Cut cables, closed straits, four majority owners and no rules: The fragile seabed that carries the world's data
95% of world's intercontinental data travels through submarine cables. India sits at the crossroads, yet owns almost none of it.
Before dawn on August 5, 1914, hours after Britain declared war on Germany, a British cable ship, the Alert, slipped out to sea on a secret mission. Her orders were to drag the floor of the English Channel for Germany's five overseas telegraph cables and cut them all. She succeeded.
By morning, Germany's direct links beyond Europe were severed, and Berlin was forced to route its most sensitive messages through wireless and cables under British surveillance. Two and a half years later, Royal Navy codebreakers in Room 40 intercepted one such message: the Zimmermann Telegram, Germany's secret offer to hand the American southwest to Mexico in exchange for an alliance. Its exposure helped pull the United States into the war.
The Alert was no warship – just an ageing civilian...
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