The world could be a nicer place to live in for everyone if we used our, supposedly, intelligent big brains for mutual benefit. But instead the sociopaths, a minority who only care about themselves, act to disrupt others to persue aims to get themselves more than they need - even to give themselves a luxurious lifestyle.

The really harmful ones are those that get into top political positions. I could name them but some one my list would upset some people.

Agree on your post title, however, ...

> The really harmful ones are those that get into top political positions

No, the _really_ harmful ones allow themselves to be manipulated into voting psychopaths and sociopaths into power, while they still have a mostly functioning voting system.

Both Putin and Trump have in fact been elected in their first 2 elections. After Putin's 2nd term is was pretty much game over for any form of meaningful democracy in Russia.

Will be interesting to see if the US will be able to avoid a "King Trump"

That become billionaires....

Then they just buy the politicians...

Why would Russia even bother with such a move? It's not exactly in the same league as the NordStream 2 pipeline, is it? It's frankly utterly inconsequential. Number of people killed, frozen, starved, burned, or irradiated to death: zero.

Maybe your pron or cat video takes a bit longer to download. Number of shits given: zero.

I rather think Russia have bigger fish to fry elsewhere at the moment.

In the stock market milliseconds can be the difference between making and losing millions. Knocking out this fiber could add those milliseconds to someone's link.

Or maybe a significant communication is delayed. Can't think why that might be a problem for two countries that have direct land borders with Russia. (See icon)

If they're using an undersea internet cable for that sort of stuff then their problem isn't Russia, or the undersea cable. Their problem is they're bloody stupid.

Why would Russia even bother with such a move? It's not exactly in the same league as the NordStream 2 pipeline, is it? It's frankly utterly inconsequential. Number of people killed, frozen, starved, burned, or irradiated to death: zero.

Don't ask silly questions like that, or why Russia would sabotage their own pipeline. But it's become fashionable to jump to conclusions and try and blame the usual suspect. Fortunately the Baltic is heavily surveilled, so once the breaks have been localised, it should be easy to identify any ships that were in the area. Then it'll probably just be another anchor drag event, although it might still be possible to blame a Russian ship given they still have access to the 'NATO lake' as some mad politicians prefer to call it.

Weak, very weak.

Two broken cables in the same area and in the same 24 hours doesn't happen by chance.

Two broken cables in the same area and in the same 24 hours doesn't happen by chance.

It can. Not seen anything showing exactly where the cuts happened, but it's possible it happened close to where they cross. One multiple outage I was involved in happened off the Suez Canal. Multiple systems used that route, the canal was closed, so a lot of ships were anchoring & waiting to transit.. Cue anchor drags, multiple cables affected and a lot of Internet customers lost their transit as well. Natural events can do this as well, eg "Hey, our cable to Japan has moved!" "That's ok, so has the island." Shame that one's mostly remembered for the 'Fukushima nuclear disaster', not a massive quake that moved an island and forced a lot of map updates.

ps.. what is it with El Reg and conspiracy theorists these days?

No one is denying that accidents, and natural disasters (a vulcano cut Tonga off for a couple of weeks last year) do happen, but that also does not mean this wasn't sabotage.

All the Baltic and North Sea countries have reported an increase in Russian "scientific" ships close to important infrastructure over the last couple of years and, the aim of terrorism is to inspire terror, including of fairly mild attacks. This means more costs for repairs, surveillance, coastguards, etc. Cheaper to start banning Russian vessels from our waters.

I suspect Russia's dirty hand in revenge for some spy-type thing thats happened so a bit of for tat...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-ship-escorted-away-from-internet-cables-in-irish-sea

Because they can. A dry run for a bigger quantity of cable cutting (inc maybe power and gas pipes).

Winston Churchill set up Room 101 to read / decode telegraph traffic and then in during WWI the UK cut all the German cables.

Russia is fighting a hybrid war, even before 2014, and it's getting hotter.

A dry run for a bigger quantity of cable cutting (inc maybe power and gas pipes).

That was what I was thinking of

And it acts as a bit of a warning too. Without going nuclear.

And it acts as a bit of a warning too. Without going nuclear yet

FTFY

A phrase I heard on a podcast the other day, which has kind of stuck in my mind..."we are currently in the foothills of World War 3"

It may be inconsequential on its own, but who's to say they're not going to cut some more cables, to the point where it does start to be a problem? Maybe this was a test run, to see what it takes to cut the cable, and evaluate the effects?

[Shrug] Just a quick, dirty, relatively low cost move in a continuing campaign of low grade disruption and destabilisation….

A short time after the US president permits Ukraine to fire missiles into Russian territory, communications cables to NATO's two most recent members are cut.

Nice little military alliance you have there. Shame if anything were to happen to it.

It would not be the first time.

Or an underwater backhoe?

Or an underwater backhoe?

That's pretty much what bottom trawls and anchors do to cables. Vessels shouldn't be working those areas, which is one of those good/bad news things. Cable routes and protection zones should be clearly marked on charts, so vessels should avoid them. If nothing else, the vessel owner can face a large repair bill for the damage caused and restoration work. Bad news is of course they're clearly marked.

It's a fairly common strategy when a marginalized nationstate wants to disrupt the free world's economic activity, to have a 'fishing trawler' or 'containerized cargo ship' do the actual deed. The strategy is simple: Plausible deniability. "We most certainly DID NOT want that to happen. There are always accidents in commercial shipping!"

The strategy is simple: Plausible deniability. "We most certainly DID NOT want that to happen. There are always accidents in commercial shipping!"

Or they could just be accidents. I worked in the submarine cable business, and these things happen. Then again, our 'leaders' have created the situation where these things might to start happening, and happening more frequently. Or cable mainenance vessels do a bit of a Rainbow Warrior. We have a lot of subsea cables we rely on, and not many vessels that can repair them. Plus ever since Nord Stream had it's totally mysterious unplanned outage, our 'leaders' have also been slowly waking up to this vulnerability.. Which was suposed to have included increasing maritime patrols of cable & pipeline routes, and a general increase in surveillance.

But the reality is the cable operators will already know exactly where the cuts occured, because OTDRs are built into pretty much every SLT so the distance to cut(s) would be known within seconds. Then a quick look at AIS data services might show vessels in the area, or a phone call to your friendly coastal state could tell you that, or you could look at companies that provide maritime satellite data.

Or conspiracy theorists could just jump to the conclusion that it was Russia. Cat stuck up a tree? Russia stuck it there. Of course if it were Russia, and it was being a tad hostile, I'd expect a lot more cuts and to a lot more important cables.

ps..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dl4vxw501o

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has said damage to two undersea cables in the Baltic Sea looks like an act of sabotage and a "hybrid action", without knowing who is to blame .

So far, so normal for Germany. Nord Stream go ? Nope, no idea who did that either..

A shark who's trying to increase their daily fibre intake?

With added laser illumination!

Damnit, all those chemicals being dumped into the Baltic means they're evolving faster than expected, and really want their frikken lazor beams.