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Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

cnn.com

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Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#351

Post by Hizonner »

sofixa wrote: post #233
zelon88 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once things get back online. That would be like trying to cold start a power plant without any power. I think you're missing my point. I'm trying to point out that there are 3 "infrastructure providers" that our economy CANNOT live without. In a world war situation, these 3 organizations are going to be the biggest targets. They are literally our crown jewels. They will be under continuous attack from all angles. A…

> If WW3 starts, we will lose Azure, AWS, and GCP within 5 days and it will be more or less completely destroyed within 30 days. They won't survive concerted attacks from nation state actors during war time. The same probably applies to moist mainstream (public) datacenters. Only ones that will be safe-ish would be something like Scaleway's underground nuclear bunker/datacenter.

What a moist data center might look like: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/5uvvnrHCuRmzZzyLZUQXNU-970...

Actually seems like a hardish target.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#352

Post by Aloisius »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #273
zelon88 wrote: post #76

It's just practice. Locate the cables, establish a means of damaging them, deploy the means as a test and a show of force. The western economy is almost completely built using off-prem in Cloud PaaS environments. It should be pretty fun when WW3 starts and not a single hospital, school, laboratory, or factory can operate.

> It should be pretty fun when WW3 starts ... Which may happen as some people just got Biden to authorize (honestly I don't think he can do that by himself), without congress approval, the use of long range missiles by Ukraine. Some people are really hard at work trying to start WWIII. I don't think it's the russian who severed those cables. Russia knows that if WWIII doesn't start until a few more weeks, Trump is pr…

> honestly I don't think he can do that by himself

Why not? They're not restrictions instituted by Congress. They were restrictions instituted by this and previous Presidents.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#353

Post by aguaviva »

paganel wrote: post #282
azeirah wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The Russian oligarchs have no say in any of this, they never have, people in the West still repeating this mantra almost 3 years since the war in Ukraine has started for good is a big part of the reason why the same West is close to military defeat there, they just refuse to acknowledge how Russia really operates.

The "never have" part certainly isn't true.

For a certain period of time, they definitely had significant influence.

They just refuse to acknowledge how Russia really operates.

By and large they have, actually, which is why one seldom hears the "oligarchs" mantra these days.

In other words -- though you're correct in response to the flagged commment, in the bigger-picture sense, you're railing against a straw man.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#354

Post by lenerdenator »

euroderf wrote: post #73

So what's the solution ? Assign a surveillance UAV to every Russian ship parked "without a good reason" over a cable ? It would be expensive, but doable, and create a reserve of vehicles for wartime use.

Make them pay dearly every time there's even reasonable suspicion that Russia has messed with Western/NATO technological infrastructure.

That we still have oligarchs and bratva members walking around on NATO soil in the open this far into things is insane.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#355

Post by faizmokh »

rightbyte wrote: post #46
mikeyouse wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, some would rather let criminal governments invade sovereign countries, commit acts of global sabotage and murder dissidents all over the world rather than take any action at all to dissuade them. Peace through appeasement is likely to work as well as it has at any other point in history.

Are you referring to the US or Russia here? Hard to tell when you talk in riddles.

Not gonna lie. I thought of US first instead of Russia.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#356

Post by inpdx »

dxdenton wrote: post #348
IncreasePosts wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already been settled that the trump dossier from 2016 was a work of fiction. Why did Putin take crimea under Obama's watch, parts of Ukraine under Biden's watch, but then not make any huge moves like those while his "asset" was in the white house?

[flagged]

If you believe otherwise...you aggressively haven't been paying attention for the last 8 years.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#357

Post by aguaviva »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #337
HumblyTossed wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" won't respond because "we" just elected a Russian asset and he is going to install more in his cabinet.

It's already been settled that the trump dossier from 2016 was a work of fiction. Why did Putin take crimea under Obama's watch, parts of Ukraine under Biden's watch, but then not make any huge moves like those while his "asset" was in the white house?

Because he needed all that time (2014-2022) to build up his forces and cash reserves.

Also, he needed a green light. Which was provided in the form of the chaotic Afghanistan pullout in 2021. Not that he was counting on it -- but once it went through, it seems very likely that tipped the scales in his mind in favor of deciding to actually go through with the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#358

Post by willy_k »

lxgr wrote: post #88
whythre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do these nations not have navies? Can’t they tell the Russian non-combat ships (or pressure them) to get lost?

> Can’t they tell the Russian non-combat ships (or pressure them) to get lost? Not in international waters, which is where submarine cables are largely located. And even if they could: The oceans are... kind of big. If it were that easy to "just patrol" shipping lanes/submarine cable tracks etc., why would piracy still be a concern?

Would relatively cheap AI-piloted satellite connected ships with sensor equipment work as a solution?

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#359

Post by csomar »

tptacek wrote: post #343
csomar wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No we do not. Saying it with "confidence" and "authority" doesn't make true either.

Sure we do. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/11/...

The same article you link only quote "speculation" on the role of Ukraine. There is no detailed evidence of the people involved (and if some certain other agencies are involved in this).

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#360

Post by Aloisius »

Etheryte wrote: post #242
staplung wrote: post #63

It's worth mentioning that cable breakages happen quite often; globally about 200 times per year [1] and the article itself mentions that just last year, two other cables and a gas pipeline were taken out by an anchor. The Gulf of Finland is evidently quite shallow. From what I understand, cable repair ships are likely to use ROVs for parts of repair jobs but only when the water is shallow so hopefully they can figur…

This is a misleading framing. The two cables last year were not taken out by an anchor as an accident, it was literally a ship putting down its anchor just before the cable and then dragging it over the cable. In other words, sabotage. There's no point in trying to color any of this with rose tinted glasses when it's clear who's done it and why.

> it was literally a ship putting down its anchor just before the cable and then dragging it over the cable

I don't understand. That's how I'd expect most accidents to happen. Someone decides to anchor too close to an undersea cable, the anchor fails to hold and the drifting ship drags the anchor over the cable damaging it.

I'm not saying it wasn't sabotage, but there needs to be something a bit more than that.

Source: have dragged anchors - thankfully never near undersea cables

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