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The Undersea War: The International Battle for Supremacy at the Bottom of the World
'A sizzling account'The Times
A hidden network sustains our world, but it's no longer safe.
Every button, house, nation and financial market depends on a massive, unseen web of cables across the ocean floor. Power cables and pipelines on the seafloor provide the world with energy. This is the newest battlefield where countries must protect their interests - and the functioning of daily life - while rivals test their limits. From the Baltic to the Pacific, sinister ruptures, mysterious vessels and submarine incursions mark a conflict already under way.
With gripping accounts of maritime patrols and access to naval officers, undersea engineers and cable operators, Elisabeth Braw captures the fragility of an infrastructure that underpins everything from mortgages to cancer research and the global financial system to simple emails.
The stakes are immense. Virtually all global internet traffic runs through these arteries, and energy runs in cables and pipelines alongside them - yet the more essential this network becomes, the more exposed it is. The Undersea War shows that the next great conflict may not erupt on land - but in the depths below.
A hidden network sustains our world, but it's no longer safe.
Every button, house, nation and financial market depends on a massive, unseen web of cables across the ocean floor. Power cables and pipelines on the seafloor provide the world with energy. This is the newest battlefield where countries must protect their interests - and the functioning of daily life - while rivals test their limits. From the Baltic to the Pacific, sinister ruptures, mysterious vessels and submarine incursions mark a conflict already under way.
With gripping accounts of maritime patrols and access to naval officers, undersea engineers and cable operators, Elisabeth Braw captures the fragility of an infrastructure that underpins everything from mortgages to cancer research and the global financial system to simple emails.
The stakes are immense. Virtually all global internet traffic runs through these arteries, and energy runs in cables and pipelines alongside them - yet the more essential this network becomes, the more exposed it is. The Undersea War shows that the next great conflict may not erupt on land - but in the depths below.
403 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 8, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
October 16, 2026
Comprehensive Look At Little Known Yet Essential Topic. As I sit here near the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida, it turns out I actually have a facility wherein an undersea cable connects to the land cable networks almost literally just a few miles down the road from me (+ over a couple of blocks or so). This particular cable is a backup to the US/ Latin American cable network that comes into Miami that Braw discusses in this text - and its facility is absolutely unremarkable, hiding in plain sight a few miles due south of the US Navy's base at the mouth of the St. John's River at Mayport. (And a few miles further south from the King's Bay Submarine Base, home to apparently a significant portion of the United States' Atlantic Submarine fleet.)
In this book, Braw details the history of how the undersea cable network came to be and why it is so utterly essential to modern life. Basically, the Internet is incredibly fragmented at best without it, and communication between continents, particularly at the speeds life in the "developed world" in the 2020s demands, is largely non-existent.
Braw does a solid job throughout this text of explaining the histories from the earliest cables all the way into the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War and how and why various technologies were developed as well as their uses and challenges. In other words, you're going to learn a *lot* here that you likely barely knew at all - *if* you ever knew it at all to begin with.
It is one of those topics that most of us (particularly those of us who don't live on islands, particularly small and/ or remote islands) never really even think of... and one that is 100% essential to modern life. One that is becoming, according to Braw, increasingly under threat in new and novel ways that international law currently has little it can do to stop and which could come to play a significant role in the escalation - or even initiation - of the next major war.
While primarily focused on the consumer and law enforcement side of this topic, Braw does at times get into the military significance of these cables and how and why these issues also play into the overall geopolitical picture and strategies - yet keeps all of this at a narrative level that is easy enough to follow along with, including several anecdotes of particular people in particular places around the world and how they interact with various facets of the undersea cable networks.
Overall, this is a very well written book that explains a rather obscure issue quite well - and is pretty reasonably documented, clocking in at about 18% bibliography.
Very much recommended.
In this book, Braw details the history of how the undersea cable network came to be and why it is so utterly essential to modern life. Basically, the Internet is incredibly fragmented at best without it, and communication between continents, particularly at the speeds life in the "developed world" in the 2020s demands, is largely non-existent.
Braw does a solid job throughout this text of explaining the histories from the earliest cables all the way into the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War and how and why various technologies were developed as well as their uses and challenges. In other words, you're going to learn a *lot* here that you likely barely knew at all - *if* you ever knew it at all to begin with.
It is one of those topics that most of us (particularly those of us who don't live on islands, particularly small and/ or remote islands) never really even think of... and one that is 100% essential to modern life. One that is becoming, according to Braw, increasingly under threat in new and novel ways that international law currently has little it can do to stop and which could come to play a significant role in the escalation - or even initiation - of the next major war.
While primarily focused on the consumer and law enforcement side of this topic, Braw does at times get into the military significance of these cables and how and why these issues also play into the overall geopolitical picture and strategies - yet keeps all of this at a narrative level that is easy enough to follow along with, including several anecdotes of particular people in particular places around the world and how they interact with various facets of the undersea cable networks.
Overall, this is a very well written book that explains a rather obscure issue quite well - and is pretty reasonably documented, clocking in at about 18% bibliography.
Very much recommended.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review