READ: The Internet and Its Uncontested Dominion on Land and Sea (Ghalia Al Alwani)

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT

BY: GHALIA AL ALWANI

Diver checking underwater protection of cable at hydroacoustic station HA08 at the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), U.K.

(image source: CTBTO Preparatory Commission)

Abstract

The sea has facilitated and represented modes of movement for human beings since the beginning of time, be it the passage of bodies, products, materials or waste. More enthralling is the part it plays in the transmission of communication at distance, and it’s expediting of human connection through messaging since the foremost transatlantic communications telegraph cable relayed its first message on August 16th 1858 (Geere, 2011). When most speak about how the human race is connected through the oceans on earth, the irony concerning how quite literally that sentence takes on life is missed; there is nearly 750,000 miles of cable laid across the ocean floor, physically linking the world’s continents together through travelling photons of ones and zeros (Satariano, 2019).

The more one indulges in conversations about the information dissemination age in our time, it’s easy to be engulfed in overheating statistics and a growing sense of inexhaustibility. Ultimately, there is significant symbolism to its availability and potential, particularly in its reflecting of global inequalities and power structures (whether geopolitical or local) (Eriksen, 2016). In this report, I interrogate the politics and interchanging narratives that ensue once these massive fiber optic cables reach the land from the ocean, specifically considering the case of Lebanon in which one can distinctly observe the treadmill syndrome through which developing countries attempt to keep up with the technological advances of the world. In investigating Lebanon’s case, the report will aim to answer the following questions: why is the internet in Lebanon slow and frustrating even in 2019; is it due to a cultural lag or should we scale the blame up towards the consistent fabrications and monopolies of its telecommunications ministry? Is the issue embedded in social or economic clashes of scale, or is there a materialist approach that could be utilized to recognize the (physical) roots of the issue? What are the informal sectors that were born out of this need for a globalized society’s clashing cognitive scales between its experiences externally, and the limitations of what is provided internally?

After grasping the relevant actors/scenarios at play in the case of Lebanon, this report will contextualize the data against the backdrop of the situation the country is witnessing today. I will do so by taking a closer look at the way information dissemination (or lack of it) shaped earlier and later uprisings in the Middle East, most notably those of the Arab Spring in 2011, and those that ensued in 2019. I’ve categorized this data under a few underlying themes under the umbrella of “Surveillance and Resistance”. This includes the internet’s ability to aid resistance movements, open a space for likeminded discussion, and broadcast critical information internationally as well as its power to act as a governmental weapon to track political dissidents or unleash electronic armies to spread propaganda. Once we’ve placed the information within these contexts, we can begin to untangle the undersea cables as a means to the ends mentioned above; how do these themes inform global scales of inequality, and what are the power structures at play here (i.e. who owns the internet, and why does this matter?).

1.     Lebanon as a Case Study

 1.1 Lebanese Network Infrastructure

Lebanon is connected by sea to three submarine telecommunications cable systems including:

1.     BERYTAR (1997), which connects Beirut to Tartous (Syria) and is owned by both the Lebanese Telecommunications ministry and the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (Submarine cable map).

2.     CADMOS (1995) or ALEXANDROS (2013), which connects Beirut to Cyprus and is owned by Cyta, Lebanese Ministry of Telecommunications, AT&T, BT, Orange, Telekom Austria, Syrian Telecommunications Establishment, Telecom Italia Sparkle, Tata Communications (India), Deutsche Telekom (Germany). Alexandros was built to link Egypt to France through Cyprus and in 2013 Lebanese telecommunications ministry announced their involvement with it to replace the existing CAMDOS. (Submarine cable map).

3.     IMEWE (2010), which has several landing points including Egypt, Italy, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, France, India and of course, Lebanon. It is owned by Telecom Italia Sparkle, Etisalat (UAE), Tata Communications (India), Pakistan Telecommunications Company Ltd., Orange (France), Airtel (Bharti) (India), Saudi Telecom, Ogero, Telecom Egypt. (Submarine cable map).

