The future of the entire internet will depend on which countries dominate the South China Sea, writes Maurizio Geri.
The future of the entire internet will depend on which countries dominate the South China Sea, writes Maurizio Geri. Dr Maurizio Geri is a former senior NATO analyst who has worked at the NATO Allied Command Transformation in the US, NATO Southern Hub in Italy and NATO HQ in Belgium, and served as an analyst in the Italian Defence General Staff. With the US and Philippines holding the largest-ever military drills in the South China Sea, followed by China and Singapore, tensions over control of the strategic waterway are increasing. As one of the world’s most important shipping lanes for oil, minerals and food, whoever dominates the South China Sea will control over a fifth of global trade. But the most significant economic asset up for grabs in the region is Big Data – and the future of the entire internet depends on which countries dominate the South China Sea. Some 486 undersea cables carry over 99% of all international internet traffic, according to the Washington-based research firm TeleGeography. The US has a first-mover advantage: the bulk of them are controlled by a few American technology giants, namely Google-owner Alphabet, Facebook-owner Meta, Amazon and Microsoft. Transmitting everything from emails and banking transactions to military secrets, these data flows are more valuable than oil. With information at the centre of technological innovation, controlling data is the key to economic productivity. As such, the world’s subsea cabling infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to sabotage and espionage – spy agencies can easily tap into cables on their own territory. That’s why geopolitical rivalry between the US and China has increasingly focused on control of the world’s subsea cabling networks over the last decade. Southeast Asia’s internet economy is forecast to reach $1 trillion by 2030.
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