Can you elaborate?
"You can't seriously be telling me that governments are threatening to--"
"The Chinese have already done it. They cut an older cable--first-generation optical fiber--joining Korea to Nippon. The cable wasn't that important--they only did it as a warning shot. And what's the rule of thumb about governments cutting submarine cables?"
"That it's like nuclear war," Randy says. "Easy to start. Devastating in its results. So no one does it."
"But if the Chinese have cut a cable, then other governments with a vested interest in throttling information flow can say, 'Hey, the Chinese did it, we need to show that we can retaliate in kind.' "
"Is that actually happening?"
"No, no, no!" Avi says. They've stopped in front of the largest display of needlenose pliers Randy has ever seen. "It's all posturing. It's not aimed at other governments so much as at the entrepreneurs who own and operate the new cables.”