"As I discovered while researching my latest novel, subaquatic sabotage could be easily carried out and we are woefully underprepared The events of the past few weeks - including ­Donald Trump's threats to ­Greenland, the US seizure of a Russian-registered tanker after its encroachment on Irish waters and the severing of ­telecoms cables in the Baltic - have all come together to highlight one of the great vulnerabilities of contemporary Ireland: the fragile cables that connect us all."
"the fragile cables that connect us all. We might imagine the information cloud lives in the sky, but in truth it is closer to the abyssal zone, and 95pc of the world's information travels through tiny tubes that snake along the ocean floor."
Subaquatic sabotage poses a realistic and underprepared threat to Ireland's digital lifelines. Recent incidents — threats over Greenland, the US seizure of a Russian-registered tanker after encroaching on Irish waters, and the severing of telecoms cables in the Baltic — reveal how geopolitical actions and targeted attacks can expose infrastructure weaknesses. The country's connectivity depends on fragile submarine telecoms cables. Most global data (about 95%) transits these seabed cables, concentrating enormous strategic value and vulnerability in a physical network on the ocean floor. Defensive, monitoring, and contingency measures remain insufficient to mitigate damage from deliberate or accidental cable disruption.
Read at Independent
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]