Once more, we are getting a lesson in the physical reality of the cyber-world:
The recent four day blackout in lower Manhattan (New York City) brought to light a little known Internet bottleneck. The eleven fiber optic cables from Europe to the United States all pass through two facilities in the blackout area. One facility is at 16th Street and 8th Avenue and the other is three kilometers (two miles) to the south on Hudson Street. These places also contain servers for many major Internet sites. Both facilities had backup generators and fuel supplies to keep them going until the power was turned back on. If both facilities were knocked off line, most Internet users in the United States would notice momentary difficultly in reaching web sites in Europe and, until those two sites were back in operation, everyone would find that it took longer (seconds, or more) to reach web sites outside the United States.
The loss of those two sites wouldn't have knocked out the Internet, of course. But people would have felt their loss.
But how many key facilities would need to be physically attacked to cause serious damage?
I keep wondering if our interest in cyber-warfare sometimes gets a little too focused on the digital world while ignoring the physical world that supports the digital world.
I'm still reasonably sure the Internet can't be physically destroyed given its ability to rout around damage. But with physical locations it can certainly be attacked. The question is, how much damage could it endure before breaking down in significant ways? And how many bottlenecks are we creating for an Internet used in commerce rather than in the aftermath of nuclear attack?
In the name of commercial efficiency, the pressure to create more bottlenecks is surely growing, and that works against the robust nature of the network designed to survive damage from a nuclear war.
It is necessary to prepare for war in cyber-space with sophisticated cyber-weapons as have been deployed against Iran. But in the rush to fight in cyber-space, don't forget that a physical smart bomb can simply blow up a room full of enemy cyber-warriors if they have an office park and we know the address.
