Undersea Cables Affirmative

Plan Text
Plan: the United States federal government should substantially increase its
undersea cable development in the Earths oceans.

Security Advantage

1AC
Contention_is Security
Undersea cables are vulnerablehaphazard model, natural vulnerability and
managerial disconnect guarantee a critical problem
Sechrist, Vaishnav, Goldsmith, and Choucri 2012Office of Naval Research (Michael Sechrist, Chintan
Vaishnav, Daniel Goldsmith, and Nazli Choucri, The Dynamics of Undersea Cables: Emerging Opportunities and Pitfalls
http://ecir.mit.edu/images/stories/The%20Dynamics%20of%20Undersea%20Cables%20Final%20(3).pdf, 7/22/14, AMJ)
In sum, we argue undersea

cables architecture are governed under an ad-hoc, haphazard model

on

the national and international level. Also, while the above focuses on the specifics of undersea cable permits in the United States, a

similar complex web of decision processes pervade in general. The foregoing discussion highlights several
facts about the dynamics of managing undersea cable infrastructure: its critical nature given the Internets
growing reliance on it; its vulnerability to natural and human-made disruptions and the associated
impact; and the growing complexity of its governance with increasing number of stakeholders. Moreover, the ad-hoc government of
undersea cables shows how these

changes have occurred faster than the ability of the governing

institutions to understand their ramifications. The result is a disconnect between critical
challenges facing the management of undersea cable infrastructure and the tools available for
it. The goal of this and the following section is to reduce this disconnect by providing a casual framework that describes the
dynamics of undersea cables, by showing critical linages among underwater sea cable actors and impacts.

Attacks are comingsymbolic appeal and cyberspace connections make

undersea cables specifically vulnerable to terrorism
Saffo 13Senior fellow for the Council's Strategic Foresight Initiative (Paul Saffo, Disrupting Undersea Cables: Cyberspace's
Hidden Vulnerability, The International Relations and Security Network, http://www.isn.ethz.ch/DigitalLibrary/Articles/Detail/?id=162869, 4/15/13, AMJ)
Behind the abstract virtual cloud of cyberspace is a very real physical infrastructure with some surprising vulnerabilities. For
example, want to throw all of Manhattan into cyberspace chaos? Then disrupt the 75 Broad Street CoLo or NYIs New York
datacenter on John Street. But if you really want to disrupt the Internet globally, then mess with the biggest chokepoints of all -- the
undersea fiber-optic cables that move vast volumes of data from continent to continent. This sounds like the stuff of James Bond
and deep-diving submarines, but ocean-crossing

cables have to pass through shallow water at either

end and come ashore somewhere. This last mile is where problems like dragged anchors can
cause no end of mischief. Making matters worse, the shore nodes are astonishingly
concentrated. For example on the US east coast, virtually all of the trans-Atlantic undersea cables come ashore at three
locations between Long Island and southern New Jersey. On the US west coast, the vast bulk of cable traffic is concentrated in two
locations, one in Central California and the other in Oregon. However one of the most concentrated cable landing points on the
globe is Egypt, where thanks to the proximity of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, virtually all of the cables linking Europe to the
Middle East and Asia come ashore. In fact, it is hard to imagine anywhere on the planet where more cables are clustered in such
close proximity. The amount of bandwidth that crosses Egypt is breathtaking: the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable, which the divers are accused
of attempting to cut, has a total capacity of 1.28Tbit/s. Multiply that by the number of other cables shown in Figure 1, and it
becomes clear that if one wanted to create a global cyberspace disruption, Egypt would be a convenient place to start. It is
anyones guess what the divers were attempting off of Alexandria, but

attacks on cables are not without

precedent . In 2007, a gang of knucklehead pirates yanked up portions of two cable systems off the coast of Vietnam in the
mistaken belief that the fiber-optic lines held valuable copper, which they hoped to resell on the scrap market. And in 2010,
terrorists cut a cable near Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines. In the last century, the US and Soviet Union had multiple cable-related
tangles, most famously in 1959 when a Soviet trawler, the Novorossilsk, caused twelve breaks in five transatlantic cables off of
Newfoundland. There

is no shortage of infrastructure that terrorists might attack , but fiber-optic

cables hold a symbolic appeal, being the vehicle that delivers cyberspace to the masses
worldwide and also the conduit for global financial transactions. It is easy to imagine anti-globalization
zealots concluding that cutting a cable is just the way to stop decadent Western culture from polluting the minds of locals in places

like Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Unfortunately, the cables they might cut also serve countless other nations so any

disruption would have a regional if not global impact . Disrupting cables isnt rocket science. The image of
SCUBA divers sawing away at a cable on the seabed is thriller-worthy stuff, but there are easier ways to do the job. Snagging a cable
with an anchor or fishing net will also break a cable as evidenced by the fact that there are 150-odd accidental cable disruptions
caused by shipping and fishing gear each year. Neer-do-wells who prefer to stay dry also have no shortage of targets to attack,
including shore side stations where undersea cables land and terrestrial cable links like those running between the Mediterranean
and Red Seas in Egypt. The

vast bulk of the globes communications are carried on undersea fiberoptic cables, with satellite communications coming in a very distant second. There is considerable redundancy in the system,
but if enough capacity is lost, the effect can be dramatic. In early 2008, three cables (including SEA-ME-WE-4)
were cut between Egypt and Italy. Despite aggressive rerouting, over fourteen countries ended up losing web connectivity. The
Maldives were completely cut off, while over eighty percent of Indian traffic was affected along with slightly lower outages among
Gulf states including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. As already mentioned, the

global undersea cable system

experiences several hundred disruptions per year, and the consortia operating the various cable networks
maintain specialized cable repair resources at the ready to respond within twenty-four hours of a failure. But even when response is
fast, repairing a cable is a complex and time-consuming process. The broken ends must be located, hauled
up from the seabed and the broken optical fibers re-spliced in a complex process that involves everything from grappling gear and
heavy winches to microscopes and delicate probes. Break enough cables at once and it is anyones guess how quickly resources can
be deployed to bring things back to normal. It is also anyones guess whether cable cutting will remain merely an occasional
headache or become a serious infrastructure threat. That said, we note that the news attention being given to the Egyptian divers
can only work to bring the vulnerabilities of the undersea cable network to the attention of individuals inclined to disrupt it. This

is

certainly not the last time we will read about individuals seeking to cut the communication
links that binds cyberspaceand the globetogether.

Cables are critical to the internet any disruptions would devastate

international communications
APEC 12 (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Policy Support Unit, a forum for 21 Pacific Rim member economies that seeks to
promote free trade and economic cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific region. APEC Policy Support Unit Economic Impact of
Submarine Cable Disruptions December 2012)
<http://www.suboptic.org/uploads/Economic%20Impact%20of%20Submarine%20Cable%20Disruptions.pdf>~BCai

The present study and the economic impact model were prepared for the Policy Support Unit
of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). They serve to fulfil the goals of the APEC Supply Chain
Connectivity Framework Action Plan (SCFAP), resolved by the APEC member economies, which contains under its Chokepoint 7 the
protection of submarine cables. The

objective is to enhance the security and quality of cross-border

communications. The amount of data and information generated, sent and received through
the global submarine telecommunications cable network in recent years has experienced
unmatched growth and exceeded any kind of information transmission previously known by
far. Deployed international bandwidth increased at a compound annual rate of 57 percent
between 2007 and 2011. The situation is no different in the Asia-Pacific region. Submarine cables carry over
97% of intercontinental data traffic as they provide a more efficient means of transmitting
telecommunications than satellites. Two reasons account for the superiority of submarine cables: They are the
only technology that can transmit large amounts of information across bodies of water with
low latencies (delays), and they do so at low costs. It is important for all APEC member economies to recognize
the fact that modern economies and societies are very much dependent on uninterrupted global
data connectivity. Member economies should be aware of the importance of submarine
cables and the risk to trade in goods and services, international financial markets, social
welfare, political stability, and domestic security posed by submarine cable disruptions. Despite
being examples of advanced technology, submarine cables are susceptible to damage. Cable systems may
be disrupted for a number of reasons, each of which has a different profile in terms of the
likelihood that their occurrence could damage the overall network performance of an

economy. The hazards to submarine cable-bound communication can be categorized into

three groups: natural hazards to the cables themselves, man-made hazards to the cables
themselves, and hazards to the remaining infrastructure, especially landing stations and IT
network management systems. Insufficient availability of repair vessels is a further hazard. Three especially
vulnerable choke points that require special attention were identified: the Strait of Malacca
between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia; the Strait of Luzon between Chinese Taipei and
the Philippines; and the South China Sea.

Internet prevents collapse of civilizationprevents spread of disease, predicts

natural disasters, mitigates tyranny, increases knowledge production, prevents
environmental degradation
Eagleman 10 Six ways the internet will save civilization
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/12/start/apocalypse-no David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and writer at Baylor
College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law.

Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. Usually this
results from: natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease, poor
information flow and corruption. But were luckier than our predecessors because we
command a technology that no one else possessed: a rapid communication network that finds
its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in which the net has vastly
reduced the threat of societal collapse. Epidemics can be deflected by telepresence. One of
our more dire prospects for collapse is an infectious-disease epidemic. Viral and bacterial epidemics
precipitated the fall of the Golden Age of Athens, the Roman Empire and most of the empires of the Native Americans. The
internet can be our key to survival because the ability to work telepresently can inhibit
microbial transmission by reducing human-to-human contact. In the face of an otherwise
devastating epidemic, businesses can keep supply chains running with the maximum number
of employees working from home. This can reduce host density below the tipping point
required for an epidemic. If we are well prepared when an epidemic arrives, we can fluidly shift into a self-quarantined
society in which microbes fail due to host scarcity. Whatever the social ills of isolation, they are worse for the microbes than for us.

The internet will predict natural disasters. We are witnessing the downfall of slow central control in the media:
news stories are increasingly becoming user-generated nets of up-to-the-minute information. During the recent California wildfires,
locals went to the TV stations to learn whether their neighbourhoods were in danger. But the news stations appeared most
concerned with the fate of celebrity mansions, so Californians changed their tack: they uploaded geotagged mobile-phone pictures,
updated Facebook statuses and tweeted.

The balance tipped: the internet carried news about the fire
more quickly and accurately than any news station could. In this grass-roots, decentralised
scheme, there were embedded reporters on every block, and the news shockwave kept ahead
of the fire. This head start could provide the extra hours that save us. If the Pompeiians had
had the internet in 79AD, they could have easily marched 10km to safety, well ahead of the
pyroclastic flow from Mount Vesuvius. If the Indian Ocean had the Pacifics networked tsunami-warning system,
South-East Asia would look quite different today. Discoveries are retained and shared. Historically, critical information has required
constant rediscovery. Collections of learning -- from the library at Alexandria to the entire Minoan civilisation -- have fallen to the
bonfires of invaders or the wrecking ball of natural disaster. Knowledge is hard won but easily lost. And information that survives
often does not spread. Consider smallpox inoculation: this was under way in India, China and Africa centuries before it made its way
to Europe. By the time the idea reached North America, native civilisations who needed it had already collapsed. The net solved the
problem. New discoveries catch on immediately; information spreads widely. In this way, societies can optimally ratchet up, using
the latest bricks of knowledge in their fortification against risk. Tyranny is mitigated. Censorship of ideas was a familiar
spectre in the last century, with state-approved news outlets ruling the press, airwaves and copying machines in the USSR, Romania,
Cuba, China, Iraq and elsewhere. In many cases, such as Lysenkos agricultural despotism in the USSR, it directly contributed to the

a more successful strategy has been to confront free speech with

free speech -- and the internet allows this in a natural way. It democratises the flow of
information by offering access to the newspapers of the world, the photographers of every
collapse of the nation. Historically,

nation, the bloggers of every political stripe. Some posts are full of doctoring and dishonesty whereas others strive
for independence and impartiality -- but all are available to us to sift through. Given the attempts by some governments to build

Human capital is vastly increased.

