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Subsea Communication Cables in Southeast Asia: A Comprehensive Approach Is Needed | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

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By treating undersea cables as critical infrastructure, Southeast Asian stakeholders can better manage geopolitical, environmental, and more conventional risks threatening cable resilience.

Introduction In 1859, the Dutch colonial administration attempted to link its East Indies capital, Batavia (now Jakarta) to the British entrepot of Singapore by way of an undersea cable. The project met with great difficulty and ultimately failure. In many ways, the venture was a product of its era, imperious in scope yet experimental in innovation. It rapaciously extracted from its surroundings and unsurprisingly came up against challenges from the very environment it sought to change.1 Still, the Batavia-Singapore telegraphic line and its contemporaries persisted, paving the way for the…

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