The 70-year run of the New World Order that claimed liberal democracy
through open market economics through universal communications and
common security agreements would end global inequality and conflict, took
a massive hit this week as Houthi tribesmen literally on camels blew up the
undersea telecommunications cables connecting Europe, India and Asia.
When the Soviet Union’s communist party collapsed in 1989, Stanford
professor Francis Fukuyama triumphantly declared the event as the “End of
History” and the launch of the New World Order as the highest form of
government would create equality, justice, and universal happiness.
The book’s conclusion was ironic, since Karl Marx as the founder of
communism had insisted that history could be reduced to a series of
economic revolutions where capitalism emerged in the wake of feudalism,
and then communism would emerge as the universal highest form of
government to create equality, justice, and universal happiness.
Houthi rebels have been attacking container ships and military vessels in
the Red Sea near Yemen since December in sympathy with Hamas after
its Oct. 7 raid on Southern Israel. According to the Department of Defense,
the Houthis over the last four months had conducted 100 drone and
ballistic missile attacks against ships from 35 different nations that cost an
estimated $10 billion in damages.
The newest Houthi attacks damaged or destroyed at least 5 of the 16
undersea fiberoptic cables that each day provide 17% of the world’s critical
high-speed-bandwidth route for data exchange and internet traffic to the
Middle East, India and Southern Asia.
It’s unclear how quickly the cables can be repaired, given the location of
the subsea cable and the escalating tensions in the area. Furthermore, the
fleets of ships that are capable of making such undersea cable repairs are
usually pre-booked by many months in advance for routine maintenance.
The data outages could affect financial transactions, international trade and
even stock prices. There are no reliable cost estimates for the camel-
mounted Houthi damages, but the costs could easily be $1 billion per day.
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