pcXpressions
We are a non-profit organization, we are looking forward to a peaceful world by helping each other to join hands together to bring a better future for all people.
About Us
Our Beliefs
OPINION
The US-China Battle Over the Internet Goes Under the Sea
The DOJ’s opposition to Facebook and Google’s 8,000-mile cable to Hong Kong highlights how physical infrastructure is as contentious as the virtual world.
Last week, Washington strongly objected to a new project from Facebook and Google. It’s too risky, and offers “unprecedented opportunities” for Chinese government espionage, the Justice Department declared. The project, however, wasn’t about online speech or contact tracing, but concerned an issue that would seem far less politically charged: building an undersea internet cable from the United States to Hong Kong.
On June 17, Team Telecom—the executive branch group charged with reviewing foreign telecoms for security risks (and recently in the news for escalating and apparently insufficient inspections)—recommended the Federal Communications Commission stop the Hong Kong connection. It may seem odd for American officials to fret over undersea cable networks; rarely does your chosen crime show’s protagonist kick a door in because someone is laying telecommunications fiber.
WIRED OPINION
ABOUT
Justin Sherman (@jshermcyber) is an op-ed contributor at WIRED and a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative.
B ut geopolitical influence-projection on the internet isn’t just about hacking other countries’ intelligence databases. While not nearly as flashy, the development and maintenance of undersea cables, the landing points anchoring them above ground, and other physical internet infrastructure are a growing arm of cyber statecraft and source of security risk. This cable is just one element in a broader geopolitical contest.
Facebook and Google joined the project, dubbed the Pacific Light Cable Network, back in 2016. Teaming up with New Jersey–based telecom TE SubCom and Pacific Light Data Communication Company, a Hong Kong subsidiary of the Chinese firm Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Group, the US giants jumped on a project already months underway: building a massive undersea internet cable—the submarine-depth metal tubes hauling internet traffic from one land mass to another—connecting the US, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
To the US government, the Taiwan and Philippines part was up to scratch. Undersea cables have visible benefits, such as bolstering digital connections between regions and facilitating all forms of communication that follow. And for this 8,000-mile-long fiber-optic snake, connecting dispersed areas of the world was exactly the point. The stakeholders wrote as much in a December 2017 filing to the US government, noting this would be the first undersea cable moving internet traffic directly between Hong Kong and the United States, at speeds of 120 terabytes per second.
But the government had security worries about the Chinese-owned Hong Kong subsidiary behind the effort, as well as the proposed line to Hong Kong itself. Google, Facebook, and their partners had already laid thousands of miles of cable and spent millions of dollars last August when word broke of the Justice Department’s opposition to the project. Officials thought Beijing could physically access the cable for espionage—in this case by capturing internet traffic.
The DOJ’s position didn’t halt everything; in April of this year, the executive branch allowed the Taiwan component of the cable to proceed under a temporary six-month agreement. That, however, was only after Facebook and Google paused the Hong Kong link. And with growing attention to Chinese telecoms and the Chinese Communist Party’s potential sway over them, Facebook and Google will likely have a lot more government heat to contend with.
The story is notable in its own right. As The Wall Street Journal remarked last summer, this could be the first time Washington puts its foot down on an internet cable for security reasons. (The Pacific Light Cable Network is one of only dozens of these cables touching the US, among hundreds around the world.) Tensions between the US and China—today more politically driven than anything, despite real cybersecurity questions—are boiling over into another area. Yet Google and Facebook’s history with this venture is but one piece of a much larger puzzle: the physical internet infrastructure that’s increasingly part of geopolitical competition and cooperation over the internet.
The internet is human-made. Humans are the ones who designed laptops and iPhones and smart devices, who built servers and routers and cables. Today, companies build new data centers to store information and fiber-optic cables on land and along the ocean’s floor, which humans physically install. Such behaviors change the internet’s layout, and they change if, how, and where different actors can connect all around the world. Faster links support faster research, communication, and trade, for example, hence why those driving these changes have geopolitical influence.
