Swedish authorities say they have detected a Chinese ship moving near two telecoms cables that failed within hours of each other on the Baltic Sea bed in recent days.
Prosecutors in Stockholm have launched a preliminary investigation into suspected sabotage, hours after Germany dubbed the cable failure part of a “hybrid operation”.
On Sunday morning at about 10am, Swedish authorities registered problems with a data cable under the Baltic Sea from the Öland island to Lithuania. At 4am on Monday, telecoms operators in Finland and Germany reported problems with another cable called C-Lion-1.
Both cables were damaged in the Swedish economic zone, prompting prosecutors in Stockholm to take the investigation lead.
Oh no… Russia has dragged China in WW3, hasn’t it?
China did this same shit well before Russia brought them into the war.
Where?
There was a pipeline damaged last year under circumstances that seemed to be challenging to rule as accidental. China claimed responsibility, but claimed it wasn’t intentional, but it seems they ignored all communication attempts made to the ship and that the amount of time they dragged anchor along the seabed would have been impossible to not notice.
Thank you. This is news to me. I just hope there were repercussions because such an “oopsie” should still lead to having to pay for the damages done.
I haven’t found anything past the August updates I linked. Someone more local might be able to chime in if there’re some non-English updates out there that I can’t find.
I can’t imagine it’s quick or easy to do repairs in the middle of the sea. 😧
Being that was after the war started, I wouldn’t list that as anything other than a possible attempt to cause gas shortages and economic damages to Ukrianes support.
I’m inclined to agree. Both events seem to involve too many coincidences for it to be unintentional. I have no idea how they would prove this, and moreso what the official response would be.
I’d be very curious to see a video or write-up of how the investigation is done and if there is any deep sea forensics work.
Yeah it would be hard to prove it wasn’t just an idiot dragging many thousands of pounds behind them. But at 60-70 meters deep is deeper (but not unheard of) of a depth for a ship to lay anchor.
For them to then start going again while dragging the anchor and not realize the ship is moving incorrectly for a long distance seems impossible.
This particular instance is sounding more malicious as it seems they have the same ship at the right location to have caused the damage on 2 occasions now. I haven’t gotten to read any updates since they were pinning down the ship’s location data yesterday to see if they’ve found even more showing this was intentional.
We have had recentish events though where we have had extreme disruption caused by ships with the Ever Given in the Suez and the Dali collapsing the bridge to the Baltimore ports due to human error. The Baltimore incident has a nice write up on the investigation, going through the ship maintenance, questioning different people, and going through the ships’s black box data.
I’ve been thinking one of the motivations for the invasion of Ukraine was to secure a larger food supply to keep China fed through an all out trade war. Them shutting down exports to the west might be enough to destabilize things sufficiently to change the world order once the dust settles. Especially if combined with the invasion/destruction of Taiwan.
More like the EU is more likely to be hard on China in the starting trade war.
Lol, the EU can’t produce shit. Without China, it dies.
*looks at ASML just from the top of the head… Ok dude 🤔
Is the rest of my statement incorrect? It will take decades for Europe to ween itself off of China. Until then, China has a lot of power in Europe - and so does the USA.
Europe is the smaller player caught between the US and China. It doesn’t want to develop its own industries for fear of being called “protectionist”, it relies on the US for military protection, it relies on China for a dizzying amount and range of products, materials, and resources, and lets its citizens be heavily influenced by US media.
Until Europe grows a pair and becomes more self-sufficient in terms of energy, good, and services, it will stay acquiescent to the aforementioned powers.
Or, our elites profit greatly from the US induced, China manufactured, product consumerism for landfills. They also benefit greatly from the US borne “print money capitalism” which basically eschews competition in favour of just printing money and buying the competitor. Once our beloved ruling class stops huffing dollarium we’ll be fine.
We can be passive observers and just “let it happen to us” or do something. Vote with our feet, wallets, and of course actually vote. They aren’t going to suddenly change “actually, you know what? I don’t like money anymore. maybe I’ll be a good human now”.
Democracy much like religion is a way of pacifying the masses while you let them choose between illusory candidates. Meanwhile the large interest groups engage in the “real democracy” enacted by their capital. (legal in the EU since 2007 btw, that was the beginning of the end) We the cattle are calm and everything resumes as usual till line doesn’t go up anymore. When that happens, you find a couple of scapegoats like Madoff or Muslims, redirect the cattle’s anger and things resume as usual a couple of years later. While the dollar remains the world reserve currency our civilisation will be stagnant because people are closer to cattle than actual rational agents. And the fences are getting better. People now happily opt in for 24/7 tracking. Our only hope is decoupling from the US, that’s it! Bretton Woods’ legacy needs to die for there to be real democracy. Just from the top of my head, MS “allegedly” bribed several government officials throughout Europe to guarantee the presence of Windows and office in schools at the detriment of open software. Thanks to that we bread an entire generation of people who can barely use a printer or zoom competently. Do you think these are the people that will vote for the wise egalitarian leadership that will bring balance to the force? The only option left is to just opt out of society, be kind to everyone and wait it out till we devolve in idiocracy (like the US) at which point we can start with a clean slate.
what do you mean by that?