do alternative roots, which people
Speaker 2: have been trying to do for years and years now,
Speaker 2: then you run into the second problem economy or war. Syria, Iraq, Iran,
Speaker 2: Afghanistan aka the Graveyard of Empires. That's not a place
Speaker 2: where you want to run a cable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I but the old conspira brain is doing something here, Ben.
Speaker 2: Oh what you got cooking?
Speaker 3: Where has the US been focusing their kinetic efforts in
Speaker 3: those areas?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh gosh, they are resource rich, aren't they? And
Speaker 2: of course the Strait of hor Moves is its own
Speaker 2: little story to be told. That's a really good point, Matt.
Speaker 2: Now you're in my head about it, okay. And so
Speaker 2: they go through the red seat, right, we've got to
Speaker 2: get back to those countries and the Grand aims in
Speaker 2: a future episode. The Red Sea is not perfect by
Speaker 2: any means for this sort of stuff, because the Red
Speaker 2: Sea is big. It's a sea, but it's shallow, and
Speaker 2: that means it's way easier to get down there and
Speaker 2: get up to some grimlin shenanigans. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, the Egyptian Navy arrested three people who
Speaker 2: were doing just that. They were like, Oh, these cables
Speaker 2: aren't that far away. Let's get frigging kinetic.
Speaker 4: Let's see what happens. Sneep. It's way harder than a
Speaker 4: little snip.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's pretty crazy. If you look at that map,
Speaker 3: you can see where there are vulnerabilities, minor choke points
Speaker 3: that exist across the planet, places where if you had
Speaker 3: bad intentions, you could do some serious damage to the
Speaker 3: connectivity of large swaths of land.
Speaker 2: Very quickly as well. Yeah, so Egypt TWA and those
Speaker 2: are just two examples of a trend that continues across
Speaker 2: the globe. And yet the system itself does have redundancy.
Speaker 2: Like obviously, the people who run companies as smart as
Speaker 2: tech empires are not going to say, yeah, one cable,
Speaker 2: that's fine, because they are so used to people losing
Speaker 2: their minds when the Internet goes out, So not even
Speaker 2: like a I kid you not not even like worried
Speaker 2: about saboteurs or war. They're worried about their customer service
Speaker 2: departments getting overwhelmed. So they have multiple cables or space
Speaker 2: on multiple cables because they need that redundancy. If one
Speaker 2: thing goes out, then they have another route hopefully and
Speaker 2: they have a lot of redundancy. Or it's very smart.
Speaker 2: That's how you want a system to be built. But
Speaker 2: some countries like Tongas still just have the one connecting cable.
Speaker 2: And if you're one of those four companies that you mentioned, Matt,
Speaker 2: when something goes wrong, they have the ability to pinpoint
Speaker 2: where the cut occurs so they can isolate it. But
Speaker 2: they often have to get a government permit because these
Speaker 2: are cables that go across nations, they have to get
Speaker 2: a government permit to operate. So a repair can take
Speaker 2: two weeks on average, but if anything else goes wrong
Speaker 2: during that time, the repair window automatically extends. Like in
Speaker 2: the wake of Fukushima, one repair took two months. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that means if we think in terms of system analysis,
Speaker 2: to your earlier point. You if you are a bad
Speaker 2: faith actor, if you are an attacker, you have some
Speaker 2: advantages depending on your goal. Like the Taiwanese example we're
Speaker 2: talking about, So they have twenty seven cables, and if
Speaker 2: they wanted to cut off if the if China or
Speaker 2: some other attacker just for the sake of argument, wanted
Speaker 2: to cut off Taiwan and cripple them in advance of
Speaker 2: a physical war, they would just need to overwhelm the
Speaker 2: repair capabilities. For they cut the twenty seven cables at
Speaker 2: once as close to as close to simultaneously as possible,
Speaker 2: just like in Breaking Bad spoiler where Walter White has
Speaker 2: all those people killed within two minutes at the prison.
Speaker 2: Just do that.
Speaker 3: Well, what if you had what if the strategy was
Speaker 3: to have a dedicated connection from a different angle that
Speaker 3: didn't require those cables to connect to the interior systems.
Speaker 3: Then you cut the exterior systems so communications can't go
Speaker 3: out or come in from other parts of the world,
Speaker 3: but you could still connect to the systems via the land. Right,
Speaker 3: there's potential there to basically take everyone off guard by
Speaker 3: breaking most communications but still being able to function within
Speaker 3: systems at the same time while while they're disconnected. That's
Speaker 3: really creepy because you're talking about like financial hits. You're
Speaker 3: talking about stuff that could cripple systems without any kinetic maneuvers.
Speaker 2: Yes, asymmetric warfare one hundred percent. This is an excellent
Speaker 2: example of it. I like your scenario too.
Speaker 3: I don't well that scenario at all.
