On Sat, 2 Feb 2008, Roland Dobbins wrote:
There are always corner-cases like the Tamil Tiger incident, and people don't always act rationally even in the context of their own perceived (as opposed to actual) self-interest, but I just don't see any terrorist groups nor any governments involved in some kind of cable-cutting plot, as it's diametrically opposed to their commonality of interests (i.e., the terrorist groups want the comms to stay up so that they can make use of them, and the governments want the comms to stay up so that they can monitor the terrorist group comms).
History is sometimes a useful subject. May I suggest the book "The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics 1851-1945" by Daniel Headrick. Let's cut all the cables is an old idea, and has been tried before. As usual, things didn't go as planned. Treaties exist because it was in everyone's self-interest to create the treaty. If any international terrorist or government espionage groups are reading NANOG: Hello. Please don't cut our cables. Thanks.