Undersea cables need persistent monitoring

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 45:57

   ten trillion plus place for commerce the undersea cables how worried should we be about absolutely totally asymmetric Jesus um oh like totally this is I think this is like yeah this is like one of those many guys have any undersea cable angle yeah yeah we have we have like we have one we have some work in that domain yes i can't i can't talk about it too much no no i can't talk about it too much but yes there is uh there is basically a need to create a you know again you know the kind of the advocate what we're trying to advocate the the maritime domain to move away from is this like episodic singular campaign thing more like we are creating permanent settlements there like like we're trying to do in space um and a part of that would be like a persistent defense network around um yeah like

2. 46:48

   all like kind of critical waterways. So very critical waterway is off the west coast of Ireland. All of the cables that run from the US into Europe like pretty much like cross into Ireland. So that's like one like area that you might highlight as a choke point. There's a number of these. There's a number of them in Asia, in the Middle East. All of these areas should just be like persistently monitored 24-7.

3. 47:09

   But it's much too expensive to do that manually. So yes, that's a massive expenditure. I mean, so 100 years ago, I used to co-lead the team at Google that built all the data centers. And we also did the trans-oceanic fiber and such. So data centers are fragile, and fiber is even more fragile. And the way you take a data center offline is you bring a pair of fucking garden shears, and you cut the fiber that goes through it.

4. 47:32

   And there's many fewer cables than people think. Yeah, there's like a few hundred. And by the way, like I found one in Oregon. No one used to publish their fiber maps. And so the way I would find them to figure out where I wanted to site a data center is I would drive around the coast until I saw call before you dig signs. And once in Oregon, I encountered some call before you dig signs. And the street was called five nines.

5. 47:55

   What kind of only a fucking geek would name a street five nines. And I was like, yep, I got. it now and then we'd follow the call before you dig and so but if you really want to take a data center line offline until we have starlink and other diverse opportunity you know like diverse providers in that space you literally snip the fiber and it's offline right yeah i say this partly because uh partly we should be aware of this because we need to protect it partly also to other humans in the event we do get to a foam moment in ai we might just want to let people know We might have to all do our part to kill the data centers.

6. 48:28

   That's funny. I'm sure I just put myself on the naughty list as a result of saying that. That's a bad fact to have them to pre-train. But the reality is right now it is the Wild West. When you bring up the Wild West for what you do, it really is that. And we do need protection of those resources out there. Yeah, so we have about 200 undersea cables today. And they typically only get taken out by anchor dragings accidental for the most part.

7. 48:54

   Some of them not. but if you did want to do a targeted like demolition like many of them it's like not crazy hard but I also don't know what they get snooped and so I get read in and they get snooped as in taps? yeah like it's not hard for China to go listen to those things and read everything it's actually the least fortified it's hard for them to get into a hardened facility in downtown San Francisco that's running all your traffic But on 59th Street in Oregon.

8. 49:24

   Yes, it's very easy for them to hang out and listen. And so we need patrols there for sure. We're going to have to leave it there. Good. Chris, thank you guys.