Samanth Subramanian on the Undersea Cables That Keep the Internet Alive
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2006, then-Senator Ted Stevens coined an infamous term for how to understand the internet: It's a "series of tubes." The funny thing is, that's a fairly accurate description. Underneath the world's oceans, miles and miles of fiber optic-cables send packets of information from one location to the next, serving as the backbone of the internet as know it. This infrastructure is delicate, too: Memorably, a 2022 volcanic eruption cut off the island of Tonga from web access for an extended period of time. Journalist Samanth Subramanian is the author of The Web Beneath the Waves: The Fragile Cables That Connect Our World, a book that explains, in detail, that the internet is not, and has never been, truly weightless or wireless. In fact, the system in place right now is pretty old school and resembles the telegraph cable network of yore. We talk to Subramanian about the strange contradictions of the undersea cable system, how much basic marine geography — like the Strait of Hormuz or the Suez Canal — informs where cables are laid, and how hard it is protect this vulnerable and vital infrastructure.
Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter
Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Oddlots is brought to you by Vanek. For years, investors basically forgot about real assets, |
| 0:05.3 | energy, gold, and infrastructure. But look at what's driving markets now. Central banks loading up |
| 0:10.5 | on gold, massive capex cycles, currencies doing weird things, these assets are at the center of it. |
| 0:17.1 | RACS, the Vanek Real Assets ETF is an actively managed one-stop shop for real assets, |
| 0:22.6 | spanning gold, commodities, natural resource equities, and more. |
| 0:26.1 | Go to vanek.com slash RAAX pod to learn more. |
| 0:30.8 | Fun disclosures later in this episode. |
| 0:33.8 | Some follow the noise. |
| 0:36.3 | Bloomberg follows the money. |
| 0:38.5 | Because behind every headline is a bottom line. |
| 0:42.3 | Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, |
| 0:46.9 | there's a money side to every story. |
| 0:49.6 | And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. |
| 0:53.9 | Get the money side of the story. |
| 0:56.0 | Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. |
| 1:03.2 | Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. |
| 1:08.1 | Music Radio News. |
| 1:22.6 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloy. |
| 1:24.2 | And I'm Joe Wisenthal. |
| 1:26.5 | Joe, I am going to send you a link. |
| 1:27.0 | Okay. |
| 1:46.9 | You're going to open it on your laptop, which we have expressly for this purpose, and tell me what you see. Okay. Okay, I'm putting it. This is a fun experiment. We've never done anything like this before. I know. We've never been so prepared for a podcast as to have a link ready to go. It's a map of undersea. it's actually the Encyclopedia Britannica page of |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 2 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.