Crowdsourcing brings people together to solve problems. Yet far fewer than one per cent of
the worlds population is involved. We need expand human capital. Most of the world not
have access to the education afforded a small minority. For every Albert Einstein, Yo-Yo Ma or
Barack Obama who has educational opportunities, uncountable others do not. This
squandering of talent translates into reduced economic output and a smaller pool of problem
solvers. The net opens the gates education to anyone with a computer. A motivated teen anywhere on
firewalls, its clear that this benefit of the net requires constant vigilance.

the planet can walk through the worlds knowledge -- from the webs of Wikipedia to the curriculum of MITs OpenCourseWare. The

Energy
expenditure is reduced. Societal collapse can often be understood in terms of an energy
budget: when energy spend outweighs energy return, collapse ensues. This has taken the form of
deforestation or soil erosion; currently, the worry involves fossil-fuel depletion. The internet addresses the energy
problem with a natural ease. Consider the massive energy savings inherent in the shift from
paper to electrons -- as seen in the transition from the post to email. Ecommerce reduces the
need to drive long distances to purchase products. Delivery trucks are more eco-friendly than individuals driving
new human capital will serve us well when we confront existential threats weve never imagined before.

around, not least because of tight packaging and optimisation algorithms for driving routes. Of course, there are energy costs to the
banks of computers that underpin the internet -- but these costs are less than the wood, coal and oil that would be expended for the
same quantity of information flow.

Internet access strengthens democracy, benefits development, supports

cultural diversity, key to freedom
Reding 6 The internetkey to freedom, democracy, and economic development http://europa.eu/rapid/pressrelease_SPEECH-06-650_en.htm Viviane Reding is a member of the European Parliament and Vice President of the European
Commission responsible for Information Society and Media. (KQ)
Let me recall the

overarching principles that shaped the process of the World Summit on Information Society and which
should guide us in my view through our discussions in the coming days and months on the future of the
Internet, in the IGF framework and in negotiations between governments. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the need
to respect fundamental human rights and the need to protect freedom of expression. In just a few
years, the Internet has undoubtedly turned into one of the most dynamic communication tools
the world has ever seen. The flow of information that it facilitates strengthens democratic
processes, stimulates economic growth and allows for cross-fertilizing exchanges of
knowledge in a way never seen before. Too often however, this very freedom is under attack from
those that do not value freedom of expression or disregard the economic and social benefits
of allowing a free flow of information within and across borders. Freedom is too often seen as a threat by
those who do not value human rights or want to impose their vision of the world or their religious beliefs. A key objective for the
European Commission is therefore to keep the Internet as an open and censorship-free zone where all the world's citizens can
communicate freely with each other without needing to seek the permission of anyone else, not least their governments, to do so,
in line with internationally recognised fundamental rights. Secondly, we

should acknowledge the benefits the

Internet can bring to development policies , and Tunis has taught us all a lot in this respect.
The benefits of the Internet must be shared by all the world's citizens, not just those in
Northern Europe, Northern America and South East Asia. In other words, the digital divide needs to
be bridged. Much of this will have to do with improving access to the necessary hardware,
software and connectivity in developing countries. Internet is for all. This is why the European Union, which is
already the worlds largest donor of development aid, will continue to work on bridging the digital divide. Mobile telephony and
satellite communications offer promising solutions in that respect. Let me add a point: bridging the digital divide is not just a matter
of bringing screens and cables to all parts of the world, important though such infrastructures are. An

equally important

dimension is the recognition of the extent and value of cultural diversity within the global
village created by the Internet.

Democracy laundry listsolves war, nuclear weapons, ethnic cleansing,

terrorism, the environment, and international security
Diamond 95Senior Fellow at Hoover Institute (Larry Diamond, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments,
Issues and Imperatives,
http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/PDF/Promoting%20Democracy%20in%20the%201990s%20Actors%20and%20Inst
ruments,%20Issues%20and%20Imperatives.pdf, 12/95, AMJ)
This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia
nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal

drugs intensifies
through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with
authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear ,
chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate . The very source of life on Earth, the global
ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are
associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality,
accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that
govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not
aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments
do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency.
Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of
mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and
enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are
more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the
destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal
obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their
own borders, they

respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law ,
democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international
security and prosperity can be built.

UQ Status Quo Doesnt Solve

US infrastructure lacking
Sechrist 12 New Threats, Old Technology: Vulnerabilities in Undersea Communications Cable Network Management
Systems http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/sechrist-dp-2012-03-march-5-2012-final.pdf Michael Sechrist is a Former Project
Manager and Research Fellow for Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR) at Harvards Belfer Center.
As a technology system with physical, logical, and human components, cables

have long been a high-risk, single point of

potential failure. For highly connected nations, both developing and developed, the consequence of failure is higher
today than ever, as global Internet traffic has surged, and much of the worlds commerce and
security now relies on cable for nearly all its voice and data needs. Undersea communication
cables are, in fact, the only technology that can transmit large amounts of bandwidths across
bodies of water at low latencies (delays) and low costs. In fact, undersea cable systems worldwide transmit nearly 99 percent of all
trans-oceanic Internet and data traffic.In the U.S., over 90 percent of international voice and data traffic is
transmitted via fiber. Little can substitute for cable. In the event of a catastrophic failure to the
entire cable architecture, for example, satellites and other technologies would likely be able to recoup only
a sliver of that capacity. With the world so dependent on cable systems, the technology needs to be among the
most reliable in the world. Industry makes it so: cables are operational with up to 5 nines reliability, or 99.999 percent of the time.
Only highly critical systems such as space shuttle technology and nuclear weapons security have similar reliability. High reliability comes at high cost.
Since undersea cable deployment is expensive, forces of history and economies of scale have, over time, concentrated cable landing sites in a few
geographic areas. From GIS data, at least ten major cable chokepoints exist around the world today. For example, much

of the U.S.
trans-Atlantic bandwidth comes ashore in just a few locations within a 30-mile radius of New
York City.14 Some in the industry claim that nearly all that same trans-Atlantic traffic then funnels into one
pipe under a single building in downtown Manhattan, contravening the popular belief of
extraordinary redundancy and resiliency within todays telecommunications infrastructure.

US needs more undersea cablesexisting ones arent in use, security is

ineffective, lacks convergence, and needs redundancy
Gingold 13Burma Journalist (Naomi Gingold, Burmas Shaky Internet Connection and the NSA Surveillance Scandal Have
More in Common than You Think, Down to the Wires,
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/11/nsa_surveillance_scandal_and_burma_s_terrible_internet_have_
something_in.2.html, 11/27/13, AMJ)

Heavy rains or a shovel striking a cable can knock out a terrestrial link for days. As more users log
on during the day in Burma, the Internet gets slower and slower, because theres just not enough domestic fiber (bandwidth in the
domestic network) in the country to support the amount of people going online. (Although YouTube isnt censored anymore,
streaming a YouTube video is practically impossible in downtown Yangon unless youre sitting at one of the citys most elite hotels.)

In the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber in the ground, some of which are
never even used . The construction and security of Internet cables is surprisingly low , even
in countries with highly developed networks. Heavy rains or a shovel striking a cable can knock out a terrestrial
link for days, while a rogue anchor or an undersea earthquake can rupture a submarine cable, leaving it out of commission for
anywhere from three to six weeks. Redundancy

on internal networks is also key to minimizing outages .

If one cable breaks, as long as there are alternate routes for the data to take, users wont feel much of a slowdown. In a system as
sparse as Burmas, though, losing one major connection can wreak havoc on the network. The

physical connections are

important over in the States, too: Regardless of whether youre using cable, DSL, or fiber, long cords snake out of your
home, travel under city streets and over bridges, and link your modem to the network of your Internet service provider. If, for
example, you want to load your Gmail account but use Comcast as your home Internet provider, your Gmail account information,
stored in a Google data center, needs to traverse Googles physical network and get on to Comcasts network in order to get to you.
Internet exchange points (IXP), enormous warehouse-like buildings located around the world, are the key junctions in the Internet
where the physical networks of Internet companies, large and small (Google, Verizon, Facebook, AT&T, etc.), directly connect to
exchange information. Inside the IXP, your Gmail information request enters Googles routers and network, then heads out on
Googles privately leased or owned cables, often traveling on subsea links toward Googles foreign data centers. Burmas recent

Internet problems, as well the latest revelations about NSAs monitoring of Internet traffic, highlight how much of our lives have
become reliant on the physical pieces (infrastructure) of our world that we often know little about. Unless something completely
breaks or some spy agency somewhere is accused of snooping, people just dont pay much attention to the physical wiring of the
Internet. According to reports, the NSAs MUSCULAR program taps into Google and Yahoos internal networks. But data on Google
and Yahoos privately leased or owned cables can cross cities, IXPs, oceans, and countries, so that information by itself doesnt
explain very precisely where on the physical network the NSA was monitoring. Speculations exist, but details are still unknown.

For efficiency, it would make sense for the NSA to monitor a place with a convergence of
Internet pipes and traffic. Paul Brodsky, a senior analyst at TeleGeography, a telecommunications research and
consulting firm known for its detailed and beautiful maps of the Internet, is one of many who suggest that the logical place would
be at the submarine cable landing stations. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of miles of domestic wiring funnel into
roughly 35 submarine cables on the East Coast. These cables begin their journey across the Atlantic from one of about 19 landing
stations in the eastern United States. In the United Kingdom, where more monitoring supposedly happened, there are roughly 31
known landing stations. (See TeleGeographys interactive submarine cable map.) If the NSA knows the locations of Googles foreign
data centers, the cables right outside the data centers would be another potentially useful spot to tap. (Google only publicly
acknowledges the existence of seven foreign data centers, but Pingdom, a company that does website and Internet performance
monitoring put this map on its blog of where the folks at Data Center Knowledge think there are more.) IXPs could also be
attractive spots for monitoring. As disclosed in the reports on PRISM, the NSA already subpoenas vast quantities of information from
several large tech companies (although most have denied that they hand over user data). It

wouldnt be much of a leap

to suggest that governments also serve warrants to companies that operate large IXPs.
US cables old and tech outdatedUSFG needs funds

Sechrist 3/23/10 Cyberspace in Deep Water: Protecting Undersea Communications Cables

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/PAE_final_draft_-_043010.pdf Michael Sechrist is a Former Project Manager and Research
Fellow for Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR) at Harvards Belfer Center.

From the list of U.S.

cables, one can see that many cables are almost a decade old. A recent study pointed out that a cable
systems life now averages 18 years (see graph below)Many systems will soon reach their 25-year half-life (see
Appendix C). It is also important to note that many were built before the events of 9/11 and the creation
of DHS. Critical infrastructure protection, especially involving cables and cable landing
stations, was not on the radar of cable builders when these systems were being laid. Thus if
new systems are built, the U.S. government will have or needs to create an opportunity to influence
cable operators to build route diversity into the projects. Finding a way to build extra, possibly
more expensive security measures into cable systems will require more capital (CAPEX) and
operational (OPEX) expenditures. Implementing government security plans into the bottom line profit motive of
Some of the cables in use today may not be able to be replaced because the technology is outdated.

companies is a daunting challenge, particularly because a lack of communication exists today.

