Cables and wars

Idle minds or devil's workshops, whatever you may call ours, but there seems to be some value in our paranoia, after all.

Last week, a friend and I were discussing about the 'yet to be officially acknowledged,by Fed Bank, but already heating up' recession in the US economy when the topic turned to how, apparently, wars have been fought just to revive or jumpstart flagging economies. Naturally, the discussion then turned to what the "Economic Hit men", if you may, would do to counter the stagflation lurking at US shores. It is widely prophesied that the impact of US recession would be minimal or marginal on the growth of emerging economies such as India.

Now, there is theory that wars in future would be not physical ones but more of 'intelligence wars', not in the sense of espionage but intelligence as relates to information and telecom technology pillaring economies. It leads to less bloodshed and, apparently, has more impact toward hampering the sustenance of normalcy in the enemy territory. The Internet, in such cases not only becomes a potential war ground, but an Achilles ‘heel for some economies. It was but natural for us to concur that stagflation and multiple cable damages were too much coincidental.

As far as the internet or the web is concerned, all roads lead to Rome. So, if something big goes down, it will probably slow down the flow of information, but networking technology will sustain the flow (with all disclaimers that apply). Apparently, this logic does not so easily apply to the Suez Canal cables. We were unaware of the criticality of 'these' cables.But looks like were not paranoid for no reason.

Read an article here to understand more about the nature and impact cable damages and to, at least to our surprise, know that we were not just dreaming out loud. Phew!

Einstein's point to ponder: "I am not sure how the third world war will be fought. But I am quite sure that the fourth one will be fought with bows and arrows."