1 00:00:00,299 --> 00:00:05,110 Far below the ocean’s surface, down where the light dares not go, there is something 2 00:00:05,110 --> 00:00:07,040 remarkable. 3 00:00:07,040 --> 00:00:11,030 Something the world’s superpowers are desperate to control. 4 00:00:11,030 --> 00:00:12,250 Is it this? 5 00:00:12,250 --> 00:00:13,250 No. 6 00:00:13,250 --> 00:00:14,349 Is it this? 7 00:00:14,349 --> 00:00:15,349 No. 8 00:00:15,349 --> 00:00:16,850 It’s this. 9 00:00:16,850 --> 00:00:19,070 Biiiiiiig long rope. 10 00:00:19,070 --> 00:00:24,990 But it’s not just any big long rope: this is the internet. 11 00:00:24,990 --> 00:00:30,060 Undersea fiber optic cables like this carry 99% of the world’s international telecommunications 12 00:00:30,060 --> 00:00:34,469 traffic: global commerce, military secrets, passive-aggressive emails, Zooms that could 13 00:00:34,469 --> 00:00:38,149 have been passive-aggressive emails, and the YouTube videos you watch during those Zooms—yes, 14 00:00:38,149 --> 00:00:42,820 I see you, hello—all ripping through the murky depths at the speed of light. 15 00:00:42,820 --> 00:00:48,160 Right now, there are over nine hundred thousand miles—or over 1.4 million kilometers—of 16 00:00:48,160 --> 00:00:52,570 cables sitting on our ocean floor: enough to go from Fiji to Sydney… then to the moon, 17 00:00:52,570 --> 00:00:56,840 then around the moon 51 times, then back to Sydney, then around the Earth three times, 18 00:00:56,840 --> 00:00:57,980 then to Melbourne. 19 00:00:57,980 --> 00:01:01,230 Now, because they’re sitting at the bottom of the ocean, there’s not a ton of footage 20 00:01:01,230 --> 00:01:05,010 of these cables, so we’re gonna use footage of eels instead, because what is an eel if 21 00:01:05,010 --> 00:01:06,780 not an underwater electric rope? 22 00:01:06,780 --> 00:01:07,970 Think about it. 23 00:01:07,970 --> 00:01:13,020 Despite being some of the most important infrastructure in the world, undersea cables are vulnerable: 24 00:01:13,020 --> 00:01:16,259 to sabotage, to espionage, to shark bite-age. 25 00:01:16,259 --> 00:01:19,720 And wherever you find important technological infrastructure, the potential for spying, 26 00:01:19,720 --> 00:01:25,000 or especially both, you will find the United States and China—bickering. 27 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:29,130 The latest and greatest spat concerned this particular cable, the much-awaited follow 28 00:01:29,130 --> 00:01:33,090 up to South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 5: South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 29 00:01:33,090 --> 00:01:37,270 6… or SEA-ME-WE-6 for short, or SMWX for shorter. 30 00:01:37,270 --> 00:01:40,939 But before we get to the deets of this geopolitical cable-measuring contest, let’s talk about 31 00:01:40,939 --> 00:01:44,200 what these things are and how you could possibly build one. 32 00:01:44,200 --> 00:01:48,770 A fiber optic cable carries information as light: flashes of a laser at one end of the 33 00:01:48,770 --> 00:01:52,380 cable create sequences of “light on” and “light off” that get interpreted at the 34 00:01:52,380 --> 00:01:54,100 other end as ones and zeroes. 35 00:01:54,100 --> 00:01:59,539 An optic fiber is a thin strand of ultrapure glass, engineered to promise total internal 36 00:01:59,539 --> 00:02:03,890 reflection—basically, that light fired at a certain angle will bounce all the way down 37 00:02:03,890 --> 00:02:06,850 the cable and never Pink Floyd its way out. 38 00:02:06,850 --> 00:02:11,130 Even so, the signal weakens as it travels, so cables have amplifiers at regular intervals 39 00:02:11,130 --> 00:02:12,560 down the line to boost it. 40 00:02:12,560 --> 00:02:16,500 On the ocean floor, those get their power from a layer of copper around the fiber that 41 00:02:16,500 --> 00:02:19,430 carries electricity all the way from the shore. 42 00:02:19,430 --> 00:02:23,280 Other layers include a steel wire to shield the cable from oceanic pressure, polyethylene 43 00:02:23,280 --> 00:02:27,970 to prevent static electricity and corrosion, crush-resistant armor to resist crushing, 44 00:02:27,970 --> 00:02:32,000 and tar-soaked nylon yarn on the outside to protect from ship anchors, shark bites, and 45 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:33,220 other horrors of the deep. 46 00:02:33,220 --> 00:02:37,440 There are only sixty-ish ships in the world that can put these bad boys down. 47 00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:44,659 They carry about 5,466 metric tons of cable onboard in huge spools, plus a remote-operated 48 00:02:44,659 --> 00:02:48,489 plow that crawls along the ocean floor and lays the cable—following a path designed 49 00:02:48,489 --> 00:02:51,260 to avoid large rocks, trenches, and coral reefs. 50 00:02:51,260 --> 00:02:55,319 Often, the plow just drops the cable on the ocean floor, but sometimes it digs a small 51 00:02:55,319 --> 00:02:57,140 trench and buries it as it goes. 52 00:02:57,140 --> 00:03:02,420 It’s a huge operation: one of the ships, the Durable, has a crew of eighty people who 53 00:03:02,420 --> 00:03:06,550 split two twelve-hour shifts so they can lay cable around the clock. 