It is often said that “necessity is the mother of invention”… According to Gus Leonisky (cartoonist since 1951), this is SOMEWHAT wrong. 

Necessity is the BASIC derivative of survival. 

Uncertainty and GREED are the parents of the invention of a BETTER MOUSETRAP.

Humans are the greatest manipulators of uncertainty in nature. They CANNOT STOP BABBLING ABOUT IT. Most species have settled in the niche of their hunting grounds and selected pathways in evolution. 

All this bathes in an environment of luck and serendipity — in which bad luck can end up in disaster… Humans decided to invent PROTECTION AGAINST “BAD LUCK”… and “communicate” making sense or not. SO….

We invent gods, fairies and extra-terrestrials which we never see, in order to justify our aggressive/passive activities under the umbrella of “MORALITY”. This could be (AND IS) the biggest invention of all. 

IT IS HIGH DECEIT. 

On a local scale, this is only dangerous to a small amount of people. USED ON A GLOBAL SCALE, “MORALITY” HAS MASSIVE IMPLICATIONS when hiding its aggressiveness (which it always does through DECEIT).

Greed is a derivative of uncertainty by planning to acquire more goods than necessary for survival, through extraneous stylistic (often aggressive) activities and inventions for the future of GREED, including patents on invention to achieve CONTROL. 

WE KNOW THAT THE AMERICAN SYSTEM (some people dispute the term “empire”) HAS BEEN PSYCHOLOGICALLY, IDEOLOGICALLY AND ECONOMICALLY GEARED TO RULE THE PLANET for profit — since its inception. 

WE KNOW (we all should know) THAT THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE IS 100 PER CENT DUE TO THE RUSSIANS FIGHTING AGAINST THIS greedy American INVASION. 

Deceit is used to trick people OF THE WEST into believing in the moral value of what is being achieved — or what is planned… INCLUDING SENDING “ILLEGAL” BOMBLETS TO THIS BATTLEFIELD. 

“Europeans should be grateful that Ukrainians are willing to fight Russia and perish on the battlefield on their behalf,” President Vladimir Zelensky’s senior adviser, Mikhail Podoliak, has said. His comments came after Zelensky slammed NATO members for not providing his country with an accession roadmap during last week’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

THIS IS PURE DECEIT. THIS IS DELIBERATE MISINFORMATION by the American System through the foghorn of its fighting proxy, designed to moralise the battle. But THE SET UP has psychological limits of ACCEPTABLE pain. As long as the conflict is restricted to this little battlefield, the general public (IN THE US and mostly in Europe despite the cost of energy) DOES NOT FEEL THE real PAIN. SHOULD UKRAINE (presently UNDER CAREFULLY CULTIVATED FASCIST morality) JOIN NATO, THIS WOULD BE A full DECLARATION OF WAR, LEADING TO AN ESCALATION OF THE CONFLICT INTO A POSSIBLE painful DESTRUCTION OF ALL. The American system ALWAYS works hard to avoid being PAINFULLY destroyed as it consumes its preys.

“The pelican ALWAYS eats its fish HEAD FIRST”… There is method in the process. 

Despite appearing nutty through its presidential loonies, the AMERICAN SYSTEM is cleverly managed by the PENTAGON — THE AGGRESSIVE branch and TRUE controller of the fully armed American MORALITY system.

ONE OF OUR LATEST INVENTION IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. At this stage, Artificial Intelligence has different sets of needs/POSSIBILITIES. 

As well, there could be many clusters of Artificial Intelligence, that may end up competing for control — or not — OR BEING USED AS SUCH, cranking up INVENTION AND DECEIT at unimaginable speed… So here we come to a pressing topic of study, in which Google, TikTok, Meta and others play a major role in the CONTROL of “humanity” (whatever this collective is)…

TOPIC: IS THE INTERNET A NECESSITY? NO…

OR AN INVENTION DUE TO NECESSITY? NO…

THE COMMUNICATIONS OF GREED (COLLECTING CASH FROM COMMUNICATION) STEM FROM A STYLISTIC FRIVOLITY, NOW a RELATIVELY ESSENTIAL because we (the dumb apes) have developed the habit of usage — WHICH IS BORN WITHOUT CERTAINTY OF UNIVERSAL TRUTH NOR RELATIVE DECEIT — BUT WITH THE UNCERTAINTY OF ENTERTAINING STYLISTIC COMMUNICATION — AND/OR BEING PROFITABLE — OR HIGHJACKED by governments. We love the Internet….

