The texts you send overseas go to the bottom of the ocean first. 🌊🌐 Forget satellites. More than 99% of international data crosses the ocean floor, through more than 600 active and planned cable systems linking the continents. Inside, glass fibers thinner than a human hair carry pulses of laser light. A video you send from New York to London crosses the Atlantic in less than a tenth of a second. Those cables break about four times a week. Usually not from sharks or sabotage, but from fishing nets and ship anchors dragging across the seabed. When one snaps, a repair ship sails out, hooks the cable off the ocean floor, and technicians splice the fibers back together on deck. The owners are changing too. Tech giants like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are now among the biggest users, and they’re funding cables of their own. The internet feels weightless. It actually rests on a few hundred cables, a fleet of repair ships, and the companies paying to keep them running. Follow ...