Status quo doesnt solvelack of redundancies risk $1 trillion of the banking

industry
Matis 12US Navy Commander (Michael Matis, The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat, Strategy
Research, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf, 7/3/14, AMJ)
Douglas Burnett, a legal expert on undersea cables notes that international

banking institutions process over $ 1

trillion dollars per day via undersea cables. Any disruptions of these cables would severely
impact global banking . Indeed, Stephen Malphrus, Chief of Staff to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, recently
noted, When communication networks go down, the financial services sector does not grind to a halt, rather it snaps to a halt.

Even though there are hundreds of cables crossing the global seabed, there are just not
enough undersea communication network redundancies available to handle the vast
amount of bandwidth needed to keep global banking transactions in check.

Current solutions are unprotected and uncoordinated

Matis 12US Navy Commander (Michael Matis, The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat, Strategy
Research, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf, 7/3/14, AMJ)

Undersea cables are vital infrastructure to the global economy and the worlds
communication system. Undersea cables account for 95% of the worlds international voice
and data traffic (Military, Government, Emergency Response, Air Traffic, Subway, Rail, and Port Traffic) while satellites account
for less than 5%. The protection of these cables and their vulnerabilities to man-made and natural disruptions are
important to the global community and in need of an overarching organization to coordinate
information sharing among the various entities tasked to minimize cable disruptions. The lack of any agreed upon
international, tiered protection scheme for global undersea cable routes or a global grid restoration plan represents critical
global infrastructure vulnerability.

UQ Cables Vulnerable
Undersea cables are vulnerablecapacity constraints, natural disruption, cable
concentration and Internet traffic all pose a risk
Sechrist, Vaishnav, Goldsmith, and Choucri 2012Office of Naval Research (Michael Sechrist, Chintan
Vaishnav, Daniel Goldsmith, and Nazli Choucri, The Dynamics of Undersea Cables: Emerging Opportunities and Pitfalls
http://ecir.mit.edu/images/stories/The%20Dynamics%20of%20Undersea%20Cables%20Final%20(3).pdf, 7/22/14, AMJ)
The problem, however, is that the

undersea cable infrastructure is susceptible to several types of

vulnerability , including: rising capacity constraints, increased exposure to disruption from

both natural and manmade sources and emerging security risks from cable concentration in
dense geographical networks. Moreover, even under normal working conditions, there is a concern whether
governance-as-usual can keep up with the future of Internet traffic. In this paper, we explore the impact
of these problems on the dynamics of managing undersea cable infrastructure.

Cables vulnerable nowlanding sites

Sechrist 12 New Threats, Old Technology: Vulnerabilities in Undersea Communications Cable Network Management
Systems http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/sechrist-dp-2012-03-march-5-2012-final.pdf Michael Sechrist is a Former Project
Manager and Research Fellow for Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR) at Harvards Belfer Center. (KQ)

The U.S. State Department listed the worlds cable landing sites as among the most critical of
infrastructures for the United States. With good reason: by gaining access to terminals located within
cable landing sites, or to control systems managing the fiber-optic wavelengths themselves, a hacker could acquire
control over portions of international data and voice traffic and, potentially, the power to
disrupt or degrade significant portions of states cyber infrastructure. That capability is prized by defense
and intelligence agencies the world over. Nor are governments alone: cyber criminals, hackers, terrorists
and other non-state actors are determined to acquire this capability. With the risk of attack
and the cost of compromise high, it is critical that industry and government treat cable system
physical security and access with the utmost seriousness and concern even to the same five nines
they accord other critical infrastructure, like nuclear power plants. To date, however, that has not occurred.

Cables vulnerableman-made and natural disasters

RAND No Date Submarine Cable Infrastructure
http://www.prgs.edu/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1395/MR1395.appi.pdf RAND Corporation (Research ANd
Development) is a nonprofit global policy think tank formed to offer research and analysis on global policy issues and decision
making. (KQ)
These fiber

optic networks offer a number of security advantages over satellite

communications. Fiber optic cables are thought to be much harder to eavesdrop on than
satellites and have more dependable installation and repair practices. However, those fiber optic
cables are in many ways significantly more vulnerable than is commonly thought. Submarine
cables already face many man-made and natural disasters. Anchors dropped from ships and
dredging fishing nets are two of the most common. The occasionally volatile nature of the seabed can expose a
previously buried segment of cable. Between 1985 and 1987, AT&T found that its first deep-sea submarine fiber optic cable (laid
between the Canary Islands, Grand Canaria and Tenerife) suffered periodic outages because of

frequent attacks of the

crocodile shark , on the cables. In deep ocean, the cables often lie unprotected
on the ocean floor; cables in areas closer to the shore, where seabed activity might include
fishing, are usually both armored and buried some two to three feet deep in the ocean floor.
The cables need only be bent to suffer significant damage.
Pseudocarcharias kamoharai, or

Cables susceptible to attacktesting fails

Matis 12 The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf
Michael Matis is a Commander in the US Navy who has more than 20 years of experience providing strategic management solutions
to the Navy. (KQ)
There was a belief that if cables could be identified through nautical charts, damage caused by fishing nets or a ships anchor
would be alleviated. Identifying

undersea cables on nautical charts is a logical engineering solution for the cable
industry, but it could be a security nightmare and/or vulnerability from a possible terrorist strike
because the exact location of undersea cables could be exploited. If the exact location of the
36 cables in the U.S were identified, a successful attack on a few of these locations could
affect roughly 95% of East coast Internet traffic. There are redundancies to mitigate a terrorist strike on undersea
cables but, the possibility of something like this happening is feasible. What cannot be overlooked is that
the impact of such a failure on international communications and economic stability could be
devastating. Also, it is not known whether the international cable consortium and government entities involved in the
protection of undersea cables has tested the system against such an attack. Research indicates that there have been
no international tests of cable system defense and repairs, only limited national tests that
tend to ignore the international component.

Cables weaklack of armor, no patrols, attractive to saboteurs, susceptible to man-made

mishaps

Chang 13 Why Undersea Cables are More Vulnerable than You Think http://www.wired.com/2013/04/how-vulnerable-areundersea-internet-cables/ Alexandra Chang is a freelance journalist who writes mainly about technology. She has her BA from UC
Berkeley and her writing has been featured in magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Mens Journal, Details, Dwell, The Atlantic, The
Bold Italic, AllThingsD, Macworld and VegNews. (KQ)
Thats not to say it didnt happen, and so far, its one of the explanations the Egyptian military has offered in the five days since

naval forces arrested three men alleged to have attempted to cut an undersea cable off the
coast of Alexandria. The head of Egypt Telecom said the incident caused a 60 percent drop in
internet speeds. The men have insisted they cut the cable by mistake. Egyptian officials havent offered any further details on
what exactly happened to the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4 for short) cable beyond saying the military
stopped a criminal operation. Regardless of what exactly happened, the

incident underscores the vulnerability

of the worlds undersea communications cables to damage, intentional or not. Nearly 200
undersea fiber optic cables link the worlds telecommunications, and they are for the most
part poorly armored, rarely patrolled and only occasionally monitored. Telecommunications market
research firm TeleGeography recently released an intricate map (ironically, it is sponsored by Telecom Egypt) that traces the routes
these cables follow. When

a major cable breaks (or gets cut), it can severely slow down internet
connection speeds and even put countries completely in the dark . A cut cable off the coast of
Alexandria in 2008 left Egypt, India, Pakistan and Kuwait in the dark. A 2006 earthquake in
Taiwan damaged several cables and cut off communication to Hong Kong, South East Asia and
China. There has been some suggestion that the guys in Alexandria were treasure hunters who thought the cable might contain
copper, Simpson said. It wouldnt be the first time someone cut a line trying to strike it rich. Two years ago, a Georgian
woman struck a fiber optic cable while digging for copper, cutting off internet access to
neighboring Armenia for five hours. Historically, however, undersea cables are more susceptible to
accidental breakage by ship anchors, fish trawlers and natural disasters. Tim Stronge, a researcher at
Telegeography, says such mishaps snap cables about 100 times a year. Some countries try to prevent breakages
by providing detailed nautical maps and levying heavy fines for dropping anchor or casting nets in close proximity to cables. The
industry is accustomed to cables breaking, Stronge said. They are armored when they are close to shore and generally they are
buried slightly under the sea floor closer to the beach. A single submarine cable is anywhere from 0.75 to 2.5 inches thick. The
armored cables closer to shore can have up to two layers of galvanized wires protecting the fiber optic core (.pdf). These arent the
kind of cables you cut with a pair of wire cutters. That said, nothing is impossible, which is why it

is somewhat surprising
that there is little security in place to protect these vital cables from sabotage or terrorism .
Other than obscurity and a few feet of sand, [the cables] are just there, Andrew Blum, author of
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, told Wired. The staff at a cable landing station might patrol the path to the beach

landing once or twice a day, but otherwise Ive

never heard of or seen any constant security. A lack of

security can leave cables vulnerable to attack. Some telecoms and governments use radar
tracking systems to monitor the area around these cables. Such technology detects when a
ship is getting dangerously close to a cable and can warn the vessel of its proximity. But Blum
says this high level of awareness can be a boon to saboteurs seeking the exact location of
certain cables. In places like Egypt, undersea cables are especially vulnerable because there is a bottleneck of 14 cables
coming out of both Alexandria and Cairo. Eight of them connect to the shores of Alexandria. Cutting cables in this area would have a
domino effect that would hurt connectivity in many countries. Whats true for shipping is true for the internet, Blum noted.
Cutting these cables would effectively slow down internet speeds in more than just Egypt. A ship anchor recently damaged six cables
off the coast of Alexandria in February and led to outages in several East African countries. With

so much of the
continents connectivity tied to such a small area, it would make it an appealing target for
would-be saboteurs.

Sea cables are vulnerable to cyberattacks --- Infiltration means global economic
shutdown
Sechrist 12 (Michael Sechrist, Harvard Kennedy School, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Science,
Technology, & Public Policy Program, Explorations in Cyber International Relations Project NEW THREATS, OLD TECHNOLOGY
VULNERABILITIES IN UNDERSEA COMMUNICATIONS CABLE NETWORK MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS February
2012)<https://citizenlab.org/cybernorms2012/sechrist.pdf>~BCai

Many cyber experts predict 2012 will usher in a new era of malware attacks on critical
infrastructure systems. The predictions follow reports that the Stuxnet worm may have at least four cousins, several of
which have yet to be fully identified.1 Security firms now rank cyber attacks on industrial supervisory
control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, which control everything from power to
water, as among top threats. Surveying the field, McAfee concluded there was little good news about cybersecurity
[and] the crucial services that depend on information technology and industrial control systems. 2 Control systems, McAfee
said, especially those connected to the Internet, introduce significant vulnerabilities into
systems never designed to sustain suck risks.3 Those vulnerabilities now proliferate. Conferees at
January 2012s International Conference on Cyber Security heard reports of the discovery in 2011 of 147 so-called zero-day
vulnerabilities unpatched flaws in Siemens-based SCADA systems. 4 In December 2011, the U.S. Department of Homeland
security issued an alert: it had discovered researchers using a new search engine called SHODAN. SHODANs purpose: search and
find Internet-facing control systems.5 The

risk is real. In Texas, a hacker posted screen shots to the Internet of a SCADA system
have come
close to shutting down elements of U.S. infrastructure apparently both Wall Street and
transportation systems.7 Hackers compromised SCADA systems in three cities, the FBI
reported, and could have theoretically dumped sewage into a lake, or shut off the power to a
shopping mall.8 With all the commotion, there exists now an abundance of regulation, advice and confusion about what to
monitoring a water treatment plant in South Houston. In late 2011, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said hackers

do next. For all of the governments efforts, for example, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in 2012 that DHS and
the other sector-specific agencies have not identified the key cybersecurity guidance applicable to or widely used in each of their
respective critical infrastructure sectors. 9 This

paper explores the vulnerabilities to cyber attacks of

infrastructure that today carries nearly all the worlds data and voice traffic: undersea
communications cables . Long-standing physical vulnerabilities in cable infrastructure have
been compounded by new risk found in the network management systems that monitor and
control cable operations. Unlike an attack on a water treatment plants control systems,
however, an attack on the cables control systems could devastate the worlds economies
presenting a different kind of Internet kill switch altogether shutting down world
commerce, and doing it all with the click of a mouse.

