Ref: AD-2984
Summary: with the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea serving as chokepoints in the global internet cabling system the Iran war has underlined a little discussed vulnerability not just for the region but the world.
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There is a long history dating back to the 1860’s to the laying of submarine cables through the Hormuz Strait, still a key link in a line to enable telegraph traffic between Britain and India. Until the early 1900’s a major relay station existed at the northern tip of Oman’s Musandam Peninsula, in mid strait and known as the Bend. British signals staff posted to this remote outpost faced a lonely existence. When I first worked in the Gulf in 1961, I found the local employees of Cable and Wireless still spoke of the lasting mental strains that had resulted from the long periods of solitude and Morse Code. It was claimed that such was the notoriety of this experience that it had given rise to today’s commonly heard English idiom ‘to go round the bend’. History may be about to repeat itself…..