At this level of communication, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HAS TO BE USED TO MANAGE, CLEAN, PROTECT AND CONTROL THE INTERNET NETWORK — itself DESIGNED TO IMPROVE “HUMANITY” (whatever this collective is) WHILE PROFITING A CERTAIN SECTION OF HUMANITY (America’s super rich). The internet has become more of a WEAPON than a tool (note to self: most tools were weapons of sorts — WE KNOW).

(Note: variations from the following original text (behind paywall) are due to secondary-translation FROM FRENCH by JULES LETAMBOUR. The text carries a certain amount of “American BS” to justify the manipulations of the caper. THE STRANGE  Gussian CONFUSING introduction above will make sense as you immerse yourself into the “cable battle” of the human species…)

HERE WE GO:

According to experts, the submarine cable market is at risk of splitting into two blocks, one eastern and the other western, due in part to fears of espionage and geopolitical tensions.

Source: FINANCIAL TIMES, Anna Gross, Alexandra Heal, Chris Campbell, Dan Clark, Ian Bott, Irene de la Torre Arenas (13-06-2023)

Undersea cables: How the US is driving China out of the internet

Nearly 1.4 million kilometres of metal-clad fibres criss-cross the world's oceans, carrying internet traffic seamlessly around the globe. The supply and installation of these cables is dominated by French, American and Japanese companies.

Despite being routinely shut out of international undersea cable projects involving U.S. investment, Chinese companies have adapted by building international cables to benefit China and many of its allies.

This situation raises fears of a dangerous split between the owners and managers of the infrastructure that underpins the global web.

In 2018, Amazon, Meta and China Mobile agreed to work together to install a cable from California to Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. But a series of manoeuvres in Washington aimed at blocking Chinese participation in American cables led China Mobile to withdraw from the consortium.

In 2021, Meta and Amazon filed a new application for the system, this time without Chinese investment, unconnected to Hong Kong, and with a new name: Cap-1.

Then, last year, the request for Cap-1 was completely withdrawn, even though most of the 12,000 km cable had already been built. According to two people briefed on the talks, China's initial involvement would have remained a security concern for the US government.

"Hundreds of millions of dollars have been sunk in the Pacific," said a person involved in the aborted project. Meta and China Mobile did not respond to requests for comment. Amazon refused.

Over the past five years, as tensions between the two countries have grown and fears have grown in Washington over the risks of espionage, the US government has sought to dismantle an internet cable network that had developed over decades through international collaboration.

The United States succeeded in preventing Beijing from becoming a major player in the global submarine cable market. According to an analysis of data provided by consultancy TeleGeography, Chinese supplier HMN Tech has only supplied or is about to supply 10% of all existing or planned global cables, where the supplier is known. . Meanwhile, the French cable manufacturer ASN supplied 41% and the American company SubCom 21%. Neither ASN nor SubCom responded to requests for comment.

Interviews with more than 20 industry executives seem to indicate that Washington's campaign resulted in a de facto ban on the use of a Chinese supplier in entire sectors of the industry, even in projects not involving United States. Some fear this could lead to a rift in the global internet, with Chinese companies beginning to build their own wired networks elsewhere.

“One of the great risks today is that we are moving towards fragmented systems. Doesn't this create a system where it is impossible to connect, with a quasi-cold war, Eastern bloc against Western bloc? asks April Herlevi, an expert on China's foreign economic policy at the Center for Naval Analyses. “I don't think we're there yet, but I'm afraid that's the direction we're headed. »

Several countries, including China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Russia, have made no secret of their ambition to create a more centralised internet infrastructure over which their governments could exercise greater control. They have also shown themselves willing and able to cut off access to certain sites, or even the entire internet, in these times of political turmoil.