There are many reasons cited as to why the internet in Lebanon is shamefully weak, but one of the most critical ones lies in the physical details. While Ogero and countless telecommunication ministers have promised the implementation of a new fiber optics network that connects central offices (businesses, universities and hospitals) as well as homes, their guarantees have not been met yet (“Ogero launches fiber optics project”, 2018). In the past, the main problem was that there was not enough bandwidth supply coming into the country; since then, there has been an expansion of bandwidth from the CADMOS and IMEWE submarine cables (Murray, 2015). For example, the IMEWE submarine cable has been connected through fiber optic cables to around 308 Ogero central offices through Beirut, Jdeideh and Tripol since 2011 (Ghazal, 2017). However, while the submarine fiber cables are fully capable of reaching and nourishing the internet service providers (or ISPs) on land, Lebanon is unable to accommodate for them because it is still mostly relying on copper wires (an older infrastructure) that was originally built to adjust for Ogero’s billing and office transactions, not to handle the entire country’s internet traffic (Murray, 2015).

Copper wires, although cheaper and more convenient, are slower at transmitting information. This is due to the speed of electrons being slower than the speed of photons in fiber optic wires. So, the further the copper wire extends from a central office the slower the internet is, which explains the difference in speed between Beirut and its environs (Collins, 2019). Copper wires are more likely to be used for these internet transmissions in most developing countries for convenience’s sake, as they were already laid out in the past for phone lines, and happen to do that job extremely well. Still, fiber optic wires, although costlier and much more complicated to build, retain faster signals that are unaffected by distance, nor are prone to electromagnetic interference or fire damage like the copper wires are (Collins, 2019).

For a few years now Ogero and the Telecommunications Ministry have promised to take on a massive fiber optics project (FTTX) which includes FTTH (fiber-to-home) and FTTC (fiber-to-Cabinet), which pledged to provide internet at the outlandish speed of 50 mbps. For context, Yemen ranks at the slowest internet speed in the world at an average of 0.38mbps, whereas the fastest internet in the world, i.e. South Korea’s, runs at an average speed of 25.3 mbps (“Ogero launches Fiber Optics Project”, 2018). This plan has been implemented for the most part for only a small number of institutions (universities and hospitals) (definitely not at the 50mbps standard) and has largely been put on hold for households (Ghazal, 2017). Since homes are linked to street cabinets which are connected to Ogero central offices through copper, it would be much more pricey and time consuming to replace them individually, as opposed to replacing those connected to larger institutions such as universities and the like (Jamaleddine, 2017).

1.2 Lebanese Politics and The Internet

Of course, as is infamous in Lebanon’s public policies and general governmental services, all decisions and actions are interwoven in a complex web of physical, political, cognitive/symbolic and economic clashes of scale. In the case of the slow internet, it seems there is a series of blockades besides the infrastructural issues that would make it so that even if Lebanon were to acquire a functional fiber optics network, fast internet would be obstructed in a multitude of other ways (Murray, 2015).

Without getting into too many obscure details, the first issue has to do with the distribution of Lebanon’s ‘international capacity’, which in Lebanon runs at 300 to 600 gigabits per second. Contextualizing this: the Jupiter submarine cable that connects Maruyama and Shima in Japan to Los Angeles in the US and Daet in the Philippines has an international capacity of around 60 terabites per second (Murray, 2015). The idea is that when Lebanon receives this international capacity from the submarine cables it is linked to, it should pass them down to private sector internet service providers (ISPs). Here we find that Ogero, the state-run custodian of the telecommunications sector, restricts other ISPs vital connections (named E1 lines) that are required for speedier internet because they claim that “they have the capacity they need” (Murray, 2015). The reason for this is that Ogero prefers making a profit off of selling these E1 lines illegally to Alpha, Touch and other illegal ISPs (Murray, 2015). This has caused a huge rift and rivalry between the gigantic Ogero and other ISPs; Ultimately the companies are forced to purchase bandwidth from the private sector instead, which in turn makes it close to impossible for them to compete with the prices Ogero is offering (Murray, 2015). This is a classic example of “scaling up”, in which we see a state-run giant (which owns over 60% of the market for internet provision in this case) forcefully monopolize the market by setting conditions that smaller competitors find impossible to navigate (Murray 2015). Essentially, this is also why they are able to set inflated prices for their services, with the prices linking in conjunction to the internet speed itself (Murray 2015). Scaling up through means of state proprietorship is an increasingly prevalent process in authoritarian regimes, further complicating the complex and almighty grip they have on their populace.

