Cutting Up

John C Dvorak is promoting the theory that all those cable cuttings in the Middle East might not just be coincidence.

Nobody knows what caused the cut cables in the Mediterranean that interrupted Internet service to parts of the Middle East last week, but there are now conspiracy theories galore written by bloggers and pundits.
Some say it will benefit terrorists and Iran somehow. In fact, the cut cables -- originally blamed on ships dragging anchors -- look more like a ploy by some intelligence agency to disrupt Iranian commerce, specifically an emerging oil bourse that the Iranians have been quietly establishing and hoped to roll out fully in the next 60 days.

If so, there is no lack of suspects. The US, harassing Iran just to show we can? Israel?

The cuttings were at least initially blamed on dragging ship's anchors. If that theory has any credibility whatsoever, it certainly implies that cable cutting is not so tough. This sounds like the kind of information warfare that anyone with a boat and an anchor could wage.

Most of the worlds communication traffic is via fiber optic cables, and a lot of the network lies under the oceans.

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