China unveils a powerful deep-sea cable cutter that could reset the world order
China unveils a powerful deep-sea cable cutter that could reset the world order
Beijing now has the power to disrupt global communications after scientists revealed a device that can sever undersea cables.
The tool, which is able to cut lines at depths of up to 4,000 metres (13,123 feet) – twice the maximum operational range of existing subsea communication infrastructure – has been designed specifically for integration with China’s advanced crewed and uncrewed submersibles like the Fendouzhe, or Striver, and the Haidou series.
I mean, no? Ok let's say you did cut off the internet, there's still radio. Shortwave still can reach spies in foreign countries with their numbers stations now, and then there's VHF/UHF at home etc. Snail mail still exists, so does ol' fashioned landlines for communication at least internally even if they cut undersea telcom cables, hell I'm pretty sure CDMA would still be running, this sets us back to like 1990 at most, especially if we take this threat seriously and start implementing non-internet based (or sat internet) fallbacks just in case standard comms go down for a while until a new cable can be lain.
Like don't get me wrong, we'd definitely feel the effects, but this isn't some kind of world dominating shit we're talking about here, it's just pretty inconvenient, especially if we already have alts in place as fallbacks so we don't have to scramble to set them up.
The knock on effects of substantial infrastructure interruptions like this can have massive impacts that snowball aggressively. Not saying you’re wrong, but it is nothing to scoff at. Things like this do have the potential to severely change the geopolitical landscape.
I'm not saying it's nothing, just saying I think it's massively overstated.
Cool
So for every European deep sea cable cut it should send a fleet of Russian and Chinese ships to the bottom, torpedo the fuckers. Just by default presume it was either of them and make then responsible for the safety of our cables. If you fail to protect our cables, we'll send your ships to the next life.
Gloves. Off.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Me resetting the world order:
I can have 2 million of these tomorrow! Who's biting?
Coming soon to vague shell corporation owned fishing boats to the shore of the Baltic and Northern seas!
Sponsored by China and Russia
If only cables can be designed to pull down ships that try to cut or anchor drag them. Maybe defensive cable around the main cable. Or some kind bigger of casing/shell around actual cable.
That's not how reality works... You can't make the cable pull down the ship. And even if you could they'd just lose the anchor
No shit, lol. Those cunts have been cutting cables for almost a year now. This is why countries tend to hide the exact locations of cables. Shit is expensive.
Powerful seems like a pointless adjective here.
It doesn't take much power to destroy a cable. Did they invent a really long, and powerful, chain with a powerful anchor on it only usable by a boat with powerful electric winch?
Maybe they put AI in it too, for extra power of course
Oh you mean the AI Pro Power Winch 9000? Available at a genocidal dictatorship near you for 3 easy payments of 19.99B USD.
"That could reset the world order"
Lmao, what hyperbolic bullshit. It's just a cable cutter. Most nations have shit like this, but thanks for letting us know in the title this is just Chinese propaganda.
If I had that type of technology I would not advertise it
A doomsday device is useless if no one knows you have it.
"why didn't you tell the world, eh?"
For me it's quite the opposite. It's all about power projection in the grand scheme of things.
Reset the world order by sending everybody including China back to stone age right? That’d be fun.
Well, everybody except people hooked up to Starlink and other satellite based internet
You realize that data comes from the same place, right?
That country fucking sucks ass.
It's give and take. China is smart enough to invest in its country and its people. They're making great scientific and technical advances that's on a course that will surpass the west in many areas. The individual rights and freedoms are terrible though to the point where unsanctioned creativity is punished.
The whole country is dystopian. But agree there are smart people. They are just used for doing/inventing awful stuff.
They are playing the long game and are currently the only ones benefiting from all that happens. They sit by idly watching our idiot leaders antagonise each other.
they're also experimenting with dogfighting satellites
That seems less concerning to me after reading the article.
Russia and the US are also known to conduct proximity operations to their own and other satellites, she added.
[…]
Referring to China’s operations as “dogfighting” in space is “not helpful” because it “automatically ascribes hostile intentions to activities that frankly the US also undertakes,” Samson added.It’s concerning that they are developing the capability (which can be used in multiple ways) in the same way that any geopolitical rival developing capacity that competes is concerning, but “dogfighting” evokes the idea that China is planning to fly around and blow stuff up, in an irresponsible, Kessler syndrome-inducing way.
china is pretty cool.
xi has been a harmful influence.
I disagree. China is a scary place with face recognition and all that shit. I wouldn’t ever travel there. If my job sent me there, I would rather quit than travel to china.
Fuck china. Also Chinese culture in general is pretty unappealing to me, who is used to a free life without all these stupid and arbitrary „rules“ like having to be married or else you’re worthless and all that crap.
Also their factories have grids in front of windows so workers can’t kill themselves by jumping out. Tells me all I need to know.
I hate the whole thing, not just the government.
But please note that I do not blanket hate all Chinese people though.
Let me guess, they already tested it
Please, do it
no don't
This could have been a The Onion title
...as reported by the South China Morning Post lol
Historically they were a solid paper, based out of Hong Kong. It’s a toss up these days though, not sure.
let's hope it's bs
They already do it by simply dragging boat anchors across, it's obviously going to be weaponized further. There have multiple data and power cables cut like this in the Baltic sea recently. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/30/europe/baltic-sea-cable-anchor-drag-russia-intl-latam/index.html
SATCOM here we come!
Don’t worry, they’re working on satellite warfare too. Kessler syndrome, here we come
Working on the thing we've had for half a century? Improving sure but thaad and kenetic kill devices have been around forever like South Korea just showed video of their testing which means it's almost certainly last gen and the new Gen is deployed.
I sincerely hope they’re smart enough not to trigger that.
Someone posted an article elsewhere on the thread about China practicing “dogfighting” in space - which, after you remove the fear-mongering, is just them figuring out how to do satellite-satellite maneuvering. Still immense opportunity for runaway collisions, but it seems like the military applicability is more toward sabotage than blowing things up. I could definitely see a scenario where high value satellites have had small boosters affixed to them, their electronics tampered, or some other way of commandeering or de-orbiting them to deprive their owners of them. A microwave + laser could disable smaller sats from above, then ablate some of their exterior to sap momentum so gravity drops them in short order. (Maybe. That’s idle speculation, but generating the power and dissipating the heat in space could make that idea impossible.)
Weird way to pronounce starlink, since it seems that’s what they’re hoping for. Privatizing the government
Seriously.. Anything but Starlink
Fucker McGucker, this is evil
Operational depth is essentially the same as the claimed operational depth that oceangate sub that popped the other year. I have a lot more confidence that these things will actually work when China does it instead of some incompetent millionaire/billionaire.