In this theatrical performance that is the Lebanese political microcosm, the villain is portrayed by Abdul Menhem Youssef, a member of the Future movement bloc and essentially the “God of the Telecom Ministry” (Battah, 2012). Both ex Telecom ministers Nicholas Sehnaoui and his predecessor Charbel Nahhas made claims that Youssef is to be blamed personally for refusing to release bandwidth to local ISPs, as well as generally halting progress on the internet front with political motives (Battah, 2012). The reason Youssef is capable of so much power is of interest; not only is he both chairman and general manager of Ogero, but he is also general manager of the Telecom Ministry’s Operations and Maintenance Directorate (the directorate put in place specifically to oversee Ogero) (Battah, 2012). This case paints a painfully accurate portrait of the corrupt Lebanese loophole-based political system, where Youssef is in the absurdly powerful position of overseeing his own work.

1.3  Informalities

A report by Al-Jazeera in 2017 revealed an interesting informal sector that was born out of this internet bottleneck in Lebanon: the rise of internet ‘gaming’ cafes or centers. Video gaming enthusiasts flock to these centers due to their impressive internet speeds, a critical requirement for most bulky video gaming files in online gameplay. These cafes are often built on illegal grounds, through purchasing bandwidths from nearby countries (such as Turkey and Cyprus), hereby offering internet “up to ten times faster than the national provider, Ogero” (“Lebanon internet users evade state monopoly”, 2017).

A more fascinating informality in Lebanon’s telecommunications microcosm is Hezbollah’s evolving communications infrastructure. In the 1990s, the militia abused the Lebanese telecommunications infrastructure, particularly the outdated copper phone lines, to build their own communications network (Wege, 2014). It also built in parallel its own communications network structure, with Beirut at its center and branches to Hezbollah headquarters, which made it so that their positionality was both interwoven within the Lebanese state but also tapped into the global system at large (Wege, 2014). In Carl Wege’s ‘Hezbollah’s Communication System: A Most Important Weapon”, he claims, “distinguishing a Hezbollah phone line from a civilian phone line was often a matter of the identity of the parties at either end of the call.” In the 2000s, with the withdrawal of Israel from South Lebanon, Hezbollah began setting their fiber optic communication lines in the South. Not only were these capable of transmitting information quicker and in bigger quantities, they were also not susceptible to infiltration (unlike the copper lines) (Wege, 2014). They arranged the system in a branch-like format, along which ran several nodes (including from Beirut to Tyre, Naqoura, Jezzine, Baalbek, Tufayel into Syria’s military communications, then the North and Hermel); this meant there was no central entity (nor one single branch/node) that could be used to shut down the entire system (Wege, 2014). If one wanted to compromise Hezbollah’s network, the entire Lebanese telecommunications framework would need to be demolished (Wege, 2014).

This system has been evolving steadily, and away from media attention over the past several years (Wege, 2014). Local telecommunications firms issued permits and kept their conscious clean by merely involving themselves in laying small trunk lines (wires in the earth), only to be followed by Hezbollah experts coming in and connecting them to their facilities (Wege, 2014). On top of all of this, Hezbollah IT experts have found a way to hack into servers globally that “act as covert Hezbollah communication nodes” (Wege, 2014). They perform elusively, without disrupting everyday operations; the owners of the servers are always completely unaware that they might be expediting Hezbollah communications through their interactions with the internet. (Wege, 2014).