54 00:03:06,550 --> 00:03:09,840 As you can imagine, this is all expensive. 55 00:03:09,840 --> 00:03:14,090 Transatlantic cables tend to cost about forty thousand dollars per mile, or about twenty-five 56 00:03:14,090 --> 00:03:15,860 thousand per kilometer. 57 00:03:15,860 --> 00:03:19,549 Sometimes one huge company, like Google, will pay for their own, but more often, multiple 58 00:03:19,549 --> 00:03:23,480 companies will go in as partners, splitting the responsibility of paying for and managing 59 00:03:23,480 --> 00:03:26,700 the cable in exchange for owning some percent of its bandwidth. 60 00:03:26,700 --> 00:03:29,500 Sort of like the Avengers… for wires. 61 00:03:29,500 --> 00:03:34,519 This was the case for SEA-ME-WE-6: it was going to be funded by a consortium of twelve-plus 62 00:03:34,519 --> 00:03:39,180 companies from a bunch of different countries: China, the US, France, Egypt, Sri Lanka, and 63 00:03:39,180 --> 00:03:40,180 more. 64 00:03:40,180 --> 00:03:42,409 A few contractors put in bids to lay the cable. 65 00:03:42,409 --> 00:03:46,890 The two that matter are China’s HMN Tech: a relatively new player in the undersea cable 66 00:03:46,890 --> 00:03:52,000 game, and the US’ SubCom: one of the three companies that had laid most of the world’s 67 00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:53,349 cable up to this point. 68 00:03:53,349 --> 00:03:57,860 In early 2020, the consortium gave the contract to HMN because—thanks to some government 69 00:03:57,860 --> 00:04:02,690 subsidies—they could build SEA-ME-WE-6 for five hundred million dollars—250 million 70 00:04:02,690 --> 00:04:04,599 less than SubCom. 71 00:04:04,599 --> 00:04:08,140 And the United States of America took that personally. 72 00:04:08,140 --> 00:04:12,849 The stated concern was that the US thought HMN was too cozy with the Chinese government, 73 00:04:12,849 --> 00:04:16,019 and that if they built the cable, said government could all-too-easily install surveillance 74 00:04:16,019 --> 00:04:17,019 equipment. 75 00:04:17,019 --> 00:04:20,989 But this is the US we’re talking about, and sure, the US loves to worry about China 76 00:04:20,989 --> 00:04:22,160 spying on us. 77 00:04:22,160 --> 00:04:25,560 But even more so, we love to worry about China getting too good at a tech thing. 78 00:04:25,560 --> 00:04:29,490 Because if they get better than us at a tech thing, what’s next? 79 00:04:29,490 --> 00:04:30,680 Women’s gymnastics? 80 00:04:30,680 --> 00:04:31,680 Wars?? 81 00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:32,680 It’s unthinkable. 82 00:04:32,680 --> 00:04:37,240 So when HMN scored the SEA-ME-WE-6 contract, the US government went all-out to flip it 83 00:04:37,240 --> 00:04:38,350 to SubCom. 84 00:04:38,350 --> 00:04:42,259 The US Trade and Development Agency rolled up to five telecom companies along the cable’s 85 00:04:42,259 --> 00:04:47,440 route and offered a total of 3.8 million dollars in “training grants” as long as they picked 86 00:04:47,440 --> 00:04:49,370 SubCom to get the contract. 87 00:04:49,370 --> 00:04:53,720 Then came the gossip: US diplomats spread this nasty little rumor that the US government 88 00:04:53,720 --> 00:04:58,180 was going to sanction HMN, basically promising that the companies that owned the cable would 89 00:04:58,180 --> 00:05:03,070 lose their US clients and go bankrupt if they didn’t just let SubCom build it. 90 00:05:03,070 --> 00:05:07,190 The US also got people talking about the security risks: how easy it might be for China to put 91 00:05:07,190 --> 00:05:11,020 remote spying equipment on an HMN cable even though it wasn’t gonna make landfall in 92 00:05:11,020 --> 00:05:12,020 China. 93 00:05:12,020 --> 00:05:13,190 Did they have evidence of this? 94 00:05:13,190 --> 00:05:16,850 Well, no, not really, but that’s what makes gossip fun. 95 00:05:16,850 --> 00:05:19,270 Though they did follow through on those sanctions. 96 00:05:19,270 --> 00:05:22,720 Meanwhile, the Department of Commerce called their buddy, the Federal Import Export Bank, 97 00:05:22,720 --> 00:05:27,460 to loan some money that would drive SubCom’s price down, and in February 2022, enough consortium 98 00:05:27,460 --> 00:05:31,060 members flipped their votes that SubCom got the contract. 99 00:05:31,060 --> 00:05:36,160 SubCom is expected to have SEA-ME-WE-6 up—or, I guess, down—and running by 2025. 100 00:05:36,160 --> 00:05:40,630 So to the United States: congrats on winning another charm for your technological proxy 101 00:05:40,630 --> 00:05:42,010 war bracelet. 102 00:05:42,010 --> 00:05:45,280 And sharks: congrats on your new delicious snack. 103 00:05:45,280 --> 00:05:47,340 Oh, they figured that out? 104 00:05:47,340 --> 00:05:48,509 Well, sorry sharks. 105 00:05:48,509 --> 00:05:49,509 That’s business. 106 00:05:49,509 --> 00:05:51,840 And you know what else is business? 107 00:05:51,840 --> 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