Cables are vulnerable to terrorists and piratesempirical evidence

Matis 12 (The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat Commander Michael Matis, United States Navy,
Master of Strategic Studies degree thesis at the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, PA
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf <!--JAG-->)
A cable fault was detected in the waters off of Southeast Asia on March 23, 2007. It was later determined that over

180 km of
undersea cables had been removed from the seabed by Vietnamese fishing trawlers who
intended to sell the cables on the black market because of their copper value. The cable theft
took over three months to repair at a cost of roughly $8 million. Repair costs do not take into
account the loss of electronic data traffic between the U.S. and Southeast Asia. The culprits
were not prosecuted because no national or international treaty exists that prevents such a
crime from taking place or, prosecuting the culprits. This incident underscores a gap in the
legal protection for undersea cables outside of territorial seas, a gap that needs to be
addressed.67

Cables are extremely susceptible to terrorism, and only the USFG can solve.
Stiennon 8 (Richard Clarke on recent Mideast cable outages By Richard Stiennon, writing for ZDNet News)
I just happened to be reading Breakpoint by Richard Clarke last week. The premise for the book is that the US finds itself undergoing
a series of attacks on its infrastructure starting with simultaneous bombings of several beach heads for the main trans-Atlantic fiber
cables as well as undersea cuttings of the same fiber. I thought Mr. Clarke might have some insight into the past week's undersea
cable outages in the Mideast. He was the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council under Bill Clinton. His
comments add a little level-headeness to some of the current hype. Here are his responses to my questions. Threatchaos: After
writing about a series of undersea cable outages in your book "Breakpoint" the recent events in the Mideast where four separate
cables have been cut must have caught your attention. Do you think this many cable outages could be coincidence? RAC: Cable cuts
occur all the time, as do underwater relay failures. When you turn the light on any phenomenon for the first time, it often seems
that what you are looking at is a crisis when in fact in it is business as usual. What I tried to show in the form of a fast paced thriller
in the opening chapter of Breakpoint was how

much more damage could be done if an organized group

set about to create havoc by attacking these strand that unite the global village. Disconnect
cyberspace in key places and the unified global village and world economy can't operate. And
we have no backup economic system. Threatchaos: Whether or not these outages are nefarious let's play "what if?".
What would the next step be for a nation or terrorist organization that Sought to disrupt communications in the Mideast? RAC:

There are many parts of the world where a few cuts would disconnect them from cyberspace
or so reduce band width as to have much the same effect. Some of the places where the cuts
could occur, like deep under water, would make repair time consuming. Threatchaos: "Breakpoint"
makes it chillingly obvious that we have done nothing to protect critical assets like undersea cables and the power grid. Do these
incidents in the Mideast reflect the vulnerability of undersea cables everywhere? RAC: Yes, this is a reminder. And while undersea
lines were cut in the novel, there were also attacks on the places where the cables come up from under the water and go on the
beach. Those places are well known and unprotected. Threatchaos: What should the we do to make the Internet less vulnerable to
physical attacks like this? RAC: No

one has the responsibility to insure there are redundant lines. Each
company makes a decision based on market forces as to whether to invest in building new
capacity. Nobody pays the private firms that own the fiber to build excess capacity. In some
places it exists, but there are many point-to-point connections that have single points of
failure and insufficient work-arounds available. There ought to be a public-private
partnership, an international one, that insures there is adequate capacity to handle large scale
outages caused by malevolent actors. That means back up dark fiber, rapid repair and
replacement capability, and research to increase the bandwidth for laser uplink/downlink
satellite comms. Threatchaos: What can the typical large enterprise do to prepare for future network outages? RAC. Large
enterprises need to have service from multiple providers. They need to investigate whether their multiple
providers are all using the same fiber or the same conduit at key single points of failure. And
they need to have contracts that allow for rapid re- provisioning to shift load from one
provider to another. By the way, Breakpoint is a great read. Opens your eyes to some underlying weaknesses in the world's
infrastructure.

Submarine cables are key to the global economy and vulnerable.

Matis 12 (The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat Commander Michael Matis, United States Navy,
Master of Strategic Studies degree thesis at the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, PA
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf <!--JAG-->)
The current technology is designed to be resilient, however cable breaks can disrupt day to day activities such as online banking,
Internet shopping, defense related communications, etc. As a result, the U.S. and other governments understand the strategic value
of undersea cables and are taking proactive measures to help protect them. Unfortunately, there

is no global database
that tracks cable faults on the ocean bottom. The ICPC and other organizations track outages or faults after they
occur, but there is no authorized facility in existence to quickly identify an outage, and route to a central location that is easily
accessed by an authorized government or commercial fusion center. The

time it takes to locate and identify a

cable fault amongst all the parties involved is cumbersome because there is no emergency
response procedure available that can quickly identify what happened. A few international
organizations such as the ICPC have sought the creation of an undersea cable public or private relationship. Research has revealed
that cable

operators and government officials in many countries have a poor record of working
together during undersea cable crises. The end result is that a cable repair can be initiated utilizing the system
currently in place but, to what extent is there the capability to develop an Early Warning System that can prevent and/or mitigate
a cable cut? In most nations, there are many agencies involved with submarine cables. In the U.S., there is a long list of agencies that
are linked with undersea cables: Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, National Security Agency,
Federal Communication s Commission, Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.37 Each of these agencies owns a
piece of the submarine cable without any single agency in charge.38 The problem of coordination and management of undersea
cables increase as they extend overseas, where a quick response to repair is vital to the industry. There

was a belief that if

cables could be identified through nautical charts, damage caused by fishing nets or a ships
anchor would be alleviated. Identifying undersea cables on nautical charts is a logical
engineering solution for the cable industry, but it could be a security nightmare and/or
vulnerability from a possible terrorist strike because the exact location of undersea cables
could be exploited. If the exact location of the 36 cables in the U.S were identified, a
successful attack on a few of these locations could affect roughly 95% of East coast Internet
traffic .39 There are redundancies to mitigate a terrorist strike on undersea cables but, the
possibility of something like this happening is feasible. What cannot be overlooked is that the
impact 10 of such a failure on international communications and economic stability could be
devastating.

Also, it is not known whether the international cable consortium and government entities involved in the

protection of undersea cables has tested the system against such an attack. Research indicates that there

have been no
international tests of cable system defense and repairs, only limited national tests that tend
to ignore the international component.40 Undersea cables are a valuable commodity in the 21st century global
communication environment. The undersea consortium is owned by various international companies such as ATT, and these
companies provide high-speed broadband connectivity and capacity for large geographic areas that are important entities of trade
and communications around the globe.41 For example, the

U.S. Clearing House Interbank Payment System

processes in excess of $1 trillion a day for investment companies, securities and commodities
exchange organizations, banks, and other financial institutions from more than 22 countries.42
The majority of their transactions are transmitted via undersea cables. In addition, the Department of Defenses (DoDs) net-centric
warfare and Global Information Grid rely on the same undersea cables that service the information and economic spheres. 43 If

undersea cables were cut or disrupted outside of the U.S. territorial waters, even for a few
hours, the capability of modern U.S warfare that encompasses battle space communications
and awareness, protection, and the stability of the financial networks would be at risk. As one
analyst has noted, the increase demand is being driven primarily from data traffic that is becoming an integral part of the everyday
telecommunications infrastructure and has no boundaries.44 Maintaining the viability of these cables is extremely important. An
example of the magnitude of data that reaches the international market every day is demonstrated by the Society for Worldwide
Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), which is the global provider of secure financial messaging services. 45 This
organization transmits financial data between 208 countries via undersea fiber optic cables.46 In addition, the

security of
international transactions via undersea cables could create chaos for global markets if the

cables linking U.S., Europe and/or Asia were cut. The disproportionate importance of these
cables to the nations communication infrastructure cannot be overestimated. If all of these
cables were suddenly cut, only seven percent of the U. S. traffic could be restored using every
single satellite in the sky.47 Satellites were important to the global communication industry but, were overtaken by
undersea fiber-optic cable technology in terms of volume and/or capacity amongst users in 1986.48

Submarine cables are vulnerable to spyingsecurity and control are key.

Marks 13 (Submarine internet cables are a gift for spooks Paul Marks is a Senior technology correspondent for NewScientist
Magazine http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23752-submarine-internet-cables-are-a-gift-for-spooks.html <!--JAG-->)
It's a golden age for spying. The subsea fibre-optic cables that carry telephone and internet traffic are a technological marvel and a
gift to intelligence agencies. They

make landfall at just a handful of locations, meaning vast quantities

of data can be sucked out at one site and, according to the prolific US National Security
Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, that is what British intelligence has been doing for
the last 18 months. In a leak to The Guardian newspaper on 22 June, Snowden said the UK Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham is siphoning data from at least 200
fibre-optic telecommunications cables including many of the transatlantic subsea cables that
hit British shores at Bude in Cornwall. The tapping project, known as Tempora, allows phone calls to be monitored, as
well as emails on offshore American-hosted webmail services such as Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook. Also included are Google and
Yahoo searches, and direct messages on Facebook and Twitter. International data "It is astonishing access they are getting with
Tempora," says Eric King, of pressure group Privacy International in London. "Every

piece of data that leaves the UK,

and every piece of international data that flows through the UK which is 99 per cent of the
world's communications is available to them." King and colleagues predicted as much in 2011 when, alongside
Wikileaks, they published the Spy Files - a list of providers of surveillance technologies, which included systems for performing
subsea cable-tapping technology. The Tempora revelations are the first discovery of the use of such systems. "It has long been
suspected that GCHQ had a programme attempting to exploit subsea cables," says King. The Tempora revelations are Snowden's
third major leak. In early June he revealed the existence of PRISM, a system run by the National Security Agency (NSA) which
harvests personal online data - emails, social network updates and photos - from web service providers including Microsoft, Skype,
Facebook and Google for NSA analysts to pore over. Snowden then revealed that US cellphone companies are being forced to hand
over records of who has called or texted who - so-called metadata - to the NSA. Unlike PRISM, Tempora taps the content of both
phone calls and internet traffic, saving call content for three days and metadata for 30 days. The

project is said to
generate an avalanche of data: 21 million gigabytes per day, including 600 million phone calls .
Sifting through this currently requires 300 GCHQ analysts and 250 NSA officers, says The Guardian, seeking, for instance, signs of
terror and other criminal activity in the making. Computer algorithms perform initial searches - seeking needles in the haystack of
data, The Guardian says. Judicial oversight? Both the NSA and the UK Foreign Office - which runs GCHQ - claim some level of judicial
or ministerial oversight applies to all searches through personal data. But the fact that all data is being acquired before searches take
place makes a mockery of UK and US government positions on issues like data protection, says King. Snowden's leaks suggested
GCHQ aims to increase the number of fibre-optic cables it taps above the present 200, and that the

NSA is soon set to

expand its role by monitoring ISPs in India and Malaysia. King hopes sense will prevail. "We hope Snowden's
revelations on how invasive these activities have become leads to action to curtail it - to restrain the privacy abuses that have
happened. I have yet to hear anybody defend this as necessary and proportionate."

