Undersea cable disruption: is it a terrorist attack?
This morning I tried to call Citibank NRI center line – which took me to India. It took me 4 attempts to connect and the person on the other side said I was lucky that our conversation did not cut off within 1 minute! The voice quality wavered from minute to minute. The reason for all this was lying many feet below the sea in Middle East! Another terrorism attack? Possibly! Can’t say right now…. but it has all the signs.
Two things:
1. see this picture from guardian below.. and the full length here.
2. Raj points out that it is NOT a terrorist attack but the work of a clumsy ship.
In the last one week, 3 undersea cables have been cut off in Middle East. The third one was a cable 56 km from Dubai between Oman and UAE. The other were near Egypt. The cause has not been known!
This is caused huge disruptions in the internet specifically for the Asian BPOs. This, coming at a time when the stock market is in doldrums shows that if this could be coordinated action of a few gangs around the Mid East seas, the impact on world economy could be unimaginably disastrous! Imagine 10 cables being cut in more than two places in several areas. Can you imagine the disruption? Many of the biggest companies rely on this network for their money transfer, work, voice etc. The economy will be shattered!
Losses from 9-11 attacks will look puny in front of such a bloodless attack!
Many companies have invested in these undersea cables and continue to use these as their preferred choice of communication. Satellite could be another choice for now.. and somehow an insurance againt terrorism … potentially. But even that would not last long before someone takes over a satellite and gets active.
World is becoming smaller. But just as it gets smaller – it is also becoming Bigger through joint working. GE with just the US market and employees cannot grow or do as much as GE worldwide can. Now that is the precise growth that terrorism – educated terrorism threatens!
If the world is unable to manage this threat then it could be possible that world economy’s may hinge on just a flick of a switch. Literally!