Joe Weisenthal

But also one thing I learned in researching for this episode is that

Egypt apparently is a big, I don't want to say choke point, but like a major center for fiber optic cables in much the same way that it's a major center for container shipping through the Suez Canal.

So how much does just pure basic geography actually inform the decisions of where these cables get laid?

Wait, can I just ask on that?

So when I look at the map of subsea cables going across the Strait of Hormuz, it's like Saudi Arabia connecting to, I guess, Iran.

Can they cripple the global internet by snapping those cables in particular?

Or would it just cripple the connectivity between the countries that are clustered around there?

So we know that cables can be cut mostly by accident, but occasionally by bad actors.

But as you mentioned earlier, there are redundancies built into the system.

What are redundancies that I guess we're not as attuned to at the moment?

What are the weaknesses that we should be really thinking about?

Jo, I was trying to think of a really remote place in the world that might not have fiber optic cable yet.

And so I looked up Kiribati and it turns out there's a cable that's supposed to have become operational funded by the US, Australia and Japan in 2025.

But I can't see anything about whether it actually did start working.

What are the things that governments or private companies can actually do if they're worried about bad actors out there who might be attacking this vital infrastructure?

This was going to be my next question, actually.

So your book came out, I think, just in October of last year.

So still relatively new.

How does the rise of AI, the hyperscalers, the data centers actually change the trajectory of the subsea cable world?

All right, Samanth Subramaniam, we're going to have to leave it there.