While it does bear some consideration I think that some of the first acts of aggression in both world wars were attacks against underwater telegraph cabling, I'd be a little hesitant to jump to conclusions too quickly. There are a number of reasons why and how suchs cables could be taken offline. Sosuke mentioned one in particular: power issues. One of the first transatlantic telegraph cables was fried when the first operators, thinking it would take tons of power to "push" a signal all the way across the Atlantic, fried the cable and much of the equipment on the far end. While these aren't telegraph cables, the principle is the same. They may well have been taken offline because of recurrent power issues at one end or the other.

Then again this maybe a prelude to another country in the Middle East getting pummeled. IMO, it's hard to say at this point.

I read (Slashdot): "A commenter notes that despite the language in the article indicated a break or malfunction, the cable wasn't cut. It was taken offline due to power issues."

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/02/04/0158249.shtml

I wonder if the bottom of the ocean would be a good place for a datacenter, networked directly to those cables. There would be ample opportunities for power generation and cooling.

I'm not sure about underwater, but one way to save lots of money on a datacenter would be to build it on the shore next to a deep body of water and a massive bandwidth supply. That way you can chill the datacenter using Lake Source Cooling, which cuts power consumption by ~80%. If you're ever in Ithaca there is a huge LSC plant on Cayuga Lake that's insanely cool to walk around in.

Not if the cloverfield monster has anything to say about it.

An enclosed structure located where you're describing would be under incredible pressure from the water above, unless it's close to the surface. Also you would need people to man it. They wouldn't last long without sunlight. Finally, hard drives, switches, and other items fail all the time. You would need a storage area for food, water, shelter, and replacement gadgets, as well as toilets of some type.

Do you know if the environment would put undue wear and tear on the equipment housing? I don't know much about undersea material constraints. Otherwise, that's an interesting idea. One of my favorite books as a kid was about scientists who lived under the sea.

And the new moon is February 7th. (The most preferable night to start a stealth bombing campaign.)

My guess is the NSA. They finally think they're able to tap fiber and like fools are running around willy nilly splicing in taps to undersea cables in that area in order to stop the tur-ists.

Should we quietly do them one at a time so no one will notice? Heck no, then the tur-ists would win!

Another pointless war's coming. :(

How would cut cables affect things? Merely stopping the rest of the world from knowing what's going on?

You disrupt communication. One of the first casualties of war is truth. You want to prevent it getting out.

So you are predicting a war before the cables are repaired? That seems rather far-fetched, to say the least.

I think it is far more likely that this is just a coincidence.

It's too many to be a coincidence. I don't think a war is coming, I think it is much more likely this was a test for the CIA or whoever to see if they could actually cut this many cables if they ever needed to. Or the CIA will repair the cable in such a way to let them monitor communications.

If the intent was to monitor communications, why would they cut multiple cables simultaneously? That only draws more attention.

I don't buy the "test to see if they could actually cut this many cables simultaneously" idea. Cutting cables is not fundamentally difficult -- they are not even armored below a certain depth. It would also be a very expensive, complicated, and potentially embarrassing test.

I guess I'm too paranoid to buy "coincidence" even if there doesn't appear to be any other truly logical explanation.

It isn't necessarily a coincidence, but couldn't it be reasonable explained that when the first few went down it lead to a higher level of strain and utilization of the remaining cables, thus making them far more likely to break themselves?

I don't think the light running through the cables wears them down by much.

I think he means currents and normal wear-and-tear?

But again, 4 times...

There is definitely something strange going on.

Wasn't the last one due to power failure (extra wear and tear from increased load)?

Well, if their intention was simply to splice monitoring gear into it, do you think that they would have done it so visibly? Think anything unencrypted and important is going to go over those cables in the near future?

I agree that this seems fishy, mainly because it's so far under the sea.

However, your conspiracy theory seems way too easy. But, maybe our government is just that sneaky...