On average about 200 submarine cable damage incidents every year

Essentially all submarine cable damage is accidental not sabotage.  The few cases of intentional attacks is so rare, that folks in the industry know them as part of the stories passed down.

Easy to accuse but takes months to do the forensics.  Insurance claims and lawyers,

On Nov 21, 2024, at 11:10 AM, Daniel Golding <dgolding@gmail.com> wrote:


Intent? This is almost certainly sabotage. I'm unsure why there are such mental gymnastics. Submarine cables are sabotaged periodically. 

Dan

On Thu, Nov 21, 2024 at 11:02 AM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:

The rumours floating around about this being sabotage, with no hard evidence supporting such claims, is pretty wild.

No hard evidence? 

- Marine tracking shows the suspect vessel deviating from normal course, and stopping twice, each time in the area of where each cable was damaged. 
- After the vessel started moving again, each cable went offline shortly after. 
- The Danish navy has stopped the suspect vessel, and is holding it pending investigation. 
- The same country admitted to dragging an anchor hundreds of miles , damaging multiple subsea cables and other infrastructure just 13 months ago. Of course, it was an 'accident' . 

There's plenty of evidence (both direct and circumstantial) for the claims being made to be reasonable. 

On Thu, Nov 21, 2024 at 10:31 AM Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:



On 11/21/24 14:43, Emile Aben wrote:

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 at 10:43, Hank Nussbacher <hank@efes.iucc.ac.il> wrote:
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/18/europe/undersea-cable-disrupted-germany-finland-intl/index.html

-Hank

We looked into how RIPE Atlas saw these cable cuts: https://labs.ripe.net/author/emileaben/does-the-internet-route-around-damage-baltic-sea-cable-cuts/ . I hope this audience finds that interesting.

The rumours floating around about this being sabotage, with no hard evidence supporting such claims, is pretty wild.

Mark.