But US efforts to exclude Chinese companies from the backbone of the global internet are mired in difficulties. Even as the US administration continues its fibre optic war against Beijing, however, Chinese-owned and armed vessels continue to carry out complex repair work on state-owned fibre optic lines. United States, people with direct knowledge of the operations told the Financial Times.

Meanwhile, new analysis shows that more data is flowing between the United States and China than at any other time in history, even though the route between the two is often less direct than before. Several industry players point out that data can still be intercepted, even if the infrastructure it passes through is not built by Chinese companies.

A cold war under the sea

There are more than 500 active or planned submarine cables, which carry 99% of intercontinental data and arrive at approximately 1,400 shore stations around the world. TeleGeography, an industry consultancy, estimates that more than $10 billion worth of financial transactions pass through these cables every day.

Most of the time, it is consortia of technology and telecommunications companies that build the cables and often resell the bandwidth on the fibre optic lines to customers around the world. An email sent from London to New York over one of these cables can travel in less than 70 milliseconds (0.07 seconds). Satellites, on the other hand, are only able to carry much less data and their cost to launch and operate is much higher. They represent only a tiny part of intercontinental data transport and will continue to be so for decades.

For years, the submarine cable industry has been dominated by investment from largely state-owned telecom operators, but over the past decade, big tech groups have taken their place. American giants, such as Google, Meta and Microsoft, have invested around $2 billion in cables between 2016 and 2022, representing 15% of the global total. Over the next three years, they will invest an additional $3.9 billion, or 35% of the total. They did not respond to requests for comment.

These large groups are also large consumers of cable capacity. According to TeleGeography, they use two-thirds of the bandwidth.

While the past decade has seen increased investment by U.S. tech companies reshape the industry, a parallel story is emerging. In 2015, the Chinese government announced a strategy to invest in communication, surveillance and e-commerce capabilities of developing countries in exchange for diplomatic influence. Internet cables were essential to this "Digital Silk Road", which ran parallel to Beijing's "New Silk Roads" initiative, which injected hundreds of billions into the construction of roads, paths railways and ports in developing countries.

At the same time, the Chinese telecommunications champion Huawei was successfully carving out a place for itself in the submarine cable market, through its joint venture Huawei Marine, owned almost equally with the submarine cable installer Global Marine, headquartered in the UK.

According to Mike Constable, who was Chief Strategy Officer of China's largest cable provider until March this year and Managing Director when Huawei was co-owner of the company, Huawei Marine has managed to grab a hold of around 15% of the world market before 2019, encouraged by Beijing's ambition.

But that was "before geopolitics got carried away," he says.

In 2019, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Huawei and the telecommunications group quickly withdrew from the undersea cable joint venture. A little-known Chinese regional cable maker, Hengtong Group, bought out Huawei Marine and renamed it HMN Tech.

At present, HMN Tech is expected to commission only one cable per year for the years 2024 and 2025, each one only connecting China to Southeast Asian countries.

In 2020, the US government also launched the “Clean Network” initiative, which aims to ban the laying of new cables directly connecting the United States to China or Hong Kong. One of the most important cables built by Meta and Google, which was to connect the United States to Hong Kong, was blocked by Washington while its construction was already underway. The Pacific Light Cable Network, which went live last year, now stops in the Philippines and Taiwan.

Meanwhile, for HMN Tech, “the [invitations] to bids have started to dry up,” Constable says.

In 2021, under pressure from the US government, the World Bank scrapped a cable project it was piloting to link three Pacific island countries, to avoid awarding the contract to HMN Tech. Last year, a successful two-year campaign by US officials, first reported by Reuters, resulted in the Sea-Me-We cable planning consortium 6 of 19,000 km linking Southeast Asia to Europe awards the contract to the American supplier SubCom, while it had initially chosen HMN Tech.

