I would say that there are two ways to reach the “digital apocalypse” right now; I understand it as a generalized “blackout” that leaves us all without internet and shakes the economy of half the world. The first and most distant of these would be the one produced by our favorite star in the form of a massive solar flare. The second and perhaps not so distant is that someone literally “cuts” the wires. Actually, Russia made the threat a few weeks ago. And this is not the first time.

Turn off the network. This happened in June, when the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, issued the following statement via Telegram: “If we start from the proven complicity of Western countries in the explosion of the Nord Stream, then we have no restrictions – to prevent us from destroying the wired communications of our enemies on the ocean floor.

The context for this thinly veiled warning came after the notorious Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which carries gas from Russia to Germany, was ruptured. Russian authorities apparently quickly identified the perpetrators and accused the West of involvement. Later reports suggested that Ukraine was indeed behind the attack, but Medvedev’s words once again brought to the table a situation that was as unusual as it was frightening. Could all the network cables to the West be cut? The next question then almost went hand in hand: what would happen?

A veiled decade. The truth is, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard of something like this. Last year, an investigation came to light that showed Russia had been investigating offshore wind farms, gas pipelines and underwater cable networks between the Baltic and North Seas for at least a decade. Because? According to the investigation, the mapping is part of a Russian military program aimed at planning the sabotage of these facilities in the event of a conflict with NATO.

The “wires” of the Internet. In a hypothetical situation where a country is trying to torpedo several countries, looking for a cable at the bottom of the sea is not a trivial thing. This is because the people responsible for your home internet still have more than 1,000 million meters of underwater cables that different companies have laid to carry data between continents since 1866. Yes, satellite communication seems very modern, but since the advent of fiber optics, cables have begun to gain the upper hand and today are responsible for 95% of international data transmission.

The installation process is always more or less the same: as ships slowly cross the sea, the cables are unrolled until they rest on the bottom. One modified cable (now more impact resistant), a 17-millimeter-wide white cable for deep areas, and another black cable, protected by steel and designed for areas closest to shore.

An underwater “highway.” Capable of transmitting at 3,840 gigabits per second on each fiber optic cable, there are simply two major “sections” of how these cables are organized. The first major highway is located across the Atlantic, connecting Europe and North America, starting in various places on the East Coast of the United States and reaching mostly to the west of the United Kingdom.

The second major highway is in the Pacific and connects the United States to many Asian countries such as Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea. However, we are talking about sections and highways that do not stop growing, connecting more and better parts and geographical areas of the planet. That is why they are so important and why the threat from Russia reignites the debate.

What happens if the fiber is “cut”? A month ago, the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned that the undersea fiber-optic cable network that transfers data between continents was actually vulnerable to hostile forces. A few weeks ago, NATO intelligence chief David Cattler warned that Russia might plan to attack the cables in retaliation for the West’s support for Ukraine in the war.

Experts say if cables were severely damaged or rendered unusable, large swaths of the internet services that most economies depend on, including phone calls, financial transactions or streaming, would be taken for granted.

Signs. We told you a few months ago. Since the end of last year, the GPS interference detected in the Baltic Sea has not gone away. It affects everything from Estonia to Sweden, passing through Poland and Germany. The website GPSjam.org allows you to easily view the interference in GPS telecommunications, and it seems clear that the entire region is seriously affected. Investigations have pointed to Russia, and if it affects commercial flights, things could get even worse.

NATO made the news last June after intensifying air patrols off the Irish coast amid concerns about Russian submarine activity, according to The Times.

“Almost” war. This and other alleged Russian attacks on GPS technology (it has also been accused of interfering with GPS navigation systems on commercial airline routes, affecting flights from Helsinki to Tartu, Estonia) are part of Russia’s “grey zone” campaign against the West, according to international security expert Melanie Garson of University College London.

What the expert meant was that it involved covert actions that fell slightly below the threshold for open war, meaning they were “nerve-wracking” but not enough to trigger a more serious conflict. “As our reliance on connectivity and spatial data for everything from agriculture to food distribution increases, disrupting national and economic security through undersea cables and GPS interference is becoming increasingly effective,” Garson said.

Without GPS and Internet. So the damage that could be done by interfering with undersea cables or GPS systems has such a long horizon that the systems that keep the world moving would practically collapse if they stopped working. That’s why, in June, Foreign Policy magazine reported that NATO was taking more steps to protect undersea cables and had set up a system that would automatically alert to attempts to intervene.

Robert Dover, professor of international security at the University of Hull, noted that with GPS, the satellites that transmit its data are generally not protected against attempts to intercept, while the task of protecting undersea cables usually falls to the private companies that own and maintain them.

That’s why he thinks it’s “important to visualize these strategic futures and have a clear resilience plan that takes into account potential systemic risk and keeps countries operational if key communications infrastructure is compromised.”

Make arrangements before you regret it. In fact, in its report this month, CSIS called on the United States to increase international cooperation for a coordinated response to a possible attack on the cables. Essentially, one problem that needs to be solved before any attempt to “cut” the cables: the cumbersome legal framework in the event of sabotage, “because it is complex and fragmented, with different international legal regimes determining liability and punishment.”

The expert concludes: Interestingly, as is now typical, “when cables are sabotaged in international waters, there is no regime that can force the perpetrators to account.” a weakness.

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