Submarine cables cut in the Red Sea.Authorities looking at potential terrorism | Hacker News Reader

Submarine cables cut in the Red Sea.Authorities looking at potential terrorism

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47 pointsjsizzle38 comments

Didn't the Houthis threaten to do this last month?

https://gulfif.org/the-next-casualty-of-the-red-sea-attacks-...

What's the practical effect of this? Other than some inconvenient latency and decreased redundancy...not as much as the headlines suggested?

Can't be cheap to repair it.

no, and pretty impressive if they managed it. I'm getting the feeling they're an underestimated force

You need a boat and an anchor. People do stuff like this all the time by accident.

Any confirmation on this? Their twitter profile links a site with a self-signed certificate, I didn't look further.

Authorities of whom, the tweet is lacking a source or even information about the accident. Not to mention jumping to a terrorism case without any other details.

I don't know how this is on front page.

precisely. this simply inflammatory

I'm sorry, cutting undersea cables is not terrorism.

Yeah I don't think I'd call it terrorism by any reasonable definition. An act of aggression certainly but increasing latency/decreasing bandwidth due to a set of lost links is not by any means terrorism.

Nobody was physically harmed and it shouldn't have any real effect on essential or life preserving services (unless those services are incredibly poorly designed at which point the developers/maintainers should be held at fault).

Anything can be terrorism if it is politically beneficial. This is 2024, after all.

Same as in 2004. It's so political powerful, you can even start a war against it.

Terrorism[1] is committing crime for political purposes, rather then for personal gain, and this definition is well recognized.

Terrorism has never been exclusively categorized as mass casualty attacks (and that's a relatively recent phenomenon, compared to the 70s and 80s with hijackings).

[1] https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority...

Why are you bullshitting people? Straight from your referenced link:

"The calculated use of violence or threat of violence to inculcate fear. Terrorism is intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."

It's categorically terrorism by that definition.

Objectively intended to coerce or intimidate governments: do as you're told if you want to have a viable economy, because so much of today's economy relies on communication.

>"It's categorically terrorism by that definition."

Another BS.

You are forgetting "violence" in that definition. Bar that any attempt to influence government is a terrorism.

I mean, cutting cables is a violent act, property destruction is violence. Unless we're going to go with the weird reddit anarchist definition in which you can destroy whole structures and it isn't violence if nobody gets hurt because property isn't real, man

So the yellow vest were terrorists, as were the red caps. Which is funny, because that last movement was supported by 3 of the richest French industrialist. Can we nationalize them for supporting terrorists?

OH! And French farmers are terrorists too according to your definition of terrorism and violence.

Maybe violence against people and violence against stuff shouldn't be treated the same.

Violence against stuff that is the support infrastructure for people is violence against people.

So 40 years ago, Bretons violent actions against road signs that prevented tourists and French people to recognize places and road names, to bolster their political agenda (dual language signs) is terrorism, since it was clearly against regular French citizens (my father was a terrorist then :/) .

But filling Betancourt's swimming pool with pork shit was not terrorism, since it isn't infrastructure?

1. Correct

2. I don't know

"to inculcate fear" is an essential part of that definition. Using bombers to drop bombs on a sleeping city is terrorism. Dropping bombs onto an undersea cable is not.

> Dropping bombs onto an undersea cable is not.

Of course it is, that's been covered upthread.

Literally the post you're replying to says:

> It's categorically terrorism by that definition.

So, to be clear:

It's categorically terrorism.

No.

Terrorism is when people use terror for political purposes. While it is often synonymous with crime, the "terror" part is rather critical. Most often, the terror is over the target's personal safety, or that of the target's loved ones.

Having an undersea cable cut does not terrify a sane person without extenuating circumstances. Therefore it may be an act of war, but it is not terrorism in the slightest.

Redefining "terrorism" for the purposes of treating lesser criminals under harsh terrorism laws is unethical, immoral, unjust, and downright awful.

So if someone blows up a transformer substation, but no one dies, is that terrorism?

What about a building? A government office? An empty school?

Or here's a better question: what then do you call the use of criminal means, for political purposes, to gain compliance from local population and political authorities, when it doesn't include direct harm against humans and focuses on destruction of property?

Terrorism is acts to instil fear for political ends. Intent matters. If someone blows up a building to make people fearful, then it's terrorism. If someone does it to destroy someone's property, then its vandalism. By your logic, striking and blocking scabs is terrorism.

And so in the current moment, why do you think the Houthis (if they are indeed responsible, but let's assume so for the sake of this argument) are cutting submarine cables?

What do you think the intent behind that was?

I would guess, to be as much of a nuisance as possible to those they percieve themselves to be at war with with what limited capabilities they have. They can't possibly believe that this will have significant economic impact so as to hamper their enemies' capability to continue to wage war. This will strike fear into the hearts of no one. But it's damage, and they can do it, so they do.

So it's the use of destructive measures, which one might describe as "violence", targeted at assets utilized principally by civilians, for the purposes of affecting political change in policy by a government.

Were this to rise in severity from "nuisance", what would you describe that feeling as? What reaction do you think commonly provokes people exposed to negative stimuli into action they don't otherwise want to take?

No. Man, quit trying to massage the definition to make yourself right.

That's dodging the question not a rebuttal.

I don't need to rebut you, you're stretching the definition of "terrorism" to feel right. There's no question to dodge, "so what happens if this activity escalates into terrorism, would that make this terrorism?" The discussion was settled 2 comments ago. "Terrorism" is clearly defined. Breaking things to inconvenience your enemies in warfare is not terrorism.

Terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, for political purposes. [merriam Webster]

Taking out a communication cable is not that by any stretch of your quite substantial definitions below.

> I'm sorry, cutting undersea cables is not terrorism.

Yep. This is vandalism, not terrorism.

But it is a terrorism. By cutting cables you literally can decimate the whole international network for a bunch of countries. Basically for example cut the access to any server outside of intranet.

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