According to a source familiar with the projects, the consortium behind two upcoming connected cables, one of which will link Europe to Jordan and the other Jordan to India, did not invite HMN at all. Tech to submit an offer, because Google is a key investor. HMN Tech did not respond to requests for comment.

But projects with U.S. investors or with direct ties to the country aren't the only ones affected by the Clean Networks initiative and the sanctions the U.S. government imposed on HMN Tech in 2021. While the tentacles of the Washington's foreign policy are gradually being deployed around the world, several cable construction consortia that do not connect to the United States, nor do they use American funding, now exclude HMN Tech, several interviews reveal.

“When you build a cable, you have to determine which customers are going to be targeted. If you want to work with large companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, you must first ask yourself if you want Chinese equipment, explains Chris Van Zinnicq Bergmann, commercial director of the future Mediterranean cable Unitirreno. Inevitably, he adds, the answer is no.

A new cable project linking Singapore and Thailand to India, which has no US owners and will not touch US territory, is unlikely to invite HMN Tech to bid due to the geopolitical situation, said a person familiar with the project.

Another person said she was currently involved in two separate upcoming cable projects "for which, for political and funding reasons", investors "decided not to involve Chinese companies in the appeal process. of offers", even though there is currently no connection with the United States or American investments.

Growing hostility between China and the West is already pushing companies to forge new routes to route data traffic. Disputes over territorial waters, delays in obtaining permits and the US government's ban on cables running directly from China or Hong Kong to the US have contributed to several recent cable consortia – Apricot, Bifrost and Echo – are forging a new path via Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and the US island territory of Guam, which is emerging as an unlikely hub for international data traffic.

A spokesperson for the US State Department said: “The sustained health of the global internet depends on the free flow of data across borders, it must be facilitated by a reliable telecommunications infrastructure. »

“Countries should prioritise national security, data security and privacy protection by putting in place appropriate regulatory and policy frameworks that completely exclude untrusted vendors from the entire ecosystem. ICT, including wireless networks, terrestrial and submarine cables, satellites, cloud services and data centres,” the spokesperson added.

Change in direction and ambitions of China

Although China's ambition to become a major competitor in the global submarine cable market has been thwarted, Beijing is still finding ways to gain ground.

Industry insiders say Chinese government-owned telecom companies have tried to refocus on regions where they still have commercial and political influence.

"China is able to carry out projects in some countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, mainly because state-owned telecommunications companies are able to conduct effective price wars," said a person working for the Chinese government.

In Asia, where the need for bandwidth and the cables to carry it are growing faster than in many other parts of the world, China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom are currently spearheading several major cable projects, including two that connect China to Singapore and Japan. None of the three companies responded to requests for comment.

In terms of infrastructure, China has, for many years, succeeded in building an empire on the African continent and in Europe. China Unicom was a key investor in Sail, a 5,800 km cable linking Brazil to Cameroon, which went into service in 2020. China Mobile also played a key role in a leading cable consortium, 2Africa, which connects large areas of Africa to Europe and whose work began in 2020. This consortium counts Meta and Vodafone among its investors.

However, it is unlikely that Chinese companies today enjoy the same freedom when it comes to building a cable with Western groups and connecting it to European ports. Clean Grids clauses are “getting more and more onerous and very quickly,” according to a lawyer working in the sector. “They become more and more restrictive as we speak. »

But Peace, a cable commissioned last year that links Pakistan to France via Kenya, was entirely financed and built by Chinese companies, including HMN Tech, circumventing the need for groups to to be invited to the negotiating table by Western companies. French President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants to maintain economic and trade interests with China.

“Peace is an integral part of the New Silk Road, which goes from China to Europe,” said an executive from a major European telecommunications company, noting that it is one of the first examples where China chose to finance and build a project without the help of international companies.

