Samanth Subramanian
@samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Words in the Guardian, the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and others. Books on fish, Sri Lanka, and JBS Haldane. Newsletter: http://samanth.substack.com
Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
3. "Extremely Offline: What Happened When a Pacific Island Was Cut Off From The Internet" @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
"What a remarkable engineering feat. How unsettling that this is what holds us together."
www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...
"What a remarkable engineering feat. How unsettling that this is what holds us together."
www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...
Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian
A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life
www.theguardian.com
October 3, 2025 at 3:22 PM
3. "Extremely Offline: What Happened When a Pacific Island Was Cut Off From The Internet" @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
"What a remarkable engineering feat. How unsettling that this is what holds us together."
www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...
"What a remarkable engineering feat. How unsettling that this is what holds us together."
www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...
Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
From his excellent new book on undersea cables globalreports.columbia.edu/books/the-we...
The Web Beneath the Waves | Columbia Global Reports
Samanth Subramanian charts the geopolitical tensions, corporate power grabs, environmental risks, and quiet heroics involved in maintaining the Internet.
globalreports.columbia.edu
September 30, 2025 at 11:42 AM
From his excellent new book on undersea cables globalreports.columbia.edu/books/the-we...
…and Copenhagen, where I met Ture, who started in the cable business in the 1960s and is still on ships scouting ways to land cables in Greenland. (The older man is on the right, to be clear.)
February 27, 2025 at 9:58 AM
…and Copenhagen, where I met Ture, who started in the cable business in the 1960s and is still on ships scouting ways to land cables in Greenland. (The older man is on the right, to be clear.)
…and Kuala Lumpur, where friendly cable executives showed me their landing stations and fed me chicken and rice by the Straits of Malacca’s shipping lanes…
February 27, 2025 at 9:58 AM
…and Kuala Lumpur, where friendly cable executives showed me their landing stations and fed me chicken and rice by the Straits of Malacca’s shipping lanes…
…and Southampton, to examine a core of soil drilled out of the Pacific seabed…
February 27, 2025 at 9:58 AM
…and Southampton, to examine a core of soil drilled out of the Pacific seabed…
…and various landing stations, their refrigerated rooms full of servers and batteries…
February 27, 2025 at 9:58 AM
…and various landing stations, their refrigerated rooms full of servers and batteries…
…and Taiwan’s outlying Matsu island, which suffered an outage of a cable deliberately sabotaged by a Chinese ship (or so the government thinks)…
February 27, 2025 at 9:58 AM
…and Taiwan’s outlying Matsu island, which suffered an outage of a cable deliberately sabotaged by a Chinese ship (or so the government thinks)…
…and Cornwall, at the beach where the world’s first subsea telegraphic cable landed in the mid 1800s…
February 27, 2025 at 9:58 AM
…and Cornwall, at the beach where the world’s first subsea telegraphic cable landed in the mid 1800s…
…and Côte d’Ivoire to watch a ship land a branch of the world’s longest subsea cable...
February 27, 2025 at 9:58 AM
…and Côte d’Ivoire to watch a ship land a branch of the world’s longest subsea cable...