The easy tapping of many cables

may also fuel calls for further diversification of their routes. In 2011, the IEEE, a professional
association for electronics engineers, highlighted the risk to the global economy from the
proximity of submarine cables carrying international commercial data at certain "choke
points" allowing sabotage or seismic seafloor movements to take out many cables at once.
Such sites include the Strait of Malacca near Singapore, the Suez Canal and now, perhaps,
Bude.

Security agencies tap cables and steal data.

The Atlantic 13 (July 16, 2013 The Creepy, Long-Standing Practice of Undersea Cable Tapping by Olga Khazan, an editor
at The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-creepy-long-standing-practice-of-undersea-cabletapping/277855/ <!--JAG-->)

In the early 1970's, the U.S. government learned that an undersea cable ran parallel to the Kuril Islands off the eastern coast of
Russia, providing a vital communications link between two major Soviet naval bases. The problem? The Soviet Navy had completely
blocked foreign ships from entering the region. Not to be deterred, the National Security Agency launched Operation Ivy Bells,
deploying fast-attack submarines and combat divers to drop waterproof recording pods on the lines. Every few weeks, the divers
would return to gather the tapes and deliver them to the NSA, which would then binge-listen to their juicy disclosures. The project
ended in 1981, when NSA employee Ronald Pelton sold information about the program to the KGB for $35,000. He's still serving his
life prison term. The operation might have ended, but for the NSA, this underwater strategy clearly stuck around. In addition to
gaining access to web companies' servers and asking for phone metadata, we've

now learned that both the U.S.

and the U.K. spy agencies are tapping directly into the Internet's backbone -- the undersea
fiber optic cables that shuttle online communications between countries and servers. For
some privacy activists, this process is even more worrisome than monitoring call metadata
because it allows governments to make copies of everything that transverses these cables, if
they wanted to. The British surveillance programs have fittingly sinister titles: "Mastering the
Internet" and "Global Telecoms Exploitation," according to The Guardian. A subsidiary program for these
operations -- Tempora -- sucks up around 21 million gigabytes per day and stores the data for a
month. The data is shared with NSA, and there are reportedly 550 NSA and GCHQ analysts poring
over the information they've gathered from at least 200 fiber optic cables so far . The scale of
the resulting data harvest is tremendous. From The Guardian: This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of
email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites -- all of which is deemed legal, even
though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets. In an interview with online security
analyst Jacob Appelbaum, NSA leaker Edward Snowden called the British spy agency GCHQ "worse than" the NSA, saying it
represents the first "full take" system, in which surveillance networks catch all Internet traffic regardless of its content. Appelbaum
asked Snowden if "anyone could escape" Tempora: "Well, if you had the choice, you should never send information over British lines
or British servers," Snowden said. "Even the Queen's selfies with her lifeguards would be recorded, if they existed." The U.S.'s own
cable-tapping program, known by the names OAKSTAR, STORMBREW, BLARNEY and FAIRVIEW, as revealed in an NSA PowerPoint
slide, apparently functions similarly to Tempora, accessing "communications on fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past,"
according to The Washington Post. The slide indicates that Prism and these so-called "upstream" programs work together somehow,
with an arrow saying "You Should Use Both" pointing to the two operations. So

how does one tap into an

underwater cable? The process is extremely secretive, but it seems similar to tapping an oldfashioned, pre-digital telephone line -- the eavesdropper gathers up all the data that flows
past, then deciphers it later. More than 550,000 miles of flexible undersea cables about the
size of garden watering hoses carry all the world's emails, searches, and tweets. Together,
they shoot the equivalent of several hundred Libraries of Congress worth of information back
and forth every day. In 2005, the Associated Press reported that a submarine called the USS
Jimmy Carter had been repurposed to carry crews of technicians to the bottom of the sea so
they could tap fiber optic lines. The easiest place to get into the cables is at the regeneration points -- spots where their
signals are amplified and pushed forward on their long, circuitous journeys. "At these spots, the fiber optics can be more easily
tapped, because they are no longer bundled together, rather laid out individually," Deutsche Welle reported. But such aquatic
endeavors may no longer even be necessary. The cables make landfall at coastal stations in various countries, where their data is
sent on to domestic networks, and it's easier to tap them on land than underwater. Britain is,

geographically, in an
ideal position to access to cables as they emerge from the Atlantic, so the cooperation
between the NSA and GCHQ has been key. Beyond that partnership, there are the other
members of the "Five Eyes" -- the Australians, the New Zealanders, and the Canadians -- that
also collaborate with the U.S., Snowden said. The tapping process apparently involves using so-called "intercept probes."
According to two analysts I spoke to, the intelligence agencies likely gain access to the landing stations, usually with the permission
of the host countries or operating companies, and use these small devices to capture the light being sent across the cable.

The
probe bounces the light through a prism, makes a copy of it, and turns it into binary data
without disrupting the flow of the original Internet traffic. "We believe our 3D MEMS technology -- as used
by governments and various agencies -- is involved in the collection of intelligence from ... undersea fibers," said a director of
business development at Glimmerglass, a government contractor that appeared, at least according to a 2010 Aviation Week article,
to conduct similar types of interceptions, though it's unclear whether they took part in the British Tempora or the U.S. upstream
programs. In a PowerPoint presentation, Glimmerglass once boasted that it provided "optical cyber solutions" to the intelligence
community, offering the ability to monitor everything from Gmail to Facebook. "We are deployed in several countries that are using
it for lawful interception. They've passed laws, publicly known, that they will monitor all international traffic for interdiction of any
kind of terrorist activity." The British publication PC Pro presented another theory: that slightly bending the cables could allow a

receiver to capture their contents. One

method is to bend the cable and extract enough light to sniff out
the data. "You can get these little cylindrical devices off eBay for about $1,000. You run the
cable around the cylinder, causing a slight bend in cable. It will emit a certain amount of light,
one or two decibels. That goes into the receiver and all that data is stolen in one or two
decibels of light. Without interrupting transfer flow, you can read everything going on on an
optical network," said Everett. The loss is so small, said Everett, that anyone who notices it might attribute it to a loose
connection somewhere along the line. "They wouldn't even register someone's tapping into their network," he added. Once it's
gathered, the data gets sifted. Most of it is discarded, but the filters pull out material that touches on one of the 40,000 search terms
chosen by the NSA and GCHQ -- that's the content the two agencies inspect more closely.

Australias few cables are especially vulnerable to destruction.

Woodall 13 (May 31, 2013: Australias vulnerable submarine cables writing for the ASPI, Australian Strategic Policy
Institute http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australias-vulnerable-submarine-cables/ <!--JAG-->)
Unfortunately, the

situation for Australia is more complicated. Sitting in the Southern Hemisphere,

were largely isolated from the busy network of Transatlantic and North Asian Cable lines.
Were also unable to use overland fibre optic cables from other countries, leaving us reliant
upon just a handful of international undersea cables. The physical placement of these cables
also creates risks. The majority of the cables are gathered closely together within protection
zones, located off Perth (PDF )and Sydney. While protection zones are an effective means to warn responsible boat
users of the presence of cables, they also create vulnerabilities. Several key cables gathered together
present a greater chance of simultaneous cable breakages, whether accidental or deliberate.
And such accidents arent without precedent. In December 2008, near the notoriously crowded Alexandria
cable station off the Egyptian coastline, an anchor cut three of the four cables connecting
Europe to the Middle East. These three cables carried over 90% of the total internet and voice
traffic between the two continents. Internet speeds ground to a trickle, and there were knockon effects across the region. Fourteen countries lost some degree of connectivity, India lost up to 80% and the Maldives
100%, completely cutting them off from the global data network. APEC modelling indicates that if Australia were to lose
100% of its connection, this would cost the economy over $152 million every day until the
cables were repaired, which can take anywhere from a few days to a few months. While the
majority of cable breakages are accidental, several cables have fallen victim to deliberate targeting. The statebacked sabotage of undersea cables during World War Two was commonplace. Australia itself participated, with the Royal
Australian Navy hindering Japanese communications by cutting telegram cables off Indochina. The U.S. even managed to wiretap
Soviet undersea cables in the 1970s during the Cold War. But fast forward 40 years and decades of technological advancements, and

non-state actors now pose the greatest threat to cable security. Piracy and the cutting of
cables for scrap is an ongoing issue, but politically motivated attacks arent out the realm of
possibility. The U.S. has already conducted war-gaming for such a scenario. This critical infrastructure warrants
effective protection and physical monitoring, particularly because Australian cables are
organised so neatly together. And under current legislation, harsh penalties exist for tampering with submarine cables
within protection zones. But the AFP, which has responsibility for ensuring compliance with these laws, operates on a reactive
complaint-based model, performing no active preventative monitoring. They distanced themselves from this role in a submission to
an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report on the submarine cable protection regime:

The AFPs
responsibility for the enforcement of prohibitions and restrictions does not extend to the
monitoring of the protection zones to prevent or supervise the safekeeping of the submarine
cables in Australian maritime zones. The AFP is not physically equipped with the resources to
monitor the protection of cables in Australian waters. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority and the
Fisheries Management Authority perform some surveillance of cable protection zones. But the cable owners and operators who
responded to the same ACMA report unanimously indicated that current protection zone monitoring arrangements were
unsatisfactory. In contrast, New Zealand finds itself in a similar strategic position, but is far more conscious of protecting its physical
cyber infrastructure. New Zealand has a total of ten cable protection zones compared to Australias three, providing more options to
cable laying companies and reducing the risk of simultaneous breakages. Protection officers and Maritime Police not only patrol
their zones with ships and helicopters, in some cases they operate for up to 24 hours a day. The

risk created by

Australias dependency upon a few highly concentrated submarine cables jeopardises our
cyber and communications resilience. We already have comprehensive legislation to help protect these cables, but by
spreading them out and preventatively monitoring the protection zones, we would significantly lower the risk to Australias
communication infrastructure.

Fibre optic connections are volatile, at three crucial choke points, and control
the global economy.
Gady 10 (Undersea Cables: The Achilles Heel of our Economies by Franz-Stefan Gady, Dec 21, 2010, a foreign policy analyst
for the EastWest institute. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/franzstefan-gady/undersea-cables-the-achil_b_799808.html <!--JAG-->)

In December 2008 within milliseconds, Egypt lost 70 percent of its connection to the outside
Internet. In far away India, 50 to 60 percent of online connectivity similarly was lost. In Pakistan,
12 million people were knocked offline suddenly, and in Saudi Arabia, 4.7 million were unable to
connect to the Internet. The economic costs of this 24-hour outage: approximately 64 million
dollars. The recent revelations by WikiLeaks of U.S. national security interests in critical
infrastructure vulnerabilities mention the often neglected underpinning of the current
connectivity revolution sweeping the planet--undersea cables. In December 2008, four undersea
cables were cut simultaneously, affecting Internet users all over the world. While cable cuts
happen from time to time nothing, the scope of the cuts illustrate the exposure of our
economies to disruption once we lose connectivity. Hardly any people know that our global
digital connectivity rests upon a relatively few fiber optic cables lying at the bottom of the
Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. They wrongly believe that their international
communications are carried via satellite links. The truth is that 99 percent of transcontinental
Internet traffic travels through these connecting cables; these are the lifelines of our economies.
For proof, simply take a quick look at the financial services sector. In 2004 alone, nine million
messages and approximately $7.4 trillion a day were traded via undersea cables worldwide. The
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a provider of financial
messaging, sends about 15 million messages a day over cables. 1 million of these are financial
transactions, amounting to over $4.7 trillion dollars a day commuting via the same undersea
cables. The finance hub Hong Kong doubles its dependency, i.e. the volume of messages going
through these cables, every 18 months. Most of the cable cuts occur because of ship anchors,
natural disasters such as earthquakes or fishing nets. While the technical reliability of these
cables is very high, international politics have created three particular problem zones in the
world -- three cable chokepoints where undersea cables converge and where if cut, outages
could have severe consequences. The first is in the Luzon Strait, the second in the Suez CanalRed Sea-Mandab Strait passage, and the third is in the Strait of Malacca. Let's take a closer look
at the Luzon Strait. The reason why cables go through the Luzon Strait rather than taking an
alternative route through the Taiwan Strait to avoid this single point of failure is because of the
ongoing political tensions between Taiwan and China. The result is that Hong Kong, a major
financial hub, is one of the most vulnerable spots to outages in the world. The Hengchun
earthquake in 2006 severed the Luzon Strait cables, which, according to Chinese newspapers,
"catastrophically affected financial transactions, particularly in the foreign exchange market."
Simultaneous cuts in the Luzon Strait or the Suez Canal-Red Sea-Mandab Strait chokepoints -again largely the result of the political unwillingness of the countries on the Arabian Peninsula to
cooperate with regard to overland cables through their territories -- could cut Hong Kong off
from New York or London, as terrestrial routes would have insufficient capacity to carry the
undersea cable load. Payments suddenly could not be made, orders not processed, and bond
trading halting on the stock exchange. Given our volatile economic climate, an incident where a
number of these cables are cut could have devastating consequences. When cables are cut at

one chokepoint, the loss of connectivity might last from a few days to a few weeks depending
on how well the cable system owner, the operator of the repair vessel, and the national
government involved coordinate their efforts. A few countries are notorious for delaying repair
permits if the cuts appear in their territorial waters.

