The Web Beneath the Waves: The Fragile Cables that Connect our World

What if the Internet goes dark?We think of the Internet as wireless, weightless, ever-present - but its true foundation lies in the ocean`s depths, where nearly 900,000 miles of fiber-optic cables quietly pulse with all the world`s information.In The Web Beneath the Waves, the acclaimed journalist Samanth Subramanian travels from remote Pacific islands to secretive cable-laying operations to reveal the astonishing world of undersea infrastructure. He reveals the fate of Tonga after a volcanic eruption severs its only undersea link to the Internet, meets the men and women engaged in the fiendishly complex work of laying submarine cables, and scrutinizes the acts of `grey zone warfare,` in which ghost ships cut the cables of other countries.Subramanian charts the deep geopolitical tensions, corporate power grabs, environmental risks, and quiet heroics involved in maintaining the Internet`s unseen circulatory system. With his signature clarity and curiosity, he brings to life the cables that stitch continents together - and exposes just how vulnerable our connected lives really are. This is narrative nonfiction at its most urgent and eye-opening: a book that asks what happens when the world goes offline, and who controls the switch.