2.     The Internet and Resistance Movements

2.1 Surveillance and Resistance

There is no denying the significance of internet connectivity during uprisings and revolutionary movements, even if the extent of that weight is often debated. It should be conceded that it isn’t technology that creates revolutions, but people; still however, it would be naive to deny the support (to varying degrees) that the availability of certain social media platforms (and the internet in general) offered these movements. Other than functioning to alleviate the difficulties of having to organize and inform large numbers of people of meetings, locations and events, certain images that circulate widely (usually evoking passionate reactions resulting from the images representing either inspiring events or tragic ones) fuel the anger of those protesting and escalate the drive to the street. A plethora of examples of this could be found throughout the uprisings during the digital age in the Middle East; the image of the mutilated body of Hamza Al-Khateeb in 2011, that sparked further protests in his hometown of Daraa in Syria is one(Macleod & Flamand, 2011), as well as the interview with Dany Abu Haidar’s mother that went viral in Lebanon in 2019, in which she expresses her deep grief towards her son’s suicide (due to the economic crisis). After all, it is precisely due to this influence, that governments conceded to internet shutdowns in Egypt, Libya and Syria during the Arab Spring in 2011, as well as in the more recent uprisings in Sudan, Iraq and Iran. This political strategy has aggressively escalated as a trend to quell uprisings within authoritarian regimes, with a study done between the years of 1995 and 2011 confirming more than 600 internet shutdown insistences by 99 governments (Parker, 2019).

It should be noted that the reason this sort of power/violence-based tactic is possible in the first place, is due to the governments of these countries owning the country’s primary Internet service provider through their telecom sector (which is the case for almost all countries in the Middle East). The Libyan government owns not only the ISP, but also the country’s two mobile phone operators (“Libya Shuts Down Internet Service”, 2011). The same goes for Egypt (all ISPs depend on State-owned Telecom Egypt), Syria (all ISPs depend on State-Owned Syria Telecom) and as mentioned above, Lebanon (Ogero). The reason it would be very difficult to cause an internet shutdown in Chile, for example, is due to the privatization of their telecommunications sector in 1980, that largely limits government actions regarding anything to do with it. The means of monopolizing a commodity by the state, in itself equates to the practicing of taking away flexibility. On the other hand, the more freedom our connections provide us with, in terms of mobilizing and strengthening revolutionary ideologies, the higher the risk of oppression and susceptibility through these monopolized entities (in cases such as shutdowns).

It is important to point out at this juncture that the internet is not always influential in the same manner, and varies across countries with differing socioeconomic societies. The utilization of the internet in the Libyan case for example, varies somewhat from its usage in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon’s revolutions. Due to the fact that the average Libyan does not have internet access, the internet shutdown served different purposes (“Libya Shuts Down Internet Service”, 2011). Primarily, it stopped the flow of communication outward by the privelaged few that had access and therefore power to broadcast information about the political situation in the country (“Libya Shuts Down Internet Service”, 2011). This means the it would be easier to avoid (or alleviate) international outrage, and also serves as a fearsome tactic in that it separates loved ones and nationals in diaspora from any form of reassurance or accurate information about the happenings inside the country.

The results and reactions to these internet shutdowns are what emerged as more intriguing, in that the lack of flexibility paved the way, as it usually does, for counter/resistance movements and tactics. After the internet shutdown in Egypt in January 2011, an activist group named “We Rebuild” hacked their way into an internet connection far from the looming gaze of the Egyptian authorities in Sweden, and created a Wiki page that provided advice on how to get online (“Arab Spring Anniversary”, 2016). In addition, protestors would carry handheld signs at the protests that provided others with updates on location switches, which would’ve normally been accessible through the phone (“Arab Spring Anniversary”, 2016). More recently, during the internet shutdown in Iraq, exchanging of flash drives of photos and videos as well as constructing secret satellites on their rooftops were among the resistance methods protestors used to connect with the rest of the world (“How Iraqis are dodging”, 2019).