UQ Attacks Coming
Attacks coming nowchoke points and recent attacks make undersea cables
more at risk than ever
Australian Army Journal 13Land Warfare Studies Centre( Summer Edition 2013, Volume X, Number 4,
http://www.army.gov.au/~/media/Files/Our%20future/LWSC%20Publications/AAJ/2013Summer/AAJ_Summer2013_Complete.pdf#
page=53, AMJ)
To support cyber-blockades, physical

attack on Internet conduits could also be undertaken. There are

currently a number of digital choke points for the transfer of internet communication
through undersea cable, still the dominant medium for internet traffic globally. These digital choke points
could become the focus of physical attacks or disruption by a determined adversary. Efforts
to physically disrupt digital choke points have occurred as recently as early 2013. Egyptian
authorities in March 2013 detained a number of saboteurs attempting to cut the undersea internet cable at Alexandria connecting
North AfricaAsia to Europe.30

Cyber attacks comingimpact is global internet disruptionreparation systems too time

consuming to solve

ISN 13

Disrupting Undersea Cables: Cyberspaces Hidden Vulnerability http://www.isn.ethz.ch/DigitalLibrary/Articles/Detail/?id=162869 The International Relations and Security Network (ISN) is a leading open access information
source for international relations and security studies. The ISN is an online project of the Center for Security Studies (CSS), at the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Behind the abstract virtual cloud of cyberspace is a very real physical infrastructure with some
surprising vulnerabilities. For example, want to throw all of Manhattan into cyberspace chaos? Then disrupt the 75 Broad
Street CoLo or NYIs New York datacenter on John Street. But if you really want to disrupt the Internet
globally , then mess with the biggest chokepoints of all -- the undersea fiber-optic cables that
move vast volumes of data from continent to continent. This sounds like the stuff of James Bond and deepdiving submarines, but ocean-crossing cables have to pass through shallow water at either end and come ashore somewhere. This
last mile is where problems like dragged anchors can cause no end of mischief. Making
matters worse, the shore nodes are astonishingly concentrated. For example on the US east coast,
virtually all of the trans-Atlantic undersea cables come ashore at three locations between
Long Island and southern New Jersey. On the US west coast, the vast bulk of cable traffic is
concentrated in two locations, one in Central California and the other in Oregon. However one of
the most concentrated cable landing points on the globe is Egypt, where thanks to the proximity of the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea, virtually all of the cables linking Europe to the Middle East and Asia
come ashore. In fact, it is hard to imagine anywhere on the planet where more cables are
clustered in such close proximity. The amount of bandwidth that crosses Egypt is breathtaking: the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable,
which the divers are accused of attempting to cut, has a total capacity of 1.28Tbit/s. Multiply that by the number of other cables
shown in Figure 1, and it becomes clear that if one wanted to create a global cyberspace disruption, Egypt would be a convenient
place to start. Is cable sabotage the new terror target? It is anyones guess what the divers were attempting off of Alexandria, but

attacks on cables are not without precedent. In 2007, a gang of knucklehead pirates yanked up portions of two
cable systems off the coast of Vietnam in the mistaken belief that the fiber-optic lines held valuable copper, which they hoped to
resell on the scrap market. And in

2010, terrorists cut a cable near Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines. In

the last century, the US and Soviet Union had multiple cable-related tangles, most famously in
1959 when a Soviet trawler, the Novorossilsk, caused twelve breaks in five transatlantic cables off
of Newfoundland. There is no shortage of infrastructure that terrorists might attack, but fiberoptic cables hold a symbolic appeal, being the vehicle that delivers cyberspace to the masses
worldwide and also the conduit for global financial transactions. It is easy to imagine antiglobalization zealots concluding that cutting a cable is just the way to stop decadent Western

culture from polluting the minds of locals in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.
Unfortunately, the cables they might cut also serve countless other nations so any disruption
would have a regional if not global impact. Disrupting cables isnt rocket science. The image of SCUBA divers sawing
away at a cable on the seabed is thriller-worthy stuff, but there are easier ways to do the job. Snagging a cable with an
anchor or fishing net will also break a cable as evidenced by the fact that there are 150-odd
accidental cable disruptions caused by shipping and fishing gear each year. Neer-do-wells who prefer
to stay dry also have no shortage of targets to attack, including shore side stations where undersea cables land and terrestrial cable
links like those running between the Mediterranean and Red Seas in Egypt. How real is the risk? The

vast bulk of the

globes communications are carried on undersea fiber-optic cables, with satellite communications coming
in a very distant second. There is considerable redundancy in the system, but if enough capacity is lost, the effect
can be dramatic. In early 2008, three cables (including SEA-ME-WE-4) were cut between Egypt and
Italy. Despite aggressive rerouting, over fourteen countries ended up losing web
connectivity . The Maldives were completely cut off, while over eighty percent of Indian traffic was affected along with slightly
lower outages among Gulf states including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. As already mentioned, the global undersea cable
system experiences several hundred disruptions per year, and the consortia operating the various cable networks maintain
specialized cable repair resources at the ready to respond within twenty-four hours of a failure. But

even when response

is fast, repairing a cable is a complex and time-consuming process. The broken ends must be
located, hauled up from the seabed and the broken optical fibers re-spliced in a complex
process that involves everything from grappling gear and heavy winches to microscopes and
delicate probes. Break enough cables at once and it is anyones guess how quickly resources
can be deployed to bring things back to normal. It is also anyones guess whether cable cutting will remain merely
an occasional headache or become a serious infrastructure threat. That said, we note that the news attention being
given to the Egyptian divers can only work to bring the vulnerabilities of the undersea cable
network to the attention of individuals inclined to disrupt it. This is certainly not the last time
we will read about individuals seeking to cut the communication links that binds cyberspace-and the globe--together.

2AC Cables K2 Internet

Cables key to global Internetempirical proof that they are targeted in wars

Eagleman 12 Four ways the Internet could go down http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/10/tech/web/internet-downeagleman/ David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and a New York Times bestselling author. He primarily writes about biomedical
communication as well as internet infrastructure. He has been featured on the Colbert Report, the New Yorker, and CNNs Next List.
(KQ)
Although satellites are used for some Internet traffic, more

than 99 percent of global Web traffic is dependent

on deep-sea networks of fiber-optic cables that blanket the ocean floor like a nervous system. These are a
major physical target in wars, especially at special choke-points in the system. And this is not simply a theoretical
prediction, the underwater battles are well underway. As much as three-fourths of the international
communications between the Middle East and Europe have been carried by two undersea
cables: SeaMeWe-4 and FLAG Telecom's FLAG Europe-Asia cable. On January 30, 2008, both of these cables
were cut, severely disrupting Internet and telephone traffic from India to Egypt. It is still not clear
how the cables were cut, or by whom. And for that matter, it is not clear how many cables were cut: some news reports suggest that
there were at least eight. Initial speculations proposed that the cuts came from a ship anchor, but a video analysis soon revealed
there were no ships in that region from 12 hours before until 12 hours after the slice. Those cables were only the beginning. A few
days later, on February 1, 2008, an undersea FLAG Falcon cable in the Persian Gulf was cut 55 miles off the coast of Dubai. On
February 3rd, a cable between the United Arab Emirates and Qatar was cut. On February 4th, the Khaleej Times reported that not
only these cables, but also two more, a Persian Gulf cable near Iran, and a SeaMeWe4 cable off the coast of Malaysia. These

cuts led to widespread outages of the Internet,

especially in Iran. Suspicions that this reflected underwater

sabotage derived in no small part from the geographical pattern: almost all the cables were cut in Middle Eastern waters near
Muslim nations. Who might have done it? No one knows. But it is known that the U.S. Navy has deployed undersea special
operations for decades. In Operation Ivy Bells, for example, Navy divers appear to have swum from submarines to tap an undersea
cable in the Kuril Islands. Whatever the truth behind the incident, we see that if

a government or organization
wants badly enough to sabotage the telecommunications across a wide swath, it is possible.
New deep-sea cables are urgently needed to protect the global economy because businesses
worldwide are vulnerable to the targeting of "choke points" in underwater communications

Cables key to the Internet99% of the Web relies on them

Eagleman 12Neuroscientist, Guggenheim Fellow, and New York Times bestselling author (David Eagleman, Four Ways the
Internet Could Go Down, CNN

Tech, http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/10/tech/web/internet-down-eagleman/, 7/10/14, AMJ)

Although satellites are used for some Internet traffic, more than 99 percent of global Web traffic is
dependent on deep-sea networks of fiber-optic cables that blanket the ocean floor like a nervous
system. These are a major physical target in wars, especially at special choke-points in the system. And this is not simply a
theoretical prediction, the

underwater battles are well underway.

As much as three-fourths of the international

communications between the Middle East and Europe have been carried by two undersea cables: SeaMeWe-4 and FLAG Telecom's
FLAG Europe-Asia cable. On January 30, 2008, both of these cables were cut, severely disrupting Internet and telephone traffic from
India to Egypt. It is still not clear how the cables were cut, or by whom. And for that matter, it is not clear how many cables

were cut: some news reports suggest that there were at least eight. Initial speculations proposed that the
cuts came from a ship anchor, but a video analysis soon revealed there were no ships in that region from 12 hours before until 12
hours after the slice. Those

cables were only the beginning . A few days later, on February 1, 2008, an undersea

FLAG Falcon cable in the Persian Gulf was cut 55 miles off the coast of Dubai. On February 3rd, a cable between the United Arab
Emirates and Qatar was cut. On February 4th, the Khaleej Times reported that not only these cables, but also two more, a Persian
Gulf cable near Iran, and a SeaMeWe4 cable off the coast of Malaysia. These cuts led to widespread outages of the Internet,
especially in Iran. Suspicions that this reflected underwater sabotage derived in no small part from the geographical pattern: almost
all the cables were cut in Middle Eastern waters near Muslim nations. Who might have done it? No one knows. But it is known that
the U.S. Navy has deployed undersea special operations for decades. In Operation Ivy Bells, for example, Navy divers appear to have
swum from submarines to tap an undersea cable in the Kuril Islands. Whatever the truth behind the incident, we see that if a
government or organization wants badly enough to sabotage the telecommunications across a wide swath, it is possible. New

deep-sea cables are urgently needed to protect the global economy because businesses

worldwide are vulnerable to the targeting of "choke points" in underwater communications.

