China Plans $500 Million Subsea Internet Cable To Rival US-Backed Project (reuters.com) 25
Chinese state-owned telecom firms are developing a $500 million undersea fiber-optic internet cable network that would link Asia, the Middle East and Europe to rival a similar U.S.-backed project, four people involved in the deal told Reuters. From the report: The plan is a sign that an intensifying tech war between Beijing and Washington risks tearing the fabric of the internet. China's three main carriers -- China Telecommunications Corporation (China Telecom), China Mobile Limited and China United Network Communications Group (China Unicom) -- are mapping out one of the world's most advanced and far-reaching subsea cable networks, according to the four people, who have direct knowledge of the plan.
Known as EMA (Europe-Middle East-Asia), the proposed cable would link Hong Kong to China's island province of Hainan, before snaking its way to Singapore, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France, the four people said. They asked not to be named because they were not allowed to discuss potential trade secrets. The cable, which would cost approximately $500 million to complete, would be manufactured and laid by China's HMN Technologies, a fast-growing cable firm whose predecessor company was majority-owned by Chinese telecom giant Huawei, the people said.
Known as EMA (Europe-Middle East-Asia), the proposed cable would link Hong Kong to China's island province of Hainan, before snaking its way to Singapore, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France, the four people said. They asked not to be named because they were not allowed to discuss potential trade secrets. The cable, which would cost approximately $500 million to complete, would be manufactured and laid by China's HMN Technologies, a fast-growing cable firm whose predecessor company was majority-owned by Chinese telecom giant Huawei, the people said.
Quantum entangled bits for the win !Nordstream'd (Score:1, Interesting)
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Quantum Entanglement is a great theory for functional instant comms, but considering how slowly the actual science part of that theory has moved? It'll be decades if not centuries before we even figure out if it's truly possible.
And before the science worshippers jump on me saying it'll never ever be possible, neither is about 90% of the equipment sitting on my desk today, from the perspective of someone living in a cave a few centuries ago. Science progresses, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. But think
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Weren't we already supposed to have instant communication at any distance with massive bandwidth using quantum entanglement ?
No. Never. You can't send information faster than the speed of light even with quantum entanglement [quantumxc.com].
Re:Quantum entangled bits for the win !Nordstream' (Score:5, Insightful)
Weren't we already supposed to have instant communication at any distance with massive bandwidth using quantum entanglement ?
Huh? Where did you get that idea?
Quantum entanglement requires the transfer of classical (non-quantum) information to decode. It doesn't have any more "massive bandwidth" than the bandwidth of the classical channel.
And, you also need to have a pair of entangled particles at each end, and once you've measured them (which happens when you read a bit), the particles are no longer entangled. So, you have to send new entangled particles if you want to send more information. These could be photons, but you have to send them one at a time, so the rate isn't going to be particularly fast.
and finally, although the quantum channel is non-local, and therefore technically "instant", since you can't decypher the information on it without information sent on some classical channel, which is not instant.
"vulnerable to spying and sabotage" (Score:3)
"sabotage" - well all cables are vulnerable [theregister.com] to clumsy ships [theregister.com] that may sever them. I suppose if you hold the end points then the saboteur does not need to get wet.
Spying is harder as most traffic is encrypted these days [[ Insert note here about quantum computers ]] but traffic analysis was invented in WW2 [bletchleypark.org.uk] and helped win the war - just knowing who is talking to who really yields insights. I do not think that traffic between peering points on Internet backbones is encrypted (ie a sort of VPN between them), probably too expensive; this is a pity as it would hide needles of real interest in the vast hay of pictures of kittens and naked people.
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Surely the real threat is from "clumsy" anchor deployment. And in neither case does the saboteur need to get wet.
Walsingham and/ or Cecil want to have words with you from the 1670s or so. They were doing traffic analysis on elements of the Papal and (somewhat separate) Maryian spy networks for years before their cryptographers managed to break the codes used. Copy the letter, put it back in the courier's pocket before they recover from their (drugged
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Walsingham and/ or Cecil want to have words with you from the 1670s or so.