Totalitarian governments interact with the internet in order to subdue ‘rebellious’ activity in other ways besides completely shutting the internet down, but rather through exploiting its incredible reach. This happens mostly through two means: surveillance tech and/or electronic armies. Electronic armies are used to degrade and confuse the uprising’s message/demands, sabotage their events and also aid in spying on their movements (McBain, 2014). These hackers spam opposition social media pages with attacks, spread propaganda, and hack their way into access to information including passwords and webcams (McBain, 2014).  This was the case of Syria’s electronic army, who lured unsuspecting users in with anti-government links, which eventually spread malware that allowed for the monitoring of their computer (McBain, 2014). 

More remarkable however, is when through vague geopolitical business ties, governments purchase technologies under the guise of ‘cyber security’ that are abused in order to find and imprison political dissidents. This is reminiscent of the military-industrial complex, except the weapon being sold is information. In the case of Egypt, the government bought a seemingly omnipotent surveillance service from an American company named Narus (owned by Boeing), that allows the state-owned Egyptian telecommunication companies to not only spy on online and mobile phone communications (through Egypt’s Vodaphone), but also access the geographical location of anyone who’s online behavior they deem threatening (“Digital Darkness: U.S. U.K”, 2011). What is even more interesting is that Narus was initially launched by Israeli security experts, who have since sold it to many other companies (“Digital Darkness: U.S. U.K”, 2011).

Similarly, in Iran the Finnish-German ‘Nokia Siemens’ sold surveillance tech to the Iranian Telecom Authority, offering the Revolutionary Guard capabilities to target and incarcerate dissidents (“Digital Darkness: U.S. U.K”, 2011). In Syria, an American company named Blue Coat sold the government a tech service with the similar controls that allow for monitoring of online activity (McBain, 2014). Resistance movements also rose to combat these efforts, usually involving a sort of VPN to conceal one’s online activity. For example, in August 2011, a group of Syrian hackers intercepted the internet connection and broadcasted a message warning users that their internet activity was being monitored (McBain, 2014). They also provided them with access to ‘Tor’ an application that hides a user’s online footprint (McBain, 2014).

This highlights an interesting and largely-concealed double-bind the ‘Western’ superpowers of the world find themselves in; on the one hand, offering empty disapproving statements towards the violent regimes that were left in shambles after they colonized them, and yet on the other remaining highly committed to many vicious neo-colonial arrangements. Surveillance technology could be contrasted to the instances when the 3 Belgian firms were found to have provided the chemicals used to manufacture chemical weapons that killed thousands in Syria, as well as when the French company SAE Alsetex sold tear gas to both the Bahraini and Lebanese governments that were ultimately armed and used to attack protestors (Chehayeb, 2019).

2.2 Lebanon and Internet Shutdowns

Since the rise of the October 17th 2019 revolution in Lebanon, I’ve received messages from my peers in Sudan and Syria, asking “did they shut the internet off yet?”. It is key to contextualize this major political card that a plethora of dictatorships/corrupt governments have played as soon as it seems a threatening ‘rebellion’ of their populace is unfolding. So, what is stopping the Lebanese government, which as we’ve seen controls the telecommunications sector, from standing in the way of the movement’s online access? Why hasn’t there been an internet blackout in Lebanon?

In short, I believe the answer could be the catastrophic effects that a blackout will wreak on the already crumbling Lebanese economy. While perhaps other governments would’ve found the detrimental economic costs worth enduring, especially in closed internal systems like in the case of Syria’s economy, Lebanon has a lot to consider when the chief sectors carrying its economic weight are that of banking and tourism. When the 5-day internet blackout ensued in Egypt, the damage bled into all sectors, from e-commerce and factories to hospitals and schools, with the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation reporting a $90 million cost (M.West, 2016). In fact, by some estimations calculated between the years of 2015-2016, it was revealed that shutdowns (across 81 shutdowns in 19 countries) averaged at a cost of around $2.4 billion in GDP globally, at least (M.West, 2016).  With government debt amounting to $88.4 billion, 150% of Lebanon’s GDP, it seems highly unlikely (for now) that the cost of such a move is worth its benefits (Takieddine, 2019). Perhaps the Lebanese government absorbed lessons from Sudan, where the internet shutdowns used to quell protests caused the closing of many small business (costing the country $1 billion in GDP in 1 week), which fueled the uprising further, as it was born out of the disastrous economic crisis that had crippled Sudan’s citizens in the first place (Parker, 2019).’