Speaker 2: I think it's intellectually simulating. So there's all I guess
Speaker 2: I have to say that too, right, so you know
Speaker 2: what happens then, Really, even if you're not putting boots
Speaker 2: on the ground, you're extending that repair window, right and
Speaker 2: that and as we know, a lot can change within
Speaker 2: a month or two, so you've gone now you've gone
Speaker 2: from two weeks to maybe months on the outside. And
Speaker 2: there's also the ability for industrial espionage terrorism in the
Speaker 2: corporate front, very like Shadow Run terrorism. If do you
Speaker 2: remember that game Shadow Run? Yeah? Shadow Runs amazing. Okay,
Speaker 2: So it's it's a it's a little tricky if you're
Speaker 2: one of those cats because of the redundancy of cable,
Speaker 2: the difficulty of reaching them all at once. You want
Speaker 2: to do a war of a thousand cuts. So the
Speaker 2: cost benefit, which we're not going to do in depth
Speaker 2: is this. Most breaks in the cables occur in shallow
Speaker 2: water because that's where most of the boat traffic is
Speaker 2: likely to hit them with an anchor. Those also get
Speaker 2: repaired much more quickly, much more easily. So you would
Speaker 2: want to eat the cost of getting out in the
Speaker 2: deep deep water cutting cables at the most inaccessible places,
Speaker 2: which requires some specific equipment, so you would probably want
Speaker 2: to be careful about how you procure that. This raises
Speaker 2: your effort, but it also massively increases the amount of
Speaker 2: effort someone has to undertake to repair it. There are
Speaker 2: only a few companies that can do this. It's again
Speaker 2: an intellectually fascinating game, and it's probably best for us
Speaker 2: not to do the math on air.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's not do the math, because you could develop,
Speaker 3: let's say, a brand new type of submarine that gets
Speaker 3: introduced in the past couple of months than just andre same.
Speaker 3: Maybe that submarine has some quiet technology that is literally
Speaker 3: a heavy, sharp thing that you could drag across the
Speaker 3: ocean floor. That's all you would need to do, especially
Speaker 3: if that submarine was very quiet and difficult to.
Speaker 2: Detect, Especially if that submarine actually worked, which is up
Speaker 2: for debate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: I know, but but yes, you're making a beautiful point.
Speaker 2: That's a problem. That's asymmetrical warfare, classic textbook. You know,
Speaker 2: if you have an enemy who outperforms economically or in
Speaker 2: terms of infrastructure, you don't have to waste untold billions
Speaker 2: of dollars trying to catch up with them. You can
Speaker 2: spend a lot less money just to break the thing
Speaker 2: they made, which is we live in interesting times. And
Speaker 2: like I said, you know, we knew we were not
Speaker 2: going to get to everything here. We've only explored the
Speaker 2: physical dangers. We do want to do that plot twist
Speaker 2: you mentioned as well, Matt. We both alluded to. We
Speaker 2: have not talked about puzzle palace level compromise of data
Speaker 2: and the cables, which is happening. We have not talked
Speaker 2: about interception or the insertion interposition of purposely misleading information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these are fiber optic cables. You can split off
Speaker 3: fiber optic cables and duplicate the data. The United States
Speaker 3: figured out how to do that a while ago. Remember
Speaker 3: what we talked about that one, and they went, let's
Speaker 3: just look at all the data.
Speaker 4: Where can we plug in?
Speaker 3: Oh, look, we can just plug in to the literal
Speaker 3: pipes and duplicate the pipes and see everything.
Speaker 4: I'm using the phrase pipes on purpose.
Speaker 2: Okay, and we want to keep it a secret, So
Speaker 2: let's make sure this skyscraper doesn't have any windows. That way,
Speaker 2: no one can look in and it won't seem suspicious.
Speaker 4: Oh, the Long Lines building. Check it out.
Speaker 3: It's in Manhattan and it's really creepy. Can I really
Speaker 3: quick shout out before we end here?
Speaker 4: Ben?
Speaker 3: Somebody named Johnny Harris, awesome reporter, journalist. He's got a
Speaker 3: great YouTube channel. That's the way I interact with his content.
Speaker 3: He made a video not long ago in August titled
Speaker 3: Submarine Cables and the Rise of Mass Surveillance. If you
Speaker 3: are interested in the surveillance side of this, we would
Speaker 3: highly recommend checking that out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to highlight at the end of
Speaker 2: your one. Maybe it's just a restatement here. It's short
Speaker 2: term effective to cut these cables as an act of
Speaker 2: kinetic conflict. Is long term effective and arguably more intelligent
Speaker 2: to compromise the cables, because if you are playing the
Speaker 2: cat and mouse of espionage, or if you're on the
Speaker 2: road to a hot war, then you don't want people
Speaker 2: to know that you have an ear to the ground
Speaker 2: on them, so you would never tell people. Then you
Speaker 2: compromise the cables all to say, I imagine a small
Speaker 2: handful of manufacturers and installers. I imagine they get a
Speaker 2: lot of interesting meetings, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 2: you have to wonder what their social media is like. Anyway,
Speaker 2: these are the genuine concerns. It turns out that human
Speaker 2: beings haven't changed all that much since that unknown scribe
Speaker 2: decided to jush up the hieroglyphs. So what happens next?
Speaker 2: What do you think, folks? Is this critical infrastructure going
Speaker 2: to be targeted the way that power plants are being
Speaker 2: targeted in the US now, which just sort of faded
Speaker 2: from the news but is definitely still happening. We can't
Speaker 2: wait to hear your thoughts. Find us online while the
Speaker 2: cables still run Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, x naed, Twitter, and
Speaker 2: if you don't care for that, you can always always
Speaker 2: give us a phone call.
Speaker 3: Yes, our number is one eight three three std WYT.
Speaker 3: You've got three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname and
Speaker 3: let us know if we can use your message and
Speaker 3: voice on the air. It's that simple. If you want
Speaker 3: to send us a bunch of information. If you need
Speaker 3: an undersea cable to get us stuff, why not instead
Speaker 3: send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 2: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.