But What About the Sub-Sea Cables?

Hardly a day goes by without a story that implies we must prepare for war.

This week, Niall O’ Connor, a journalist and an ex-Garda, told how ‘military style’ drones entered Irish airspace during Zelensky’s visit. It set off an anguished controversy on the airwaves.  RTÉ then reported that Lithuania declared a ‘state of emergency’ because of weather balloons coming from Belarus, a Russian ally.

The Irish Times’ Pat Leahy claimed that it was ridiculous to be ‘fretting’ about the triple lock. And to add more gravitas, the Institute of International Affairs and Deloitte issued a report, ‘Enhancing Ireland’s Security and Resilience in Time of Heightened Geopolitical Risk’. Naturally, it was covered in the RTÉ main bulletin.

Most of these stories border on the absurd, but they have a purpose – they want to soften us up for significant government moves on neutrality.

Vague for a purpose 

Take O’Connor’s story and note the term ‘style’, these were “military-style” drones. It is purposely vague – no evidence was provided of actual military drones or that they came from Russia. Nor were we told what happened to the drones? Did they continue their merry way? And if so, was there any real target?

And as for Lithuania’s weather balloons… maybe get into the underground shelter quickly!

The one scare-story that has any purchase, however, is the risk to sub-sea cables. So let’s maybe deconstruct it.

Currently, fourteen sub-sea cables land in Ireland, four link Ireland and the US and one links Ireland to Iceland. The rest mainly link Ireland to Britain. Some of the cables branch off to Ireland, but none of the current cables join Ireland directly to the European continent.

The cables are laid by private companies, and these pay other private operators to maintain and repair them when necessary. Amazon, Google, and Meta, for example, have together funded the Havfrue cable that links Ireland and the United States and then branches off to Scandinavia. The big tech companies then pay operators like HMN Tech, FiberHome, SubCom, Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), and NEC to maintain and repair them.

Much of the propaganda about submarine cables emanates from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a right-wing foreign affairs think tank based in the US. They issued a report on the Irish ‘case study’ in July but acknowledged that ‘ the primary threat to those (cables) around Ireland is accidental and natural damage, mainly caused by fishing vessels and weather-related events’. In other words, cables can be damaged by sharks, fishing boats dropping their anchor or dragging their nets on the bottom of the sea.

The CSIS then states, ‘So far, however, no intentional cable cuts or damages have taken place in Irish waters.’

Private Sub-Sea Cables?

But what if a cable were cut in the future? Would the lights go out? Would we be left without the internet?

Strangely enough, the responses are pretty routine. Again, the CSIS tells us, ‘The operator or owner of the cable then commissions a repair ship to locate and retrieve the damaged section, splice in a replacement, and return the cable to the seabed’.

Ireland is directly responsible for 12 nautical miles of the Atlantic Ocean and an additional 200 nautical miles in an Exclusive Economic Zone. But the Atlantic covers 20% of the world’s surface and has an average depth of 10,932 feet. Which begs the question, why would anyone want to enter Ireland’s zone to cut a cable when they have the rest of the Atlantic to play with?

Or maybe the suggestion is that Ireland should provide extra security for the private operators of these cables? Companies like Amazon or Google are responsible for many of the 82 data centres that are dotted around Ireland. These are scheduled to consume 30% of our electricity by 2030. And they demand that we spend more to protect them from ‘potential’ threats in the future!

‘Emotive topic of neutrality’ 

Let’s return to the Institute of International Affairs, which is chaired by an ex-Labour Party TD, Alex White. It makes clear the intention behind much of the war propaganda.

First, they want more ‘political leadership’ to tackle ‘the emotive topic of neutrality’. They knew that the previous attempt to set up a ‘consultative forum’ chaired by Louise Richardson (who goes by the title of Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) was a fiasco. So, they want to scare the population so that we ‘defend Europe.’ They recommend following the Swedish example of producing a government brochure for every household, entitled ‘In Case of Crisis or War.’

This could give ‘information’ regarding managing anxieties related to increased geopolitical risk, how to discuss these risks with young people, and the supports available to those in need of special assistance. Such a pamphlet, adapted for an Irish context, may assist with developing consensus on the risks to the State, possibly.

But the good capitalists who contributed to the report also spotted opportunities. If Ireland gets into the ‘war is coming’ groove, then companies can gain from the €800 billion Rearm Europe plan.

Sickening! The Irish establishment are more than happy to do the bidding of these European and American warhawks. They’d rather spend billions on weapons than on the homes we need. And they want to use every piece of war propaganda to bounce the Irish public into forgetting the Western-backed genocide in Gaza and putting us firmly in the NATO camp, our neutrality be damned.

During the Iraq War, we used to shout, ‘No Blood for Oil!’ But have we really reached the point where it is ‘No Blood for sub-sea cables!’