Another more damning reason Lebanon would find itself ensuing chaos by cutting off the internet, would be due to the inseparability of its telecommunications infrastructure from that of Hezbollah’s, as mentioned above. A shutdown of the Hezbollah telecommunications sector would cause absolute outrage in the already fragile (and increasingly so) confessional power systems, and would constitute a huge blow to the militia’s operations (and their self-proclaimed lifelong mission of fighting Israel). Here, it is evident how even with all the corruption that has managed to ensue within the country, Lebanon’s sectarian-based control mechanisms obstruct their abilities to apply quick and damning techniques to suppress uprisings the way the dictator of a neighboring Arab country could.

3.     Inequalities and Agnotology

From questions of resistance, we move to discussions of equality and development. In cross-examining other Arab regions surrounding the internet and its availability/usage, one idea is constantly introduced as one of the causes of the inequality: the Internet is predominantly in the English language (Erikson, 2016). This concept bleeds beyond general illiteracy of the English language; even if one were fluent in both, attempting to navigate the internet as a dynamic space is exceedingly challenging and exasperating in Arabic. Research through keywords provides lists of vague and somewhat irrelevant connections, twice removed from the concise English algorithms we’re used to. The average Lebanese/Arab user is involved in a cognitive clash of scales of identity, especially millennials who have experienced the internet before social media began to be provided in (mediocre) translated formats. This clash brought about a counter-reaction, which is now heavily prevalent in the Arab online presence: the Arabish or “Arabeezi” dialect. Arming themselves with the minimum knowledge of the English alphabet, millennials on Yahoo and MSN messenger curated their limited keyboard to their own capabilities to cope with these developments. This morphing of the space could also be interrogated under the lens of flexibility, where we can see that when restrictions were prevalent, the opportunity rose for something creative, new and efficient in its place (much like the resistance movements mentioned above).

Other common ills traced in the Arab world surrounding internet development are as follows: Arab governments’ incompetence when it comes to prioritizing strengthening/providing the internet, high costs both for the government and end user, and a lack of operative laws and legislations that clarify rules around Internet use and e-commerce (Alrawabdeh, 2009). All of these reasons, illustrate a sort of common ground one can lean on when scaling up from Lebanon’s circumstance towards other regional cases. A more intriguing cross-regional similarity is this purposeful monopoly of one Internet service provider in action, thereby raising connection costs and reducing quality of services (Aladwani, 2003). In Adel Aladwani’s ‘Key Internet characteristics and e-commerce issues in Arab countries’, he claims, “In most cases, Arab governments, and for political reasons, try to create a monopoly in the ISP market by preventing new firms from entering the market (e.g. through controlling licences) … Another reason why Internet costs are high and connection speeds are low in Arab countries is because Internet service providers are not allowed to provide their own international gateways.” This quite accurately goes hand-in-hand with the massive and forceful Ogero monopoly (and others across the region), that limits bandwidth to competing local ISPs.

Here we arrive at an interesting dichotomy; informalities always arise out of a lack of infrastructure or other restrictions in the formal, which could be argued is precisely how Hezbollah gained prominence in the first place. This constraining of wiggle room in terms of internet service provision asserted the need for other infromalities to gain empowerment through connection, hence the accessing of this new-found flexibility by internet cafes and the Hezbollah communications network. This could likewise be seen as a cognitive clash of scales; on the one hand, a citizen rejoices at the mini-revolution internet cafés are waging for an innocent cause, but on the other cringes that the most controversial and heavily armed political faction in the Lebanese constellation is the one with the terrifyingly organized communications empire, interwoven involuntarily into his/her everyday connectivity. This could also be extrapolated to how one would feel about why the Lebanese government is incapable of shutting down the internet; citizens are reassured that their online revolution will be impossible to quell, but also recoil fearfully at the fact that it is due to the dominating and overarching influence of Hezbollah in their lives.

