

Something mighty strange going on here - Fourth cable cut in Mideast - edw519
http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=525

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TheTarquin
While it does bear some consideration I think that some of the first acts of
aggression in both world wars were attacks against underwater telegraph
cabling, I'd be a little hesitant to jump to conclusions too quickly. There
are a number of reasons why and how suchs cables could be taken offline.
Sosuke mentioned one in particular: power issues. One of the first
transatlantic telegraph cables was fried when the first operators, thinking it
would take tons of power to "push" a signal all the way across the Atlantic,
fried the cable and much of the equipment on the far end. While these aren't
telegraph cables, the principle is the same. They may well have been taken
offline because of recurrent power issues at one end or the other.

Then again this maybe a prelude to another country in the Middle East getting
pummeled. IMO, it's hard to say at this point.

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sosuke
I read (Slashdot): "A commenter notes that despite the language in the article
indicated a break or malfunction, the cable wasn't cut. It was taken offline
due to power issues."

<http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/02/04/0158249.shtml>

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johnrob
I wonder if the bottom of the ocean would be a good place for a datacenter,
networked directly to those cables. There would be ample opportunities for
power generation and cooling.

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Alex3917
I'm not sure about underwater, but one way to save lots of money on a
datacenter would be to build it on the shore next to a deep body of water and
a massive bandwidth supply. That way you can chill the datacenter using Lake
Source Cooling, which cuts power consumption by ~80%. If you're ever in Ithaca
there is a huge LSC plant on Cayuga Lake that's insanely cool to walk around
in.

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Alex3917
And the new moon is February 7th. (The most preferable night to start a
stealth bombing campaign.)

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noonespecial
My guess is the NSA. They finally think they're able to tap fiber and like
fools are running around willy nilly splicing in taps to undersea cables in
that area in order to stop the tur-ists.

Should we quietly do them one at a time so no one will notice? Heck no, then
the tur-ists would win!

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nickb
Another pointless war's coming. :(

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yters
How would cut cables affect things? Merely stopping the rest of the world from
knowing what's going on?

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nickb
You disrupt communication. One of the first casualties of war is truth. You
want to prevent it getting out.

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neilc
So you are predicting a war before the cables are repaired? That seems rather
far-fetched, to say the least.

I think it is far more likely that this is just a coincidence.

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rms
It's too many to be a coincidence. I don't think a war is coming, I think it
is much more likely this was a test for the CIA or whoever to see if they
could actually cut this many cables if they ever needed to. Or the CIA will
repair the cable in such a way to let them monitor communications.

~~~
neilc
If the intent was to monitor communications, why would they cut multiple
cables simultaneously? That only draws more attention.

I don't buy the "test to see if they could actually cut this many cables
simultaneously" idea. Cutting cables is not fundamentally difficult -- they
are not even armored below a certain depth. It would also be a very expensive,
complicated, and potentially embarrassing test.

~~~
rms
I guess I'm too paranoid to buy "coincidence" even if there doesn't appear to
be any other truly logical explanation.

