War at the bottom of the sea between the US and China, here's what's happening behind the scenes

Deep down, submerged in fact, another war is brewing between China and the United States. A deep conflict, in the sense that it has to do with the submarine cables that allow the internet to work across the planet, and the fear that if China starts to interfere with it, it could start spying there too, as it is accused of doing with TikTok. The latest battle ended in February, when New Jersey-based U.S. submarine cable company SubCom LLC began laying a $600 million, more than 12,000-mile fiber cable to carry data from Asia to Europe along the seabed. sea ??through Africa and the Middle East, at super-fast speeds, called Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6, or SeaMeWe-6 for short, will connect a dozen countries as it travels from Singapore to France, crossing three seas and the Indian Ocean. The project should be completed in 2025. The client is a consortium of a dozen companies including US-based Microsoft Corp, French telecommunications company Orange SA and three Chinese state-owned companies China Telecommunications Corporation (China Telecom). But three years ago the contract was poised to be awarded to Chinese company HMN Technologies Co Ltd, majority-owned by Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, and thanks to substantial subsidies with which Beijing had reduced its costs. But the US government, concerned about possible Chinese espionage on these sensitive communications cables, maneuvered decisively to