HN Explorer

Ask HN: What happens if the transatlantic undersea cables are severed one day?

6 points by truckerbill ↗ HN
Is the global internet our economies rely on dependent on these cables functioning? Or is there some amount of resiliency?

Would there be incentive for another nation to do so in a cold war scenario?

12 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 35.3 ms ] thread
Friday_
In cold war no, there is no incentive to cut cables

In hot war, your connection to internet will probably go down before anyone severes the backbone cables.

First your cellular network, then other types of connection.

Then you lose electricity and stuff.

So no internet only sneakernet and maybe local networks with local power supply will be resilient enough. Yeah and radio.

gostsamo
the moment the first cable is cut, you have a war.
Account_Removed
I don't think so. Russia has been cutting undersea cables for some time now, perfecting the techique. Search for 'russian yacht Ragnar' for example.
rurban
Just cutting cables is silly. More like that they are also tapping the cables.

If it was cut, it was most likely an accident.

gostsamo
I didn't find anything sea cable related to this yaht. I found a possible scenario in the UK Sun, but no actual report for an actual cutting. Actually, the Sun Article mentions that cutting such cable will have to be answered with torpedoing the submarine responsible or a cyber attack.
simonblack
The sequence is more likely reversed. War and then the cables are cut.

The British did that in WW1 to force the Germans to use radio that the British could then receive also.

gostsamo
If there is a war, there would be cable cutting, however, cable cutting is so severe action, that it will require military response.
Havoc
There are loads of cables especially on key routes like us to Europe. So it is quite unlikely

If all of them are down then I’d imagine world economy collapses. Stock markets, derivatives, wires etc. None of that stuff works without coms

Mayzie
Curiously, could Starlink be the failsafe the world would use in such a scenario? As far as I am aware, Starlink is currently being used to provide connectivity to remote mobile / cellular towers in some countries.
NoahKAndrews
Maybe once there are more satellites with laser links. Most of the current ones can only route traffic between base stations and nearby clients, not between satellites.