Now Taiwan's Having Underwater Cables Cut

Blackbird

From https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/25/asia/taiwan-detains-ship-undersea-cable-intl-hnk/index.html :

Taiwan’s coast guard detained a cargo ship and its Chinese crew on Tuesday and said it was investigating whether the vessel had deliberately cut an undersea internet cable, in the latest possible breach of the island’s communication lines.

It’s curious that a cargo ship would “linger” for days in an area over an underseas cable…

InternetJeff

Blackbird

Perfectly innocent. The ship was just doing a commercial deep sea research experiment.

/sarc

Donoreo

I bet Vegas would not take any odds on this bet.

Rook

Map of the area:

From here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/world/asia/taiwan-china-cable.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zk4.q2z9.82ttLpWr2Fie&smid=url-share

Makes me wonder how these vessels are allowed to linger for days in sensitive areas.

HELLFIRE

Rook Makes me wonder how these vessels are allowed to linger for days in sensitive areas.

...unless one wants to start a shooting war -- or tit for tat boarding and searches -- not much. Not like one can ring an international 911 line to report "a suspicious ship loitering off the coastline."

shrugs

Regards

Rook

I don't think it needs to go that far.
Maybe just a friendly "hey man, whatcha doin' over here?" from a friendly Coast Guard ship should do it.
Just to remind them that someone is watching.

HELLFIRE

Possibly, but to use a landlubber equivalent : that's like trying to secure a public patch of land 24x7x365.

You could have cops patrol it, but cops can't be everywhere at the same time.

You could have private security patrol it, but it gets expensive to get someone 24x7.

You could have video surveillance, but then there's sorting out the whole delta between "see something" versus "do something" time.

... and sure there's the whole "false positive" aspect of things I don't think needs discussion.

shrugs

My Contrarian 00000010bits

Regards

HELLFIRE

One other aspect to consider : who's doing the detecting / tracking of these?

Case in point : say the military has long duration drones watching, and picks up a loitering ship. The military more than likely has very strict Rules Of Engagement, and at best can only pass the information along to someone in the civilian sphere. More than likely would go to the Coast Guard, but

a. how long does that message take to be recieved?

b. how long does it take between reciept of message and someone acting on it?

I've no expertise in this field, but I'm sure we're all more than aware what kind of nightmare one bureaucratic area is. I don't EVER want to have to deal with two or more...

My internet 00000010bits, which I hope intelligently contributes to the conversation.

Regards