Page 12: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2022)

EYE ON THE NAVY

Subsea infrastructure security

Overseas Communications

Depend on Subsea Cables

By Edward Lundquist popular misconception is that when we make a call 1800s. Laid in the 1850s, the ? rst underwater telegraph cables or send and email or text to someone overseas that didn’t last long; in fact, it was a matter of weeks before they our message instantaneously shoots up into space broke apart. But that was a mere technical obstacle. Better

A and bounces of a satellite, then comes back down insulation — namely India rubber and gutta percha — pro- precisely to the person we are communicating with. The mi- tected the lines. raculous and instantaneous part of all that is true. But that By 1874, the transatlantic cable stretched from France to overseas call is a misnomer. Because the vast majority of in- Cape Cod. In 1883, news of the eruption of the Krakatoa vol- ternational telecommunications — 99 percent — is carried by cano in Indonesia was being followed in near real-time all over cables under the sea. Let that statistic sink in. More precisely, Europe. By the turn of the century, the cable from Orleans, it should be referred to as an underseas call. Mass., to Brest, France was the longest in the world. Data

Underwater cables connecting continents are not new. Tele- could travel in both directions, and ? nanciers could watch graph wires had already connected the country in the mid- what was happening in markets around the globe. About this

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