The odds of two, then three different undersea cables carrying much of the telephone and Internet traffic between Europe and the Middle East failing simultaneously seems very improbable. I started wondering if they could have been deliberately damaged, and if so, why?
Unlike the electrical signals from copper cables, the light pulses in fiber-optic lines are very difficult to "tap" without detection. So, if someone were interested in covertly monitoring communications between Europe and the Middle East, it would be nearly impossible to do without being noticed - at least while the lines were operating. But if the lines were "accidentally" cut, in-line monitoring equipment might be added to the cable during the outage, avoiding detection. This monitoring equipment would be far from the location of the break, perhaps replacing a repeater or amplifier with a specially modified version.
Of course I'm just making all this up, and there may be safeguards that prevent such a scenario. Still, it's not completely improbable, so I expect my theory to start spreading across the net any time now.
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