This is reflected in foreign policy. States might subsidize the development of cell towers abroad to connect previously off-grid areas. They might do the same for undersea cables, bringing new, high-speed transmission lines to their shores. Governments may even run “capacity-building” operations that increase, you guessed it, the capacity of other countries to purchase, build, and maintain digital infrastructure. Building physical things is still a key part of internet geopolitics.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is an often-cited example, but other countries spend on this too. The (increasingly defunded) US Agency for International Development has its Digital Inclusion Program. India recently pushed for global focus on “digital divides” between high-resourced and low-resourced nations. Companies often play integral roles in these efforts.
As with all things tech-related nowadays, cybersecurity issues arise—which is what brings Facebook and Google’s ambitious work into this picture. Insecure or compromised connectivity—where cables are open to potential tapping or damage, or where data from cables is siphoned away once it hits land—can undermine these benefits as other actors derive their own. Connections to Taiwan and the Philippines were fine in the Pacific Light Cable Network case, but relation to a Chinese firm spurred Washington to raise the alarm on Beijing possibly using the cable to its own strategic advantage.
Miles under the ocean floor may not be where many expect another slice of the US-China saga to unfold. But these tensions aren’t just being played out in the ether; they’re also waged in the physical world, from the depths of the seas to 22,000 miles into space. The story of Facebook and Google’s efforts to build more interconnectivity across the world exemplifies the geopolitics of physical internet infrastructure—and alongside security concerns, rising strategic contests over who leverages that power.
WIRED Opinion publishes articles by outside contributors representing a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions here. Submit an op-ed at opinion@wired.com.
More Great WIRED Stories
We can protect the economy from pandemics. Why didn’t we?
Retro hackers are building a better Nintendo Game Boy
The country is reopening. I’m still on lockdown
How to clean up your old social media posts
Walmart employees are out to show its anti-theft AI doesn’t work
👁 Is the brain a useful model for AI? Plus: Get the latest AI news
🏃🏽♀️ Want the best tools to get healthy? Check out our Gear team’s picks for the best fitness trackers, running gear (including shoes and socks), and best headphones
News of the future, now. Stay informed with WIRED. Get unlimited WIRED access.
Masks Keep Us Safe. They Also Hide Our Smiles.
Face coverings may be here for a while. How can we adapt to a world where facial expressions are invisible.
As cities and states reopen slowly after coronavirus lockdowns, more people are stepping out, cautiously, into a changed world. If they are being careful not to spread disease, they are also in masks.
And that means many of us are missing a small but important social lubricant: the smile.
In anxious times, we may want to put neighbors, mail carriers, store clerks and others at ease with a casual smile. But if smiles can’t be seen, how do you greet people? How do you reassure them? How do you flirt? Are there workarounds — a squint, a head tilt, a raised eyebrow?
It’s a conundrum that is stumping many people who want to be both socially responsible and friendly. Coco Briscoe, 38, a comedian in Los Angeles, wears a mask to walk her dog, Daisy, and has been thinking about how to show friendliness to passing strangers.
“It’s like you’re both staring at each other, and you’re smiling, but they can’t see that you’re smiling,” she said. “So it’s just a very awkward interaction with people, and I think it’s going to be that way for a while.”
I’m almost a little bit over-expressive now,” Dr. Trebach added, “to try and compensate for the mask.”
Of course, not everyone is an extroverted smiler, and some people find face coverings liberating — including women who are tired of being told to smile on the street. But masks not only hide grins; they can also make it harder for people to display a whole range of emotions including discomfort, dismay or disdain.
Facial expressions of all kinds are a very important component of human interaction, said David Matsumoto, a psychology professor at San Francisco State University and the director of Humintell, a research company that trains people to read nonverbal cues.
When we wear masks, “we’re missing a major piece of that entire communication package,” he said. But he added that people could adapt their body language. They can nod, for example. Or wave.
Jasmine Gregory, 29, of Winston-Salem, N.C., said that wearing a mask had prompted her to put in a little extra effort. “You just make more of an attempt to laugh, show your emotions and say what you’re thinking, rather than just listening and nodding,” she said.
