Un cable viaja 15.500 millas a lo largo del lecho marino, conectando Hong Kong con Marsella. A medida que serpentea a trav\u00e9s del Mar de China Meridional y hacia Europa, el cable brinda conectividad a m\u00e1s de una docena de pa\u00edses, desde India hasta Grecia. Cuando se cort\u00f3 el cable el 7 de junio , millones de personas quedaron desconectadas y se enfrentaron a apagones temporales de Internet. El cable, tambi\u00e9n conocido como AAE-1, se cort\u00f3 donde pasa brevemente por tierra a trav\u00e9s de Egipto, y muestra una vulnerabilidad de la red Internet.<\/p>\n
THE ASIA-AFRICA-EUROPE-1 INTERNET<\/span>\u00a0cable travels 15,500 miles along the seafloor, connecting Hong Kong to Marseille, France. As it snakes through the South China Sea and toward Europe, the cable helps provide internet connections to more than a dozen countries, from India to Greece. When the cable was\u00a0cut on June 7<\/a>, millions of people were plunged offline and faced temporary internet blackouts.<\/p>\n The cable, also known as AAE-1, was severed where it briefly passes across land through Egypt. One other cable was also damaged in the incident, with the cause of the damage unknown. However, the impact was immediate. \u201cIt affected about seven countries and a number of over-the-top services,\u201d says Rosalind Thomas, the managing director of SAEx International Management, which plans to create a new undersea cable connecting Africa, Asia, and the US. \u201cThe worst was Ethiopia, that lost 90 percent of its connectivity, and Somalia thereafter also 85 percent.\u201d Cloud services belonging to\u00a0Google<\/a>, Amazon, and Microsoft were all also disrupted,\u00a0subsequent analysis<\/a>\u00a0revealed<\/a>.<\/p>\n While connectivity was restored in a few hours, the disruption highlights the fragility of the world\u2019s 550-plus subsea internet cables, plus the outsized role Egypt and the nearby Red Sea have in the internet\u2019s infrastructure. The global network of underwater cables forms a large part of the internet\u2019s backbone, carrying the majority of data around the world and eventually linking up to the networks that power cell towers and Wi-Fi connections. Subsea cables connect New York to London and Australia to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Sixteen of these submarine cables\u2014which are often no thicker than a hosepipe and are vulnerable to damage from ships\u2019 anchors and earthquakes\u2014pass 1,200 miles through the Red Sea before they hop over land in Egypt and get to the Mediterranean Sea, connecting Europe to Asia. The last two decades have seen the route emerge as one of the world\u2019s largest internet chokepoints and, arguably, the internet\u2019s most vulnerable place on Earth. (The region, which also includes the Suez Canal, is also a global choke point for shipping and the movement of goods. Chaos ensued when the\u00a0container ship\u00a0Ever Given<\/em>\u00a0got wedged in the canal in 2021<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u201cWhere there are chokepoints, there are single points of failure,\u201d Nicole Starosielski, an associate professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University and an author on submarine cables. \u201cBecause it’s a site of intense concentration of global movement, that does make it more vulnerable than many places around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n The area has also recently gained attention from the European Parliament,\u00a0which in a June report<\/a>\u00a0highlighted it as a risk for widespread internet disruption. \u201cThe most vital bottleneck for the EU concerns the passage between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean via the Red Sea because the core connectivity to Asia runs via this route,\u201d the report says, flagging extremism and maritime terrorism are risks in the area.<\/p>\n It has been estimated that around\u00a017 percent of the world\u2019s internet traffic<\/a>\u00a0travels along these cables and passes through Egypt. Alan Mauldin, the research director of telecoms market research firm TeleGeography, says last year the region had 178 terabits of capacity, or 178,000,000 Mbps\u2014the\u00a0US has median home internet speeds<\/a>\u00a0of 167 Mbps.<\/p>\n Egypt has become one of the internet\u2019s most prominent chokepoints for a few reasons, says Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at monitoring firm Kentik. Primarily, its geography contributes to the concentration of cables in the area. Passing through the Red Sea and across Egypt is the shortest (mostly) underwater route between Asia and Europe. While some intercontinental internet cables travel across land<\/a>, it is generally safer for them to be placed at the bottom of the sea where it is harder for them to be disrupted or snooped upon.