Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. Most of us probably don't realize it, but much of the infrastructure that makes the Internet possible lies on the bottom of the world's oceans, in the form of vast networks of fiber optic cables that transmit data between countries. Despite the vital role that these cables playing global communications, they're largely unguarded because of their location underwater.
That vulnerability has made some headlines thanks to warnings that Russia might sabotage the cables and disrupt connections between the US and Europe. The head of the British Defense Establishment and chairman of NATO's Military Committee, Air Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, recently warned that cutting the cables quote would immediately and
catastrophically fracture both international trade and the Internet. According to The Guardian, peaches warning echoed the conclusions of report written by UK Member of Parliament Rishi Sunac, which described the potential for disruption of Internet traffic as an x estential threat. Sunak noted that the cables, which are largely owned and operated by private companies, transmit ten trillion dollars worth of
financial transfers every day. It's not the first time that an alarm has been sounded about the undersea cable networks. Report written for the U. S. Department of Homeland Security describes the effects of a two thousand eight instant in which three cables in the Mediterranean which connected Italy to Egypt were severed, apparently accidentally by commercial ships dragging their anchors of the Internet. Connectivity between Europe and Middle East
was temporarily lost. As a result, most of the U. S. Air Forces drone aircraft in Iraq were grounded due to the lack of a reliable connection to technicians back in the United States. The report warned cable breaks halfway across the world threaten US vital national security interests. In The New York Times reported that a Russian spy ship was kept under surveillance by US planes, satellites and ships as it cruised slowly down the U s. East Coast close
to Internet cables. The Russian ship reportedly was equipped with two miniature submarines capable of going into deep water to cut cables. Another Russian surveillance ship was spotted off the coast of Delaware in February, according to the Christian Science Monitor. But before you get too caught up in a nightmare scenario of the Internet suddenly going dark due to sabotage, experts say that the system, despite its lack of defenses, is resilient and would be difficult for an enemy nation
or terrorist group to disable. The fiber cables that transmit the world's data are surprisingly slim, measuring less than zero point seven inches or about seventeen millimeters in thickness, according to Keith Showfield, general manager of the Internet Cable Protection Committee, a British based industry group. But the fiber is encased in a hermetically sealed tube, which is in turn surrounded by layers of high tensile steel wires, copper, and polyethylene.
For sections in shallower water, where cables are more likely to encounter ship anchors and other man made hazards, additional layers of armor are sometimes added, or else cables are buried under the sea, beat Showfield told as in an email. As a result, cables are damaged worldwide only about two hundred times a year, which, as he said, is a tiny failure rate across a network of well over a million kilometers. That's six twenty one thousand miles of cable
linking people between continents. We also spoke with Jim Hayes, president of the Fiber Optic Association, a California based professional society that certifies cable network builders and operators, in a telephone interview. He said that it would be difficult to cut cables in the deep ocean, though a robotic submarine equipped with the right tools could pull it off. The cable networks are more vulnerable closer to land, where their
connections are in shallower water and easier to reach. It wouldn't take a lot of sophisticated weapons or know how to inflict the desired damage, he explained. If you want to interrupt communications, you hire a crappy old fishing trawler, give them a big anchor, and tell them to drag it here. Attacking a cable landing probably wouldn't cause much disruption in the US and other technologically advanced countries in Europe and East Asia, where there are a multitude of
other connections that would keep the data flowing. Hayes said, they might slow down the Internet in New York City, but they're not going to disrupt it. There are other routes that get to the same place. They can just as easily go west around the world as go east. The Internet works that way, but he said that sabotage could cause outages in a region such as the Middle East where relatively few cables are bunched in places such
as the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz. Africa, where long stretches of the continent's coast are dependent on one or two cables, also has higher vulnerability. Nicole star Celeski, an assistant professor of Media culture and Communication at New York University and author of the book The Undersea Network, explained in an email, Yes, you could disrupt the Internet for a lengthy period, but only with certain attacks in
certain places and others traffic could be easily rerouted. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Keiger and produced by Tristan McNeil. For more on this and lots of other tubular topics, visit our home planet, How Stuff Works dot com.