Information Warfare, August 1914

In the Neal Stephenson essay I blogged about below he mentions in passing that nation states have never attacked one another’s underwater communications cables in times of war. “It’s like starting a nuclear war,” he quotes cypherpunk Doug Barnes. “It’s easy to do, the results are devastating, and as soon as one country does it all of the others will retaliate” (123). He’s apparently wrong about that, however. This from Robert K. Massie’s Castles of Steel, on the war at sea during World War One:

The war’s first blow in [England’s] home waters was struck . . . by a single, humble vessel. In the misty dawn of August 5, when the war was only five hours old, the British cable ship Teleconia dragged her grappling irons along the muddy bottom of the southern North Sea. Five German overseas cables, snaking down the Channel, from the port city of Emden, on the Dutch frontier, were her quarry. One to Brest, in France, another to Vigo, in Spain, a third to Tenerife, in North Africa, and two to New York. One by one, Teleconia fished up and cut all five of the heavy, slime-covered cables. That same day, a British cruiser severed two German overseas cables near the Azores. Thus, from the war’s first day, Germany was cut off from direct cable communication with the world beyond Europe. (77)

Along with so many of its other technological monstrosities, the “Great War” bequeathed us the onset of modern information warfare.