What is the greatest tail risk stalking global finance today? There is a depressingly long list of options: surging debt, volatile rates, geopolitical conflict and/or cyber failures like the one accidentally unleashed by CrowdStrike and Microsoft. But there is another deserving far more debate: underwater sea cables.
Normally, this is a topic submerged from sight, both literally and metaphorically. That is because western cultures typically depict the internet as a disembodied thing (think “cloud”), while the media focus on flashy satellites, like those run by Elon Musk.
But, as anthropologists such as Alexandre Laumonier have long noted, this cultural frame is a dangerous illusion: the internet is rooted in physical infrastructure, with over 99 per cent of global traffic via subsea cables. This includes the $10tn in daily financial transactions on platforms such as Swift which drive global markets.