Whether by terrorists, governments or cyber-pirates, these weak points in the chain should be keeping us all up at night.

2AC Internet K2 Democracy

Internet key to democracyonline expression promotes diplomatic aid and
financing to encourage a transition
Fontaine and Rogers 11Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (Richard Fontaine and Will Rogers,
A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age, Internet Freedom,
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf, 7/11, AMJ)
Thus far, the discussion among advocates and foreign policy practitioners has revolved around Internet

freedom, a broad
rights of expression and online organization, and
role of the Internet in promoting democratization.

rubric that encompasses online freedoms, including the

the potentially transformative

and hotly contested

The U.S. government now has an Internet freedom agenda, with tens of millions of dollars to implement it. Both the Senate and the
House of Representatives boast global Internet freedom caucuses. The Secretary of State has given two major addresses articulating
principles and policies for Internet freedom, and newspapers and periodicals have repeatedly pointed to the use of online tools both
for popular protest and as a means of repression. In the midst of the 2011 Arab Spring, President Obama went so far as to describe
the ability to use social networking as a core value that Americans believe is universal. Internet freedom typically includes two
dimensions. Freedom

of the Internet denotes the freedoms of online expression, assembly and

association the extension to cyberspace of rights that have been widely recognized to exist
outside it. Promoting freedom of the Internet merely expands to cyberspace a tradition of U.S.
diplomatic and financial support for human rights abroad. Freedom via the Internet, the notion that new
communications technologies aid the establishment of democracy and liberal society offline, is
at once more alluring and hotly contested. Internet freedom in this sense has captured the imagination of many policymakers and
experts who see in these technologies a

tool for individuals to help move their societies away from

authoritarianism and toward democracy . Though the links between democracy and Internet freedom are indirect
nascent evidence suggests that new communications tools do matter in political
change, and that both dissidents and dictators act on that basis.
and complex,

Internet key to democracyonly way to spread information of representative

ideals, pluralism, and civil society
Mohr 2007Review of International Affairs Writer (LaKindra Mohr, Of Note: State Control of the Internet Reins in Cuba's
Future, Muse Project, https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/sais_review/v027/27.2mohr.html,
2007, AMJ)
When Ral Castro assumed temporary political power from his ailing brother on July 31, 2006, academics, policymakers, and experts
on Cuba were promptly pressed to return to the question that they had contemplated for years: what does the future hold for Cuba
after Fidel Castro? Assuming that Ral Castro is capable of assuming power in the post-Fidel Castro era, a successor communist
government has the strongest likelihood of emerging after Fidel Castro's departure. Among the many forces behind this probable
outcome is the inability of activists in Cuban civil society to mobilize pressure for a regime change in the short term. The
government's 'ownership'

or control over cyberspace, a potential instrument of dissidence, plays

a central role in undermining the development of a robust civil society that could challenge the
regime's authority and set Cuba on a new course. The Internet is considered an important tool in
democratic development, supplying the masses with a powerful and far reaching means of
communication. With unrestricted access, it can bolster democratic ideals and pluralism by
providing a forum for the freedom of expression, the sharing of ideas, and access to
independent sources of information. As Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor Boas note, advocates for change in civil
society "may use the Internet to support their activities in a variety of ways, including
logistical organization and the public dissemination of information," to challenge the
stronghold of a regime in power. However, restrictions on this communication channel can not only hinder but also

eliminate the role of the Internet in stirring a social undercurrent for political change. As a prime example, the Cuban government's
virtual monopoly over Internet access and its use remains a serious impediment to mobilizing a pro-democracy opposition
movement. Internet control in Cuba has involved a combination of proactive and reactive strategies, all serving to consolidate the
power of the regime. These strategies range from using the Internet to distribute government propaganda, to censoring content and
limiting connectivity. While the government has allowed some Internet access, particularly for intra-governmental communications,
limited international correspondence, and select academic institutions and business enterprises, it continues to dictate permissible
content, and monitor and restrict Internet use. It has also made it increasingly difficult or prohibitively expensive for ordinary Cuban
citizens to acquire Internet service. In fact, most Cubans are unable to afford even the basic hardware, software, and connectivity
fees that would gain them access. Consequently, the use of the Internet as a tool for political organization is severely limited, adding
to the obstacles that activist groups in civil society face in promoting regime change. One of the components that Juan Lpez
identifies as missing in Cuban civil society is the ability of a large proportion of the Cuban population to regularly access independent
channels of communication. In Cuba, this vital element is lacking in part because of the government's control of the Internet, and
other forms of media in general. Without this channel, Lpez argues, civil society activists struggle to disseminate information,
educate citizens, and mobilize more of the populationactivities that could ultimately challenge the regime and empower the
Cuban people.

By restricting the use of the Internet, which functions as a fairly reliable,

independent line of communication in open societies, the government has eliminated an
effective means of interaction and dialogue for civil society. While underground Internet activity exists, the
government has thus far prevented it from becoming a meaningful threat, and its use is unlikely to be widespread enough to
cultivate and support a prolonged, broad based opposition movement anytime soon. Overall, although there are many factors that
have impeded the voices of opposition in Cuba, the inability of activist groups to utilize the Internet has been detrimental to their
efforts to foster pluralism and confront the status quo. The government's domination over the flow of information through the
Internet, as well as through the media in general, has restricted free expression, the flow of ideas, and regular access to independent
channels of communication. This reality will continue to be a major barrier in civil society's attempts to reach out to Cubans across
the island and mobilize pressure for.

2AC Democracy Impact

Democracy solves extinctionkey to prevent security threats, economic
collapse, civil war, terrorism, proliferation, and weapons of mass destruction
Halperin 11Senior Advisor of the Open Society Institute (Morton H. Halperin, Democracy is Still
Worth Fighting For, Unconventional Wisdom,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/unconventional_wisdom?page=0,6, AMJ)
For there is one thing the neocons get right: As I argue in The Democracy Advantage, democratic

governments are
more likely than autocratic regimes to engage in conduct that advances U.S. interests and avoids situations
that pose a threat to peace and security. Democratic states are more likely to develop and to avoid
famines and economic collapse. They are also less likely to become failed states or suffer a civil
war. Democratic states are also more likely to cooperate in dealing with security issues, such
as terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Warming Advantage

1AC
Advantage __ is warming two internal links
First, undersea cables can provide climate and disaster monitoring.
ITU 7/1/14 (International Telecom Union: GREEN CABLES FOR CLIMATE MONITORING AND DISASTER WARNING
http://itu4u.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/green-cables-for-climate-monitoring-and-disaster-warning/ <!--JAG-->)
In recent years, the extraordinary breadth and capacity of this submarine network has motivated the initiation of an ambitious new
project: that of equipping

submarine communications cables with climate and hazard monitoring

sensors to create a global real-time ocean observation network. Once laid, this network will
be capable of providing earthquake and tsunami warnings as well as data on ocean climate
change and circulation. Submarine cables are uniquely positioned to glean key environmental
data from the deep ocean, which at present provides scant few resources for monitoring the
climate. Equipping cable repeaters instruments that amplify optical signals with climate
and hazard-monitoring sensors would yield data of great value to climate science, disaster
warning and the future of our oceans. So well-received was the presentation of this proposal at the 1st ITU Green
Standards Week in Rome in 2011 that the event closed with participants issuing a Call to Action to ITU/WMO/UNESCO-IOC to set the
project in motion. The following Green Standards Week in Paris hosted the first meeting of the ITU/WMO/UNESCO-IOC Joint Task
Force on Green Cables Systems, a multi-disciplinary body united to realize the vision of a global network of green cables. There was
never any doubt that this project was feasible. What was required, however, was a coordinated international effort to mobilize the
necessary political and business will to bring stakeholders together to determine their respective roles. Currently, the Joint Task
Force organizes the various elements of its work under the banners of Science, Engineering, Business and Law. Chief on our list of
priorities is devising means for the private sector to drive sustainable growth of the envisaged submarine climate and hazardmonitoring network. A variety of stakeholders have contributions to make, but telecommunications companies are at the heart of
the project, as they will own and manage the climate and hazard-monitoring infrastructure, becoming lead contributors to the
advancement of climate science and disaster warning.

Thats key to solve develop mitigation strategies and prevent the worst impacts
of climate change
Eumetsat no date (Monitoring Climate accessed 7/23/14; Eumetsat is a climate monitoring company
http://www.eumetsat.int/website/home/AboutUs/WhatWeDo/MonitoringClimate/index.html <!--JAG-->)

Climate services need to be developed to meet the challenge of mitigating and adapting to
climate change. An overview of satellite observations contributing to sustained climate applications, reflecting the large
spectrum of benefits of satellite data for different applications. A better understanding of climate change and its
impact is necessary for governments and decision makers to define and implement
appropriate mitigation and adaptation policies, including investment policies for large
infrastructure with long lifecycles. This requires the development of science-based climate services, in synergy with
weather services, within the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFSC) recently established by the World Meteorological
Organisation.

Climate services are based on the combination of long series of well calibrated
observations, numerical models capable of delivering climate prediction at seasonal to
decadal scales and projections at longer scales (in response to emission scenarios), and socioeconomic data. The related requirements for observations of Essential Climate Variables (ECV) are established and maintained
by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) programme.

Second, submarine power cables provide infrastructure for offshore renewable

energy installations.
Green et al 7 (Electrical Collection and Transmission Systems for Offshore Wind Power J. Green, A. Bowen, L.J. Fingersh,
and Y. Wan, National Renewable Energy Laboratory report for the DoE, presented at the 2007 Offshore Technology Conference
Houston, Texas April 30 May 3, 2007 http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41135.pdf <!--JAG-->)
Abstract The

electrical systems needed for offshore wind farms to collect power from wind
turbinesand transmit it to shore will be a significant cost element of these systems. This

paper describes the development of a simplified model of the cost and performance of such systems. The performance prediction
accounts for losses as a function of the power produced in the wind farm and the length and size of the cables. The cost prediction is
flexibly formulated so wind farm configurations can be evaluated by parameters such as the number of wind turbines, wind turbine
size, turbine array configuration and spacing, and distance from shore. The collection systemthe medium-voltage electrical grid
within the wind farm, and the transmission systemthe high-voltage electrical connection to an on-shore transmission lineare
treated independently in the model. Data sources for the model and limitations of the data are discussed, and comparison is made
to costs reported by others. The choice of transmission system technology is also addressed. This

electrical system model

is intended for integration into a more comprehensive model of offshore wind farm design,
cost, and performance that will be used for parametric studies and optimization of wind farm
configurations. Because some concepts for future offshore wind installations in deep water use
floating platforms, this paper briefly discusses the application of submarine cable technology
to nonfixed termination points, a departure from current practice. Introduction The National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) of the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, has undertaken a series of concept studies to evaluate the cost
and performance of offshore wind farms. The product of these studies will be a comprehensive model of offshore wind farm design,
cost, and performance suitable for parametric studies and optimization of wind farm configurations.

