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Why are people blaming Yemen’s Houthis for cutting the Red Sea cables?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/6/why-are-people-blaming-the-houthis-for-cutting-the-red-sea-cables?traffic_source=rss

Questions swirled after four cables were cut; some observers say it may be the Houthis, others say it was an accident.

Why are people blaming Yemen’s Houthis for cutting the Red Sea cables?

Four undersea telecommunication cables were cut in the Red Sea, disrupting 25% of data traffic between Asia and Europe.
The cables are owned by private companies, with only about 1% owned by governments.
If all cables in the Red Sea were taken out, it would disrupt Europe's communication with India and East Asia, and North and East Africa.
Officials are still investigating the cause of the cuts, with theories including an anchor or deliberate disruption.
The Houthis have denied responsibility for cutting the cables, but some experts believe they could be capable of causing damage.
There are about 380 undersea cables in operation worldwide, with a total length of over 1.2 million km.

15 comments

emergencyfood

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A rule of thumb, in cases like this, is to ask who benefits from this. The cable connects Europe and Asia, and so would affect all or most Eurasian countries to a greater or lesser extent. Further, as traffic is redirected through intact cables, there could be indirect effects across the world. Finally, the perpetrator must be capable of cutting not one but four metre-thick cables at the bottom of the sea.

Once you consider these points, there is only one possible suspect.

Godzilla.

BrokenGlepnir

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Where are you getting metre thick from? I'm seeing that modern cables tend to be around 1 inch. Maybe these are special cables, but I don't see that. These things get cut by anchors sometimes. I could imagine what it would be like to get snagged on 4 metre thick wires. Some of them aren't even that deep. Some divers tried cutting wires near egypt 10 years ago.

taladar

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1m is a bit much but thicker cables are apparently used in shallower waters.

BrokenGlepnir

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Looking more into it that's true. But we are talking about a little under 3 inches instead of 1. I may argue it's maybe more fair to say that 1 inch is a bit small instead of 1 metre being a bit much. A factor of under 3 compared to over 10. It's even more striking when we are talking about diameter and not area. The point is that the advanced technology to do this, is a commercial freight ship with an anchor, not godzilla. That's the tech to do it accidentally, as it sometimes happens.

sun_is_ra

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they have been very open about attacking ships, why would they deny cutting the cables if they did it?

BrokenGlepnir

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If they didn't do it intentionally. One of the theories is that the ship they sank dragged its anchor across the cables. It can't really be confirmed until the evidence has been collected, but it sounds plausible.

MarcoPOLO

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Sinking ship drops anchor, propulsion system working fine?

queermunist

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Nordstream flashbacks.

hglman

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Big time.

Buelldozer

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Why? Probably because they recently published a map of all the cables and then made a comment to the effect of "Hey, look at all this important infrastructure that goes right through our area!"

hglman

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I would guess bc the cause is known not to be the Houthi's.

PolandIsAStateOfMind

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Going by popular liberal logic from some time ago, it's clearly the countries hosting the owning companies that cut the cables.

Doesntpostmuch

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Act like shitheads, get blamed for shithead things

knfrmity

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So it's Israel's fault then

Aria

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Literally the only country fulfilling their obligations to humanity and the UN.