Please update the Wikipedia page.
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I don't care enough to waste my effort on fixing that.
Take every datum you find on Wiki, and treat it with great suspicion.
So..... (Score:3)
Slashdot summary seems lacking to me. This is supposedly some kind of "tech war" between China and the U.S. that risks "tearing the fabric of the Internet" ... yet doesn't explain what's happening with their competing project. If they're trying to link a group of countries with their own undersea cable -- is it a plan to segment that traffic off from the rest of the world-wide Internet? I could see Communist nations wanting their own private network so they don't have to keep fighting to censor content coming from the USA and other nations they find objectionable. THAT might arguably put a tear in the vision of one, global Internet.
Otherwise, it's just more bandwidth chaining some points together, right? Nothing that hasn't been done before.
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That said, by being less dependent on us does China gain the potential to rival the US and be more self-sufficient in the case of conflict? Well, yes.
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It's more likely that the US and other Western countries would want to stop their traffic going over a Chinese owned cable.
Of course you should encrypt everything and not trust any of the wires you use.
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Indeed - as described, this is just another "AS" - which are the fundamental building blocks of the Internet. What their border and routing rules are is what makes them part (or not) of the Internet. Hell, an AS doesn't even need to use TCP or IP, let alone both. It just needs to be able to translate such addresses into addresses on it's AS, or tu
Like it or not, you can't ignore China... (Score:2)
China are doing what the USA did many many decades back - expanding their influence on all fronts.
Sure, they've been doing it for decades too, but the reach of USA globally in terms of every factor of culture, industry and trade is remarkable.
It's too simplistic to say "it's China's turn" or that China could surpass the USA as a super power - the demographics and cultures are just so very different.
The USA managed to spread not only massive amounts of trade globally, but also a cultural impact that is total
Re: Like it or not, you can't ignore China... (Score:1)
I used to dream of escaping to Europe; to have a better work life balance. To retire without fear of abject poverty. The US and their ne
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No escape from capitalism which is what is at the core of you have issue with here. Witout restraint commercial enterprices are going to naturally gravitate towards expansion, deomestically and across borders and larger companies will always get larger because they can always be more efficent than smaller ones. The natural end state of a capitalist system will be as few companies as possible because that means the most efficency.
This isn't a "bad" or "good" thing, it just "is" and as long as we understand
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Depends on your point of view. In a lot of ways the flavor of China's direct state-capitalism combined with single party authoritarian rule is the worst of all aspects.
Despite what the doomer kids will tell you the USA is in fact still a functioning democracy. Not a great one but democracy nonetheless and that counts for something, it actually counts for a lot to me.
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As an American, I would say US and Western cultural hegemony is tragic as well. When I travel abroad I don't want to see all the familiar businesses dominating public spaces. I want to see local businesses thriving and the unique expression of the people there. What financial and cultural hegemony mean long term is homogeneity and it makes the idea of escaping impossible.
I used to dream of escaping to Europe; to have a better work life balance. To retire without fear of abject poverty. The US and their neoliberal gang are working overtime to destroy that. Their fear is that, just as they're destroying the remnants of cold-war concessions in Europe, China is going to build an viable alternative in the global south and workers in the US will wonder why they're retiring at 95 instead of 62.
I never said that China or the US cultural hegemony is tragic - perhaps I implied it?
I didn't mean to, but I get what you are saying.
My comment was entirely non-judgemental on the influence the USA has had over many decades - it's observational.
We can discuss details in minatua - that the USA is an amazing mishmash of cultures, that it's so damn large, it has cultures within cultures - that the states that comprise it are akin to countries in Europe - but arguably, the influence it has had globally is very
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Good. The more such cables, the more robust the system will be against a failure, deliberate or otherwise.
spy (Score:2)
Internet, internet or Chinanet (Score:2)
I lived in China for 2 years and the reason I refuse to live their again is the lack of Internet access. Instead they have an internet I like to call Chinanet. Chinanet is connected to the Internet via the Great Firewall of China which breaks the use of many English language Internet
The Great FearWall of China (Score:2)