https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea-deep-repair-ships

Submarine Cable Repairs Underway in South Africa
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/undersea-cable-repairs-south-africa

A clock in South Africa is counting down the seconds until a pair of broken cables are expected to go back in service. Every few hours, the service provider TENET, which keeps South Africa’s university and research facilities connected to the global Internet, tweets updates.

The eight-year-old West Africa Cable System (WACS) submarine cable, which runs parallel to Africa’s west coast, broke at two points early on 16 January. That same day, an 18-year-old cable called SAT-3 that runs along the same route also broke.

Our modern economy could collapse.

Our world’s reliance on the internet has only grown with time.

When a July 2015 undersea tremor triggered a rockslide between the islands of Saipan and Tinian in the Northern Marianas Islands, it cut the only fiber-optic cable connecting the archipelago to the global network. Air traffic control grounded flights, automated teller machines shut down, web and phone connections broke.

One of America’s greatest techno-spy capers of the Cold War involved tapping Soviet Navy communications via a submarine cable in the 1970s and 1980s. Before IVY BELLS ended with its unmasking by Soviet spy Ronald Pelton, its clandestine aquanauts, spy sub and nuclear-powered “bug” made espionage history.

Cut up undersea hydrophone networks and you deafen your adversary. Cut Internet cables and you have the ultimate denial-of-service cyber weapon.

Russia’s controversial intelligence ship Yantar has been operating in the Caribbean, or mid-Atlantic, since October. She is suspected by Western navies of being involved in operations on undersea communications cables. Significantly, she appears to be avoiding broadcasting her position via AIS (Automated Identification System).

Yantar has been observed conducting search patterns in the vicinity of internet cables, and there is circumstantial evidence that she has been responsible for internet outages, for example off the Syrian coast in 2016.

The U.S. and Russian submarines are playing a game of cat and mouse above the undersea cables that carry the world’s telecommunications and Internet data.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-internet-cable-africa-europe

On Monday, a Russian submarine caught fire during a mission, killing 14 sailors on board.

A possible reason for Russia’s caginess? Multiple sources are now claiming the sub was an AS-12 “Losharik,” a nuclear-powered submarine some speculate was designed to cut the undersea cables that deliver internet to the world.

Russian media outlets RBC and Novaya Gazeta have both cited anonymous sources who claim the submarine was a Losharik, and while the sub has been in operation since 2003, Russia has never come out and declared its official purpose.

For years, they’ve warned that Russia has been surveying undersea cables, and experts have called out the Losharik by name as possibly playing a role in future missions to disrupt those cables.

On Monday, a Russian submarine caught fire during a mission, killing 14 sailors on board.

A possible reason for Russia’s caginess? Multiple sources are now claiming the sub was an AS-12 “Losharik,” a nuclear-powered submarine some speculate was designed to cut the undersea cables that deliver internet to the world.

For years, they’ve warned that Russia has been surveying undersea cables, and experts have called out the Losharik by name as possibly playing a role in future missions to disrupt those cables.