Most internet travels by wire. Straight through the dang ocean. Josh Dzieza in a feature for The Verge:

These fragile wires are constantly breaking — a precarious system on which everything from banks to governments to TikTok depends.

But thanks to a secretive global network of ships on standby, every broken cable is quickly fixed.

I like thinking about little packets of data traveling at the speed of light with a pod of whales ambling along above.

Josh does a great job with the story. Only 22 boats repairing cable world wide! Most boats lay new cable. The people that do the work are aging out and it’s hard to find new people. Even though the work is incredibly important

If, hypothetically, all these cables were to simultaneously break, modern civilization would cease to function. The financial system would immediately freeze.