Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

CNN reports that two American government officials say the most likely explanation for the outages is simple irresponsible behavior by a Chinese cargo ship dragging its anchor. This contrasts sharply with German and Finnish officials who have insisted on sabotage. My own take is that the Americans are right. Nothing about the sabotage hypothesis is convincing.  There is no recorded incident of state sabotage of subsea cables since WWII's end.  Fishing boats and cargo ships dragging their anchors are responsible for approximately 70% of outages with the balance due to events such as debris slides in subsea canyon, loss of power, subsea earthquakes going mudslides, etc. Historical data provides no examples of state targeting of subsea fibre optic infrastructure. Most subsea cables are buried 1 to 2 meters deep to prevent damage. So locating them is difficult even for cable repair ships. Repair of the subsea cable SWM5 was delayed several weeks because the ship could not locate the ca