[HN Gopher] What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
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What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
Author : ingve
Score : 124 points
Date : 2024-05-26 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nrk.no)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nrk.no)
| jamesblonde wrote:
| TLDR; it probably wasn't the russians, most likely a trawler.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This was January 2022. Didn't the alleged Russian interference
| happen later, during the invasion of Ukraine?
| defluct wrote:
| Maybe you're thinking about Nord Stream
| jhugo wrote:
| What would the Russian motivation be for blowing that up?
| They could have just turned off the gas supply.
| omnibrain wrote:
| They left one pipe of NS2. It would have been a political
| victory for Putin with humiliation of the German
| government if they had switched to this instead of
| stopping gas imports via NS1&2 completely.
| cess11 wrote:
| "NRK has previously reported how a Russian trawler crossed the
| Svalbad cable more than 140 times, and more than a dozen times
| before the damage occurred in January 2022. The shipowners have
| denied having anything to do with the damage."
|
| The norwegians seem to think it was a russian trawler and that
| trawler doesn't exclude the possiblity that russians did it.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah the Russians also used "trawlers" to hide their recovery
| operations of KAL007 to hide their mass murder.
|
| Trawler does not mean unintentional or not state related.
| berkes wrote:
| Wow, the Russians shot down another plane. I never heard of
| KAL007 and thought MH17 was the first time this happened.
| Did any other nation states ever shoot down passenger
| airplanes?
| arprocter wrote:
| Full list:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_
| inc...
| yborg wrote:
| Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752
|
| Siberia Airlines Flight 1812
| dboreham wrote:
| For completeness: the US navy shot down an Iranian
| airliner.
| astro-throw wrote:
| The "full list" posted earlier has that one on it.
| stanislavb wrote:
| A trawler driven by the Russians?
| lijok wrote:
| If by "the russians" you mean russian defence, I can guarantee
| they would use something as inconspicuous as a trawler for the
| job rather than a combat vehicle
| trhway wrote:
| For the curious - google "tanker Minerva Julie Nord Stream".
| While officially the tanker is Greek, it is tightly connected
| to Russia.
|
| I'd be looking for the key places in international waters and
| the likes needed to be cut simultaneously to say paralyze
| Europe banking and other infrastructure and would be checking
| whether there are Russian (and affiliated like that Minerva
| company) "trawlers" with a habit of hanging around those
| places.
| dagss wrote:
| This article details how certain russian trawlers criss-crossed
| a lot over another cable in Norway that broke some time
| before...
|
| ...and then the same trawlers were in the vicinity of this
| cable in Svalbard when another trawler criss-crossed over it
| until it broke
|
| (In Norwegian but hopefully Google Translate will do an OK job
| and mainly graphics)
|
| https://www.nrk.no/nordland/xl/russiske-tralere-krysset-kabl...
| holoduke wrote:
| Criss crossing is quite normal behavior btw. I see it all the
| time here at the North Sea near England.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Sure, but that also makes it an ideal cover story too.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Does the Russian part of Svalbard depend on the cable for
| Internet?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > The current is used to amplify the fibre optic signals that
| flow through the 1300km long cables between the peninsula and the
| Norwegian mainland.
|
| This is magic to me. Anyone have a search term I could use to
| better understand how electricity is used to boost a fibre optic
| signal?
| orlp wrote:
| The optical signal repeaters that are part of the cable every N
| kilometers need power to do their job.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Ohh there's physical electronic repeaters. Okay. I thought
| this was some sort of electromagnetism witchcraft.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It's all witchcraft anyway. I'm not sure what they use
| exactly, but even photodiodes are pure witchcraft.
| nbernard wrote:
| There is still some witchcraft. Look up "optical pumping
| amplifier" for instance.
| cyberax wrote:
| They actually are witchcraft. They amplify the signal
| directly, without transforming it into electrical signal.
| cricalix wrote:
| "Fiber optic amplifier undersea" should do the trick. It's not
| that the power supply wrapped around/alongside the fiber does
| anything directly; it's being delivered to amplifiers. There's
| a hackaday article that's got some history in it.
| dekhn wrote:
| It's a optic to electronic device that is embedded in the
| cable, which is powered by electricity (but I think the tech
| was improved, see my last link). It's mentioned here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...
| with more detail here https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/under-
| the-sea-optical-repeat... and pictures here:
| https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/under-the-sea-optical-repeat...
| (IIUC those are inside of the ship laying or repairing the
| fiber,a nd they normally live on the ocean floor) and tons of
| photos of the process of laying cable:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/google-facebook-giant-unders...
|
| However I think there are also fully passive repeaters-
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_amplifier
| henrikeh wrote:
| I don't know about this cable specifically, but it can be done
| by transferring more power to the optical signal.
|
| Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers work by utilizing a nonlinear
| optical effect where energy is transferred from a pump laser to
| the signal. This is in principle possible in any optical
| (glass) fiber, but by doping with exotic elements, the
| amplification characteristics can be optimized. Erbium is
| suitable for the conventional communication wavelengths.
|
| For reference I have a PhD in information theory and signal
| processing for fiber channels.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| Comments like this are why I love HN!
