Think back to what happened in New York and New Jersey during Superstorm Sandy: Their underground internet infrastructure was disrupted by the storm surges, leading to massive outages and overreliance on smaller aboveground networks without the same capacity. So, it’s a big deal, and if action isn’t taken on both a domestic and global scale, the worst-case scenarios are mind-boggling. As you can see in this map from the World Economic Forum, these cables cover an astounding portion of Earth, crisscrossing throughout the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and encircling the coasts of South America and Africa. According to CNN, as of 2019 there are more than 380 such cables in operation-and as Rhett Butler, a University of Hawaii professor who’s worked on both extreme weather monitoring and underseas cable reuse and redevelopment efforts for decades, told me, these cables carry at least 95 percent of internet traffic.
If, and when, rising seas submerge the cable ends themselves, the networks will become unusable, with major consequences for national and international communication and security. How does something drown if it’s already surviving (occasional shark attack notwithstanding) below water? Well, the cables themselves connect with buildings above sea level-often just barely above it-at both ends in order to bring these transmissions to land. You read that correctly: The already-underseas cables will drown. In about 15 years, the waters that are rising due to the effects of climate change could drown the more than 4,000 miles of underseas fiber optic cables that transmit the internet connections of everyone who lives in the U.S. The internet is quite literally in deep trouble, with a potential apocalypse approaching more imminently than you may realize.
JOE CABLE ECONOMICS SERIES
This article is part of the Future Agenda, a series from Future Tense in which experts suggest specific, forward-looking actions the new Biden administration should implement.
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