The New US-China Proxy War Over Undersea Internet Cables (reuters.com) 43
400 undersea cables carry 95% of the world's international internet traffic, reports Reuters (citing figures from Washington-based telecommunications research firm TeleGeography).
But now there's "a growing proxy war between the United States and China over technologies that could determine who achieves economic and military dominance for decades to come." In February, American subsea cable company SubCom LLC began laying a $600-million cable to transport data from Asia to Europe, via Africa and the Middle East, at super-fast speeds over 12,000 miles of fiber running along the seafloor. That cable is known as South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6, or SeaMeWe-6 for short. It will connect a dozen countries as it snakes its way from Singapore to France, crossing three seas and the Indian Ocean on the way. It is slated to be finished in 2025.
It was a project that slipped through China's fingers....
The Singapore-to-France cable would have been HMN Tech's biggest such project to date, cementing it as the world's fastest-rising subsea cable builder, and extending the global reach of the three Chinese telecom firms that had intended to invest in it. But the U.S. government, concerned about the potential for Chinese spying on these sensitive communications cables, ran a successful campaign to flip the contract to SubCom through incentives and pressure on consortium members.... It's one of at least six private undersea cable deals in the Asia-Pacific region over the past four years where the U.S. government either intervened to keep HMN Tech from winning that business, or forced the rerouting or abandonment of cables that would have directly linked U.S. and Chinese territories....
Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told Reuters that undersea cables were "a surveillance gold mine" for the world's intelligence agencies. "When we talk about U.S.-China tech competition, when we talk about espionage and the capture of data, submarine cables are involved in every aspect of those rising geopolitical tensions," Sherman said.
But now there's "a growing proxy war between the United States and China over technologies that could determine who achieves economic and military dominance for decades to come." In February, American subsea cable company SubCom LLC began laying a $600-million cable to transport data from Asia to Europe, via Africa and the Middle East, at super-fast speeds over 12,000 miles of fiber running along the seafloor. That cable is known as South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6, or SeaMeWe-6 for short. It will connect a dozen countries as it snakes its way from Singapore to France, crossing three seas and the Indian Ocean on the way. It is slated to be finished in 2025.
It was a project that slipped through China's fingers....
The Singapore-to-France cable would have been HMN Tech's biggest such project to date, cementing it as the world's fastest-rising subsea cable builder, and extending the global reach of the three Chinese telecom firms that had intended to invest in it. But the U.S. government, concerned about the potential for Chinese spying on these sensitive communications cables, ran a successful campaign to flip the contract to SubCom through incentives and pressure on consortium members.... It's one of at least six private undersea cable deals in the Asia-Pacific region over the past four years where the U.S. government either intervened to keep HMN Tech from winning that business, or forced the rerouting or abandonment of cables that would have directly linked U.S. and Chinese territories....
Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told Reuters that undersea cables were "a surveillance gold mine" for the world's intelligence agencies. "When we talk about U.S.-China tech competition, when we talk about espionage and the capture of data, submarine cables are involved in every aspect of those rising geopolitical tensions," Sherman said.
underwater backhoe (Score:3, Funny)
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Release the Krak...underwater backhoes!!!
Already happening [apnews.com].
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Are they really that great for surveilance? (Score:3)
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Traffic patterns, routing, even if it's quiet, it's all of value to some algorithm.
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Plus better to connect on land like say an AT&T building in a nondescript room.
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Encrypted data is being stored, with the expectation that in a decade or two quantum or other computing advancements will enable decrypting the current encryption. I forget the term, Veritasium did a video in the past week on it. Looked it up, "store now, decrypt later": SNDL.
Combine that with more advanced "AI" language models being able to process that data and quantify it...
Oh, and of course that's with abilities we're currently aware of/are happening, whereas state actors likely have more advanced ab
Re:Are they really that great for surveilance? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not that quantum computing is going to happen in the next few decades, but knowing who is communicating with who is valuable information (that's the metadata).
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The data that flows on the fibers is all encrypted and there is always data being sent. The large routers now all encrypted the lower level bitstreams so and TLS packet hits the ISP router, it gets routed to the overseas link and encrypted sent as part of a 400 gb link which then gets handed to the subsea transit provider who encrypted again before it get sent down the undersea line.
As far as storing the data, a typical new project is about 128 terabits. That would require about a half a million dollars i
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The data that flows on the fibers is all encrypted and there is always data being sent. The large routers now all encrypted the lower level bitstreams so and TLS packet hits the ISP router, it gets routed to the overseas link and encrypted sent as part of a 400 gb link which then gets handed to the subsea transit provider who encrypted again before it get sent down the undersea line.
I can't quite parse this sentence but I believe it can be summarized as PPVPN [wikipedia.org] and their many variants.
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If all traffic over the links is encrypted, what does spying on the links gain them?
They hoover up all the information, and store it until the time when better decryption algorithms have been discovered. Not all information goes out of date.
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More likely the end points are already compromised so no need to store everything to decrypt later. It's already decrypted.
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Yes they will. And your point was? That China is better nicer more pro human rights and democracy place than the US? Or that both are equally evil despite piles of evidence to the contrary? Which meme game are we playing today?
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The "China is better" makes for easy jokes.
The "both are equally evil" is great for making apples apples comparisons to highlight China's horrific human rights abuses.
I'm good with either. I keep a list handy for the second one because 50 center pro-evil China loving shills like to go there.
Super-Fast? (Score:3)
Super-fast speeds over 12,000 miles of fibre is going to be be a ping time of about 200ms before you spend any time in processing. My research (i.e., I Googled it) says that fibre runs about a third slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. So if you really want fast, you need to both minimize the distance and maximize the speed, such as using microwave or laser links. The fastest way to get packets between Asia and Europe might be to use something like Starlink with direct satellite laser links. (Note that I said, "like" because the system as it is now isn't going to work that way.)
Of course, what they're talking about is super high bandwidth, which isn't necessarily super fast. The'll send massive amounts of data over that link; it just won't get there that fast.
Remember, never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of hard drives; it just isn't very fast.
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The fastest way to get packets between Asia and Europe might be to use something like Starlink with direct satellite laser links. (Note that I said, "like" because the system as it is now isn't going to work that way.)
Did someone call for a space laser [wccftech.com]?
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Super-fast speeds over 12,000 miles of fibre is going to be be a ping time of about 200ms before you spend any time in processing. My research (i.e., I Googled it) says that fibre runs about a third slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. So if you really want fast,
...obviously you need an evacuated tunnel that you can shoot lasers down without a fiber. ;)
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Otherwise you can't justify the enormous military budgets. It's also tough to keep that constant background fear going that makes it possible for us to constantly fight among ourselves while approximately 10,000 people make off with 50% of everything human civilization produces...
Have you ever considered moving to China? I hear it's a bastion of left wing ideas. A very happy place. They have flowering meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate, where the children dance and laugh and play with gumdrop smiles. You should consider going!
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Maybe if people could stop being so uselessly belligerent, we could safely cut military spending.
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You forgot your usual call out to class warfare as the only cause of all problems and how socialism is the only answer.
Oh wait, no, you nailed it! Kudos!
Countries compete with each other (Score:2)
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The NSA already has that data, what're you talking about?
Out of date (Score:1)
This was an issue we dealt with in the 1990's, and for decades before and after that.
Today we know all undersea cables will be cut and tapped in the first week.
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Global Crossing.
What's an undersea cable? (Score:2)
Asks Elon Musk.