| kaliszad wrote:
| This is still a good practical reference I like to point out,
| when people ask: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWqe8_5SUvk
| Richard A. Steenbergen has also other good talks, e.g. on
| traceroute. There are multiple versions of these talks that
| include more or less the same stuff with occasionally more
| information here and there.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > The critically important cable that connects Svalbard to the
| mainland is no thicker than a pinkie finger
|
| This is amazing. I wonder how much data per unit of time this is
| capable of transporting.
|
| Wikipedia says "Each segment has a speed of 10 gigabits per
| second (Gb/s), with a future potential capacity of 2,500 Gbit/s."
| [1]
|
| Wikipedia also notes that NASA helped fund this system.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I think NASA helped fund it because they wanted more (And more
| reliable) data to a groundstation on the island, not because
| this subsea cable is anything special.
|
| Fibre optic is great because you can usually add more bandwidth
| by lighting up another wavelength. The amplifiers don't need to
| be substituted if the wavelength is within its range.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| I've wondered in the past: is there an actual theoretical
| upper limit based on the physicality of it on the bandwidth
| of a single fibre link?
| dboreham wrote:
| Shannon bound. But it's very large. I don't think we're
| anywhere close with current DWDM emitter/detector
| technology.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| OS2 single mode fibre is pretty future proof. The
| transceivers may change, but the underlying cable should
| last a looong time and can be sliced and diced
| considerably with WDM (16+ channels AFAIK).
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually we know that a single mode fibre (there would
| typically quite a lot of them in a cable) can carry
| around 100 Tb/s in the C band (used by most systems due
| to amplifier availability) over about 100km. Research
| systems have reached that limit and commercial systems
| are not very far off.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Locals liked to say they had the best internet connection in
| the worlds, idk about that. NASA is a customer of the satellite
| station there.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Had a case in Canada where a fisherman ignored the maps and kept
| picking up a fibre optic line with their fishing gear, and
| eventually cut it with a saw (twice):
|
| (I suspect it was a short-haul line, so carried no electricity
| for amplifiers)
|
| https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2011/2011fc494/2011fc49...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peracomo_Inc_v_TELUS_Communica...
|
| > In 2005, however, he managed to pull up the Sunoque I. He did
| not know what it was but managed to free his anchor
|
| > The next year, he again hooked an anchor on the Sunoque I. This
| time he was able to haul it out of the water and secure it on
| deck. He made no effort to free it. He deliberately cut the cable
| in two with an electric saw. A few days later the same thing
| happened. This time it was much easier to haul the cable out, and
| he cut it again.
|
| > Some weeks later, after the fishing season, while on the dock
| at Baie-Comeau he noticed a strange looking ship in the area
| where he usually fished. Later, he saw a photo of the ship in the
| local newspaper. The accompanying article stated that the cable
| had been deliberately cut and a search was on for the culprit.
| resolutebat wrote:
| TL;DR of the court cases: the fisherman was guilty of damages
| to the tune of $1.2M, _and_ his insurance cover was voided
| because his act was so reckless.
|
| Funnily enough, the cable owners (Telus) tried to thread the
| needle of making the owner liable, but not so badly that
| insurance wouldn't pay for it. The judge didn't buy this, and
| obviously a sole operator crab boat can't pay over a million in
| damages (although he did lose his boat), so in the end
| everybody except the insurance company got screwed.
| cma wrote:
| Seems like the insurance would still pay but he loses his
| boat to the insurance company at that point, assuming
| carrying insurance was part of his fishing license.
| swader999 wrote:
| This has sea monster written all over it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Let's assume that these incidents actually were accidents,
| there's still a bigger question open: why is trawler fishing
| still allowed? Imagine it's not a fiber cable that ends up being
| crushed by a trawl door... but all the other marine life: Fish
| can swim away (or not, being the point of getting fished), but
| plants, corals, bugs?
|
| Trawler fishing is devastating for the local ecology, we just
| don't see the damage - to quote [1], page 16:
|
| > Seabed habitats are under significant pressure across European
| seas from the cumulative impacts of demersal fishing, coastal
| developments and other activities. Preliminary results from a
| study presented in SWD(2020) indicate that about 43% of Europe's
| shelf/slope area and 79% of the coastal seabed is considered to
| be physically disturbed, which is mainly caused by bottom
| trawling. A quarter of the EU's coastal area has probably lost
| its seabed habitats.
|
| Honestly I'm pretty much in favor of banning trawler fishing and
| the import of trawler-fished fish into the European Union, even
| if it's just to protect our fiber links.
|
| [1]
| https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/720778d4-bb17...