<\/p>\n Going through Egypt is one of the only practical routes available. To the south, cables that pass around Africa are longer; while to the north, only one cable (the\u00a0Polar Express<\/a>) travels above Russia. \u201cEvery time someone tries to draw up an alternative route, you end up going through Syria or Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan\u2014all these places have a lot of issues,\u201d Madory says. The JADI cable system that bypassed Egypt was shut down due to Syria\u2019s civil war, Madory says, and it has not been reactivated. In March this year, another cable avoiding Egypt was\u00a0severed as a consequence<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Russia\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0full-scale invasion of\u00a0Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n Disruption also happens around the Red Sea itself. \u201cThe Red Sea is a fairly shallow body of water, and there’s been historically a lot of cable cuts there as a result,\u201d Madory says. In 2013, the Egyptian navy arrested three people who were allegedly cutting internet cables in the region<\/a>. Other nearby cables also faced outages\u00a0in the same year<\/a>. The region isn\u2019t the only cable choke point around the world. The UK, Singapore, and France are all key internet connection points, with the Strait of Malacca, near Singapore, being another chokepoint. \u201cThe Malacca Strait is also a problem area, but I don’t think it’s as bad as Egypt,\u201d SAEx\u2019s Thomas says.<\/p>\n Mauldin says the Egyptian region can be considered a single point of failure due to the number of cables in one place. However, there are reasons beyond costs to have multiple cables pass through the Red Sea. \u201cThere are values in concentration because you want networks to connect to each other,\u201d Mauldin says. \u201cAt the same time, you have to balance that with the need to have diversity [in routes].\u201d<\/p>\n When the submarine cables appear above land, at the very north of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez, Telecom Egypt, the country\u2019s main internet provider, is involved. The company charges cable owners for running cables across the country. The cables travel across land among multiple different routes\u2014and do not go in the Suez Canal\u2014so there is\u00a0variation in how they are spread out<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt gives Egypt a lot of power in terms of telecommunications negotiations,\u201d Starosielski says. A recent report from\u00a0Data Center Dynamics<\/a>, which covers Egypt\u2019s \u201cstranglehold\u201d on the submarine cable industry, cites unnamed industry sources who claim Telecom Egypt charges \u201cextortionate\u201d fees for its services. (Neither Telecom Egypt, Egypt\u2019s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, nor the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority replied to WIRED\u2019s request for comment.)<\/p>\n Despite the dangers, the internet is built on resilience. It isn\u2019t easy to take down large parts of the internet. Companies that send data through subsea internet cables don\u2019t just use one cable and will have space on multiple cables. If one cable fails, traffic is eventually rerouted through others. (In some areas, such as Tonga, where there is only one cable,\u00a0cuts can have devastating impacts<\/a>.) The need for redundancy is why Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have been spending\u00a0hundreds of millions on their own subsea internet cables in recent years<\/a>.<\/p>\n When it comes to Egypt and the Red Sea, there are limited options, and more cables are often the answer. While Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink has popularized satellite internet, this kind of system doesn\u2019t offer a replacement for underwater cables. Satellites are used for providing connectivity in rural locations or as emergency backups, but they can\u2019t replace physical infrastructure entirely. \u201cThey aren’t going to handle carrying hundreds of terabits between continents. That’s only cables,\u201d Mauldin says. (Satellite systems also rely on wired connections to connect to the internet.)<\/p>\n That\u2019s all the more reason to further protect routes around Egypt. Mauldin says extra landing sites are being built along Egypt\u2019s shore, such as at\u00a0Ras Ghareb<\/a>, to allow cables to dock in different locations. Egyptian telecom authorities are also\u00a0building a new land-based route for cables alongside the Suez Canal<\/a>\u2014it is believed cables will be housed in concrete ducts to protect them.<\/p>\n However, the biggest effort to bypass Egypt comes from Google. In July 2021, the company announced it is creating the\u00a0Blue-Raman subsea cable<\/a>\u00a0that will connect India to France. The cable travels through the Red Sea, but instead of crossing land in Egypt, it reaches the Mediterranean via Israel. Google did not respond to a request for an interview, but the cable likely comes with its own geopolitical challenges. Google has split the cable into two separate projects: Blue runs through Israel and into Europe, while Raman connects to Saudi Arabia before passing along to India. (Israel and Saudi Arabia have a\u00a0complex relationship<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Mauldin says the new route, which is expected to be ready in 2024, is likely to set a precedent for more cables to travel through Israel over time. Once one cable is built, others will come. \u201cIt’s hard to turn a proposal or just a good idea into a reality,\u201d Madory adds. \u201cUnless you’re Google and you have limitless funds to do these things.\u201d<\/p>\n