NATO is ready to help Finland and Estonia as Finnish authorities probe an oil tanker that sailed from a Russian port over the possible “sabotage” of a power cable linking the two member countries, alliance chief Mark Rutte has said.
"Spoke with (Estonian Prime Minister) Kristen Michal about reported possible sabotage of Baltic Sea cables. NATO stands in solidarity with Allies and condemns any attacks on critical infrastructure.
“We are following investigations by Estonia and Finland, and we stand ready to provide further support,” Mr Rutte said on X.
Earlier, Finnish authorities said they were investigating an oil tanker that sailed from a Russian port for the “sabotage” of a power cable linking Finland and Estonia that was damaged the previous day.
The Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, was boarded by a Finnish coast guard crew which took command in the Baltic Sea and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters, a coast guard official told a press conference.
“From our side we are investigating grave sabotage,” Robin Lardot, Director of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, said.
“According to our understanding an anchor of the vessel that is under investigation has caused the damage,” he added.
I kinda hate to say this, because I hate Musk, but this is pretty much what Starlink does. It uses lasers to transfer data from satellite to satellite (or it’s supposed to, not sure if it actually works yet or is just vaporware). Because of their low orbit, the latency isn’t too bad. Not as good as a fiber link of course, but still usable. It’s probably the best alternative we currently have to underwater fiber links. Because it’s somewhat above the atmosphere in orbit, it sidesteps a lot of issues with laser data transfers.
However I still think Starlink is insanely stupid, it costs so much money and it needs so many launches all the time to keep up with decay. I’m sure it only exists to keep SpaceX afloat, it’s the biggest customer aside from the US government subsidies. There is no way it can ever be made profitable and even if it could, we shouldn’t because it’s so wasteful.
To be clear: Starlink isn’t designed to work as a replacement to fiber cables, it dumps all data to ground based equipment as soon as possible and uses the same network as we all do. But they could in principle be used as a replacement with poor latency and poor throughput, but in a disaster kind of situation.