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I agree. The more you learn about trawling the less you'll
| understand why it's still permitted in so many places.
|
| Where I live it's cut back dramatically, but the bizarre thing
| is that it's strictly permitted in territories where we know
| rare deep sea glass sponge reefs exist, and once thrived. These
| reefs are islands of immense diversity and biomass which fed
| huge numbers of transient species moving through the deep. They
| were also nurseries for a large number of fish species we
| commonly fish for.
|
| We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little to
| properly protect the resources they extract from a holistic
| perspective.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little
| to properly protect the resources they extract from a
| holistic perspective.
|
| Our fish industry is really well connected politically and
| the large players exactly know how to play the fiddle, and
| any attempt to hold the foreign ones accountable with
| actually working and appropriate measures (it's highly likely
| that it will take live ammunition or an intentional
| collision, at least in legally "open" seas) would likely
| result in WW3.
| azalemeth wrote:
| Fishing as carried out industrially is terrible for the
| environment as a whole, and really often also exploits those
| employed in it. The huge army of Asian fishing fleets that
| skirt the law and the ethics of both sides of this are the
| worst of the worst, however, and deep sea trawling is
| particularly awful. Then again, farmed fish isn't exactly
| ecologically brilliant either...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-trawling_device
|
| https://news.mongabay.com/2023/07/mud-muck-and-death-cambodi...
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8823369/Gree...
|
| https://www.huckmag.com/article/paolo-fanciulli-the-italian-...
| adolph wrote:
| This reminds me of a story in "Blind Man's Bluff," summary:
|
| _[Capt James F. Bradley Jr.] was at his office in Naval
| Intelligence one day at 3 a.m. when the St. Louis native began
| reflecting on his boyhood life on the Mississippi River. As he
| later told the authors, he recalled that the river beach was
| dotted with signs warning, "Cable Crossing -- Do Not Anchor," so
| a boater would not foul the cable._
|
| _At that point, he wondered if the Soviets did not have similar
| signs along their Arctic coasts to prevent their critical cables,
| including those used by the KGB and the Soviet Northern Fleet,
| from being damaged._
|
| _As a result of these ponderings, in 1971 the American submarine
| Halibut, with its periscope up, slowly and secretly traced the
| Siberian coast looking for telltale warning signs. The cable
| signs were found, and American divers put a tap at the bottom of
| the Sea of Okhotsk on Soviet communications._
|
| https://stationhypo.com/2021/09/05/remembering-captain-james...
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Is it possible to tap fiber-optic cables without the owner
| getting wise? Even if you could tap modern cables, I assume
| everything is now encrypted and carries so much bandwidth that
| it becomes possible to sample the interesting intelligence.
| dooglius wrote:
| Normal fiber optic can be tapped surreptitiously[0]. There
| are a number of companies that sell anti-intrusion tech, but
| it's hard to say which side is winning with respect to what
| governments can do.
|
| [0] https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/06149809-Optic
| al_...
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| What, no mention that the Norwegian police use evidence markers
| with inches printed on them? That company sells them with CM
| markers.
| rwmj wrote:
| Maybe a clue about the real origin of the photos.
| tadfisher wrote:
| That line of thinking ultimately leads to the conclusion that
| trust is impossible. If you cannot trust the Norwegian police
| to produce accurate information, then you must trust the
| media. If you can't trust the media, then you have to trust
| strangers on the Internet. If you can't trust strangers on
| the Internet, you have to trust your friends and family. But
| what if they're informed by the corrupt police, media, or
| Internet commenters? Can you even trust yourself?
|
| Apply this logic elsewhere, and you cannot trust social
| institutions; for example, your local human services
| department when they come to warn you about your domicile
| being unfit for human habitation. Next, you can't trust the
| medical profession after you've been involuntarily committed
| to a mental institution after threatening the local
| schoolchildren (although we all know you were only warning
| them about the coming danger). You can't trust the state
| medical authority to regulate the medication that is used to
| treat paranoid schizophrenia. Now you're stuck in a padded
| room, unable to move your arms to scratch that incessant itch
| on your nose, pleading with your caretakers to just listen to
| reason, open their eyes to the truth.
|
| All you wanted to do was alert the world to the alarming fact
| that the United States obviously staged evidence that someone
| intentionally cut an undersea communications cable to
| Svalbard, Norway on the 7th of January, 2022.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're not making a logical argument against the reasoning,
| you're just saying that a logical argument, ignoring
| probability at every level, leaves you helpless. _Trusting
| things_ isn 't a solution, it's a cop-out.
|
| Instead of a magic formula, you take things on a case-by-
| case basis, examining sources and possible motives of those
| sources, looking at past experience with them for hints.
| This sounds like work because it is. It's very easy to just
| accept what you're told, but it's not heroic or even
| reasonable.
|
| > All you wanted to do was alert the world to the alarming
| fact that the United States obviously staged evidence that
| someone intentionally cut an undersea communications cable
| to Svalbard, Norway on the 7th of January, 2022.
|
| Meanwhile, the United States government is like "that line
| of thinking ultimately leads to the conclusion that trust
| is impossible."
| lobochrome wrote:
| Odd indeed. I would assume the salvage company was American?
| threeseed wrote:
| The bottom image has an evidence marker with cms on it as well.
|
| Perhaps they intended for the information to be shared with US
| intelligence.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Historically, there's been a lot of mischief with the cables.
|
| https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/new-us-spy-sub-built-for-seabe...
| debo_ wrote:
| Whoever named the time-traveling, world-saving X-Man from the
| future "Cable" was oddly prescient.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(character)
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