There is another parallel that can be drawn from the material of the copper wires themselves to the provision of internet. While the placing of copper wire communication lines provided us with heightened flexibility in regards to human connection, it also exposed us to vulnerability, including infiltration through electromagnetic interferences. However, once we scale up towards fiber optics, this risk is not avoided but rather increased threefold. Besides being at risk of losing the power you’ve gained as a citizen, the cost one pays in selling their personal data for internet access is not only a disturbing and offensive loss in flexibility, but also a looming ill and clash of cognitive scale. On a local level, in countries such as the ones discussed above, this also means selling your privacy as well as your safety (that could waver in the face of said government’s gaze), for the sake of communication. Scaling upwards to the global, while these underwater submarine cables used to be owned by different groups of private telecom providers, the last couple of years saw content providers such as amazon and Facebook almost gluttonously purchase and build underwater cables (Zimmer, 2018). As of 2019, when their Curie Cable is done being built alongside other cables with shared ownership, Google will own 8.5% of all the submarine cables under the ocean (Zimmer, 2018). Google has immense powers to provide, but also to restrict, manipulate and craft a user’s mental topography, through search optimization mechanisms, evasive advertisements and censorship. Most users are aware of this nowadays, but struggle with the desire to gain connection, which clashes with fear of exploit of their online subsistence (be it by their governments or mega-corporations). Google hovers in the background, a silent parastatal data empire that we can neither live with, nor without.

In the epicenter of those clashes of scale, whether they’re found on land or relating to sea legalities (and undersea cable processes) lies a powerful driving factor: ignorance (Braverman & Johnson, 2019). ‘Agnotology’ can be observed as another go-to political technique, because ultimately mass scales of ignorance allow for smoother operations to the ends of any range of political motives. The logic here is thus; if the public does not know or understand how undersea cables work, nor how vital they are to our everyday lives, ‘wrong-doers’ would not think to disturb them; furthermore, “the scarcity of facts circulated about cable systems also reflects the reluctance of a competitive international telecommunications industry to release information of commercial value.” (Starosielski, 2015). This can be scaled down, for the same fear that cripples giant telecommunications companies also afflicts totalitarian governments when it comes to educating the masses. While many examples of this could be offered (such as Trump’s denial of climate change and the way it’s shaped his policies), agnotolgy aimed at details about the internet is particularly easier. Firstly, due to its more recent arrival in humanity’s history, knowledge about how it works is largely understudied nor taught, unless it were offered through more specialized knowledge attaining, or higher education that the average national would not have access to. Secondly, by virtue of its very definition, the internet is often imagined or presented to others as “invisible and wireless”, when in fact, the only way it is capable of functioning is through a dense network of wiring (Starosielski, 2015). This gap in our understanding makes us vulnerable as consumers (leading to lack of participation in matters regarding policy in that sector) and employees of the industry (who struggle to be able to gain rights, such as those who live on cable repair ships in the oceans) (Starosielski, 2015). This emerging body of work regarding the sea and its practices is absolutely essential, particularly during these overheating and revolutionary times.

4.     Study-Up

While there is a proliferation of tools that have mapped the underwater internet presence online (including Submarine cable map), there is no web-based tool that covers exactly what happens once this cable reaches the land. This could include mapping of numerical data, such as bandwidth distribution and internet speed along home lines as well as central offices. This could also be qualitative, including rates of different social media platform usage throughout the country. Internally, in this global map, it would be interesting to be able to get a sort of brief understanding of which local actors/politicians are involved in that particular internet context, as well as the number and information on that country’s ISPs, for research purposes. Globally, these tools would also be efficient, and this could include mapping that also details specific owners and ‘nationalities’ of the different cables and perhaps, why? Some geopolitical research could be done to understand, at least briefly, each nation’s interest.

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