Ms. Gregory, a lawyer focusing on family and juvenile law, feels the limitations of masks acutely when she is trying to put clients at ease as they testify in court, she said. That is already a scary experience for many people.
“There’s a lot of reassurance on my end,” she said. “I’ll be actively smiling so they can tell by my eyes that I’m encouraging them and telling them: ‘You’re doing just fine.’”
Not all smiles are the same, and some consider the so-called Duchenne smile to be the gold standard. Named after Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne, a French neurologist who studied it, it’s the kind of smile that lights up the whole face, engaging not only the zygomaticus major muscle to lift the corners of the mouth, but also the orbicularis oculi to raise the cheeks and squint the eyes.
The typical social smile, by contrast, is a lips-only display given to strangers and acquaintances. But its importance should not be ignored, Dr. Matsumoto said. A genuine Duchenne smile can light up a room, but social smiles do a lot of work in daily interactions.
Because Duchenne smiles hit the eyes, they are often still discernible through masks. Social smiles are the ones we lose when our mouths are covered.
Testimonials
What People Say
The generosity of this organization makes it possible for me to continue having education opportunities in this difficult area.
Jane Doe
Wonderful job with those kids that need us and people from various places all over the world. I will definitely join your group as a volunteer.
John Doe
News
Recent Causes
- T.I.-ABOUT THE MONEY ft. Young Thug (Official Music Video)FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO GET THIS WEBSITE SLASH BLOG ESTABLISHED IN 2015, IT STARTED OUT AS JUST FIXING COMPUTERS AT BEST BUY WHILE WORKING FOR CONSOLIDATED RESTAURANT OPERATIONS near 635 and Interstate 35, working for Ken Powers, Cool River, Three Forks, Fox And Hound, Silver Fox, and Dicks Last … Continue reading
- COLABRATION REGARDING BUSINESS INVESTMENT PER QUATEROnline Lesson Introduction to the Technical Side of Photography May 28, 2021 12:00 PM (UTC)60 Minutes Alyssa will introduce you to the important aspects of the technical side of digital photography. The lesson will teach you how to operate the various features of your digital camera so you can finally know what all those buttons … Continue reading
- (no title)SOUNDCLOUD FREDDIE GIBBS LEAVE A MOTHA FUCCING MEASAGE WHAT YOU TRYING TO SAY DAMN IT SHIT??????????????? ANSWER: that shit What People Are Saying “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every … Continue reading
Become a Volunteer
In anxious times, we may want to put neighbors, mail carriers, store clerks and others at ease with a casual smile. But if smiles can’t be seen, how do you greet people? How do you reassure them? How do you flirt? Are there workarounds — a squint, a head tilt, a raised eyebrow?
It’s a conundrum that is stumping many people who want to be both socially responsible and friendly. Coco Briscoe, 38, a comedian in Los Angeles, wears a mask to walk her dog, Daisy, and has been thinking about how to show friendliness to passing strangers.
“It’s like you’re both staring at each other, and you’re smiling, but they can’t see that you’re smiling,” she said. “So it’s just a very awkward interaction with people, and I think it’s going to be that way for a while.”
Dr. Josh Trebach, 30, an emergency medicine physician at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, misses the nonverbal cues that used to make patients feel comfortable. “I would want to smile to assuage someone’s anxiety, show interest or convey warmth to let a patient know that they could trust me,” he said. “Suddenly, all of that was gone.”Image
I’m almost a little bit over-expressive now,” Dr. Trebach added, “to try and compensate for the mask.”
Of course, not everyone is an extroverted smiler, and some people find face coverings liberating — including women who are tired of being told to smile on the street. But masks not only hide grins; they can also make it harder for people to display a whole range of emotions including discomfort, dismay or disdain.
Facial expressions of all kinds are a very important component of human interaction, said David Matsumoto, a psychology professor at San Francisco State University and the director of Humintell, a research company that trains people to read nonverbal cues.
When we wear masks, “we’re missing a major piece of that entire communication package,” he said. But he added that people could adapt their body language. They can nod, for example. Or wave.
pitalkpodcast.wordpress.com 