Several industry executives told the Financial Times that while HMN Tech is still considered to lag behind its global competitors in terms of technology quality, it regularly submits bids to work on international projects at lower prices of 20 to 30% to those practiced by its competitors. Savvy investors have realised this and are inviting HMN Tech to bid on projects for the sole purpose of driving down prices, they claim.

They are used as a Trojan horse when it comes to pricing because they are known to be very, very aggressive,” said an executive from a competing cable group. HMN Tech was invited to bid for the Medusa cable, which links Egypt to Portugal, and for Africa-1, which links Kenya to France, but was ultimately discarded in favour of French operator ASN, according to reports. industrial sources.

China has other levers to fight against international restrictions. In addition to further protecting its offshore territory in general, it has begun to exert strong pressure on companies that lay cables in Chinese waters and the South China Sea to use cables produced by HMN Tech, according to two executives. industry working on projects in the region.

Chinese companies have also outfitted three boats to lay and maintain the cables, to reduce the country's reliance on foreign vessels, according to Constable. “China now considers the ability to build its own cables to be strategically important, as no one else can do it for you. he explains.

“The South China Sea is one of the most critical maritime areas in China's military strategy. Every link and every piece of infrastructure must be able to be controlled,” said the person working for the Chinese government.

The threat of espionage

The growing fear of cables being exposed to espionage and sabotage has led some governments to further protect their territorial waters, which has led to delays in obtaining permits to lay and maintain cables. Several countries, including Indonesia and Canada, now mandate that only certain ships and operators can lay and maintain cables in their exclusive economic zones, industry officials say.

In addition, due to complex and long-standing maintenance agreements, it often happens that the most vulnerable and critical infrastructures of certain countries are repaired by hostile nations. Last year, a fault on a major intercontinental fibre optic cable owned by US carriers AT&T and Verizon, among others, was repaired by Chinese engineers operating from a Chinese vessel. And according to people briefed on these activities, in the same year, the same ship repaired in the East China Sea another defective cable belonging in part to Microsoft and the Japanese telecommunications group SoftBank. AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft and SoftBank did not respond to requests for comment.

Industry professionals point out that it is when these maintenance jobs are being carried out that the cable is most vulnerable to hacking and damage during its lifetime – devices that can be inserted to capture or corrupt data.

"When governments think about the exposure of submarine cables to outages and malicious disruptions, I don't think they understand how the maintenance market works," Constable says. The United States "tried to fragment this global network of submarine cables, but did not investigate which ships were repairing which cables."

While it is generally accepted that it is very difficult to wiretap cables at sea, it would seem, according to some, that it is possible to insert data extraction devices into repeaters - the electronic components that connect different cable sections in order to maintain the signal over longer distances – when manufacturing or repairing cables.

Britain's intelligence service GCHQ has already collected global data from international cable incoming land stations on the UK coast, as revealed by the Snowden leaks. In 2020, a whistleblower accused the US National Security Agency of partnering with Danish government agencies to intercept data at terminal ground stations.

Some argue that the question of who owns undersea cables and landfall stations is somewhat moot, as data crosses borders in a relatively unregulated way and it is always possible to access them when passing through the territory of a country, even if the route is less direct.

Alan Mauldin, research director at TeleGeography, points out that the fast transmission and decentralised nature of the internet means that Washington's tightening restrictions "do no good when it comes to stopping the flow of data between China and the United States”.

James Lewis, director of technology and public policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says fears about fragmentation are overblown. According to him, Beijing's main interest is not to have a separate network, but rather to have better access to information and trade.

“What they want is to do business,” he explains. The Chinese don't want to break the internet, they want to own it.” [THIS IS DECEIT BY AN AMERICAN GREEDY STOOGE.]

Additional reporting by Mercedes Ruehl, Qianer Liu and Kathrin Hille

Source: Financial Times, Anna Gross, Alexandra Heal, Chris Campbell, Dan Clark, Ian Bott, Irene de la Torre Arenas 13-06-2023

FRENCH: https://www.les-crises.fr/cables-sous-marins-comment-les-etats-unis-evincent-la-chine-de-l-internet/

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