The overall goal of

this effort is to help identify technology pathways for offshore wind energy development and
deployment in the United States. Offshore wind farms present an attractive option because
they allow for larger wind turbines that operate in higher wind resources than land-based [1,2].
Offshore installations are also more expensive, so an understanding of their performance, cost, and optimal configurations is
needed. This paper is an overview of one of these concept studies. It focuses on the power losses in wind farm electrical power
collection and transmission systems, as well as the costs of the system components and their installation. A hypothetical system was
based loosely on the Horns Rev offshore wind farm in Denmark. Inquiries were made with manufacturers about electrical and cost
data on the required components, which were then compiled in a spreadsheet model. The performance prediction accounts for
losses as a function of power output of the wind farm and length and size of the cables. The cost prediction is flexibly formulated so
wind farm configurations can be evaluated by parameters such as the number of wind turbines, wind turbine size, turbine array
configuration and spacing, and distance from shore. Electrical Collection and Transmission Systems for Offshore Wind Power Jim
Green, Amy Bowen, Lee Jay Fingersh, Yih-Huei Wan National Renwable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colorado Electrical System
Overview The

electrical system for an offshore wind farm consists of a medium-voltage electrical

collection grid within the wind farm and a high-voltage electrical transmission system to
deliver the power to an onshore transmission line. Collection System The collection grid begins with
transformers at each wind turbine, usually in the base of the tower, to step up from the generation voltage, typically 690 volts (V), to
a medium voltage of typically 2540 kilovolts (kV). This voltage range seems to be preferred because standardized equipment is
available at competitive prices and because higher voltage transformers would be too big to fit readily into the tower cross sections.

A grid of medium-voltage submarine cables, typically buried 12 meters (m) deep in the
seabed, is used to connect the wind turbines to an offshore substation. Transmission System The
transmission system begins at the offshore substation, which steps up the voltage to a transmission voltage of 130 150 kV, the
highest voltages in use today for AC submarine cables. This

higher voltage allows a much smaller diameter

and lower cost submarine cables to be used for the long run to shore. Only three offshore
wind farms in operation today have offshore substations. However, these stations are
expected to be the least-cost option for wind farms that will be larger and further offshore
than current practice. Such wind farms are the main target of this inquiry. 1From the offshore substation, a high-voltage
submarine cable (which is also buried in the seabed for protection) carries the power to shore. Once it makes landfall, the run
continues, either underground or overhead, to an onshore substation for connection to a transmission line. An additional
transformer may be used in this substation to step up the voltage to a higher level to match the transmission grid. Two technology
options are available for the transmission system: high-voltage AC (HVAC) and high-voltage DC (HVDC). The current consensus is that
HVAC is the most economical option for distances shorter than 50 kilometers (km) [2,3,4]. This technology is assumed for our model.
Between 50 and 80 km, HVAC and HVDC are expected to be similar in cost. Longer than 80 km, HVDC systems will likely be least cost,
mainly because the capacity of a given HVAC cable drops off with distance due to the capacitive and inductive characteristics of the
cable and their associated losses. DC transmission avoids these losses entirely, so it is the preferred technology for longer distances.

A lack of offshore renewable energy locks in climate change guarantees

extinction
Thaler, Professor of Energy Policy, Law & Ethics at the University of Maine
School of Law and School of Economics, 2012

(Jeff, FIDDLING AS THE WORLD BURNS: HOW CLIMATE CHANGE URGENTLY REQUIRES A
PARADIGM SHIFT IN THE PERMITTING OF RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS, Environmental Law,
Volume 42, Issue 4, September, Online:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2148122)
Thus, Part III focuses on one promising technology to demonstrate the flaws in current licensing permitting regimes, and makes
concrete recommendations for reform.16 Wind power generation from onshore installations is proven
technology, generates no greenhouse gases, consumes no water,17 is increasingly cost-competitive with most fossil fuel sources,18
and can be deployed relatively quickly in many parts of the United States and the world.19 Offshore

wind power is a relatively

presently less cost-competitive than onshore wind.20
However, because wind speeds are on average about 90% stronger and more consistent over
water than over land, with higher power densities and lower shear and turbulence,21 Americas
offshore resources can provide more than its current electricity use.22 Moreover, since these
resources are near many major population centers that drive electricity demand, their exploitation would
reduc*e+ the need for new high-voltage transmission from the Midwest and Great Plains to serve coastal
newer technology, especially deep-water floating projects, and is

lands.23 Therefore, in light of Part IIIs spotlight on literally dozens of different federal (let alone state and local) statutes and their
hundreds of regulations standing between an offshore wind project applicant and construction, Part IV makes concrete statutory
and regulatory recommendations to more quickly enable the full potential of offshore wind energy to become a reality before it is
too late. II. OUR ENERGY USE AND ITS RESULTANT CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS A. Overview Greenhouse gases (GHGs) trap heat
in the atmosphere.24 The

primary GHG emitted by human activities is carbon dioxide (CO2), which in 2010
represented 84% of all human-sourced GHG emissions in the U.S.25 The combustion of fossil fuels to
generate electricity is the largest single source of CO2 emissions in the nation, accounting for about 40% of total U.S. CO2 emissions
and 33% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2009.26 Beginning with the 1750 Industrial Revolution, atmospheric
concentrations of GHGs have significantly increased with greater use of fossil fuelswhich has in turn caused our world to warm and
the climate to change.27 In fact,

climate change may be the single greatest threat to human society and
wildlife, as well as to the ecosystems upon which each depends for survival.28 In 1992, the U.S. signed
and ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the stated objective of which was: [To
achieve] stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic
interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt
naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a
sustainable manner.29 In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

concluded that it is very

likelyat least 90% certainthat humans are responsible for most of the unequivocal
increases in globally averaged temperatures of the previous fifty years.30 Yet in the twenty years since the UNFCCC, it
also is unequivocal that GHG levels have not stabilized but continue to grow, ecosystems and food production have not
been able to adapt, and our heavy reliance on fossil fuels perpetuates dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate
system.31 Equally unequivocal is that 2011 global temperatures were the tenth highest on record and *were+ higher than any
previous year with a La Nina event, which *normally+ has a relative cooling influence.32 The warmest thirteen years of average
global temperatures also have all occurred in the *fifteen+ years since 1997.33 Global emissions of carbon dioxide also jumped
5.9% in 2010500 million extra tons of carbon was pumped into the airthe largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial
Revolution *began in 1750+, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.34 In order to even

have a fifty-fifty

chance that the average global temperature will not rise more than 2C 35 beyond the temperature of 1750,36
our cumulative emissions of CO2 after 1750 must not exceed one trillion tons. However, by mid-October
2012 we had already emitted over 561 billion tons, and at current rates, we will emit the trillionth ton in June
2043.37 The consequence is that members of the current generation are uniquely placed in human history: the choices we
make nowin the next 1020 yearswill alter the destiny of our species (let alone every other species)
unalterably, and forever.38 Unfortunately by the end of 2011, the more than 10,000 government and U.N. officials from all
over the world attending the Durban climate change conference39 agreed that there is a significant gap between the aggregate
effect of Parties mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission
pathways consistent with having a likely chance of holding the increase in global average temperature below 2C or 1.5C above preindustrial levels.40 What are some

of the growing economic, public health, and environmental costs to our country

proximately caused41 by our daily burning of fossil fuels? The National Research Council (NRC) recently analyzed the

hidden costs of energy production and use not reflected in market prices of coal, oil, and other energy sources, or in
the prices of electricity and gasoline produced from them.42 For the year 2005 alone, the NRC estimated $120 billion
of damages to the U.S. from fossil fuel energy production and use, reflecting primarily health damages from air pollution
associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation.43 Of that total, $62 billion was due to coal-fired electricity

generation;44 $56 billion from ground transportation (oil-petroleum);45 and over $2.1 billion from electricity generation and
heating with natural gas.46 The $120 billion figure did not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems and
infrastructure, insurance costs, effects of some air pollutants, and risks to national security, which the NRC examined but did not
specifically monetize.47 The NRC did, however, suggest that under some scenarios, climate damages from energy use could equal
$120 billion.48 Thus, adding infrastructure and ecosystem damages, insurance costs, air pollutant costs, and fossil-fueled national
security costs to reach a total of $240 billion, it becomes clear that fossil

consumption costs Americans almost

$300 billion each year49a hidden number likely to be larger in the future. What does the future hold for a carbonstressed world? Most scientific analyses presently predict that by 2050 the Earth will warm by 22.5C due
to the rising level of GHGs in the atmosphere; at the high-end of projections, the 2050 warming could exceed 4.5C.50 But those
increases are not consistent globally; rather, *i+n all possible *predicted+ outcomes, the warming over land would be roughly twice
the global average, and the warming in the Arctic greater still.51 For example, the NRC expects that each

degree Celsius
increase will produce double to quadruple the area burned by wildfires in the western United States, a 5%15%
reduction in crop yields, more destructive power from hurricanes, greater risk of very hot summers, and
more changes in precipitation frequency and amounts.52 Globally, a summary of studies predicts that at a
1C global average temperature rise would reduce Arctic sea ice by an annual average of 15% and by 25%
in the month of September;53 at 2C Europe suffers greater heat waves, the Greenland Ice Sheet significantly melts, and many land
and marine species are driven to extinction;54 at 3C the

Amazon suffers severe drought and resultant firestorms that

will release significantly more carbon into the atmosphere;55 at 4C hundreds of billions of tons of carbon in
permafrost melts, releasing methane in immense quantities, while the Arctic Ocean ice cap disappears and Europe
suffers greater droughts.56 To presently assess what a 5C rise will mean, we must look back into geological time, 55 million
years ago, when the Earth abruptly experienced dramatic global warming due to the release of
methane hydratesa substance presently found on subsea continental shelves.57 Fossils demonstrate that crocodiles were
in the Canadian high Arctic along with rain forests of dawn redwood, and the Arctic Ocean saw water temperatures of 20C within
200 km of the North Pole itself.58 And a

6C average rise takes us even further backto the end of the Permian period, 251
up to 95% of species relatively abruptly became extinct.59 This may sound
extreme, but the International Energy Agency warned this year that the 6C mark is in reach by 2050 at
current rates of fossil fuel usage.60 However, even given the severity of these forecasts, many still question the extent to which
million years agowhen

our climate is changing,61 and thus reject moving away from our largely fossil-fueled electricity, transportation, and heating sources.
Therefore, in this next subsection I provide the latest scientific data documenting specific climate impacts to multiple parts of the
U.S. and global daily lives, and the costly consequences that establish the urgency for undertaking the major regulatory reforms I
recommend in Part IV of this Article. B. Specific Climate Threats and Consequences 1. When Weather Extremes Increase A 2011
IPCC Special Report predicted that: It is

virtually certain [99100% probability] that increases in the frequency of

warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur throughout the 21st century
on a global scale. It is very likely [90100% probability] that heat waves will increase in length, frequency, and/or intensity
over most land areas. . . . It is very likely that average sea level rise will contribute to upward trends in extreme sea levels in extreme
coastal high water levels.62 Similarly, a House of Representatives committee report (ACESA Report) found that *t+here is a broad
scientific consensus that the United States is vulnerable to weather hazards that will be exacerbated by climate change.63 It also
found that the cost of damages from weather disasters has increased markedly from the 1980s, rising to more than 100 billion
dollars in 2007. In addition to a rise in total cost, the frequency of weather disasters costing more than one billion dollars has
increased.64 In 2011, the U.S. faced the most billion-dollar climate disasters ever, with fourteen distinct disasters alone costing at
least $54 billion to our economy.65 In the first six months of 2012 in the U.S., there were more than 40,000 hot temperature
records, horrendous wildfires, major droughts, oppressive heat waves, major flooding, and a powerful derecho wind storm, followed
in August by Hurricane Isaac ($2 billion damages), and in October by Hurricane Sandy ($50 billion damages).66 The

IPCC
impacts from growing weather hazards upon public health to include: more
frequent and more intense heat waves; more people suffering death, disease, and injury from floods, storms,
fires, and droughts; increased cardio-respiratory morbidity and mortality associated with ground-level ozone pollution;
changes in the range of some infectious disease carriers spreading, for example, malaria and the West Nile virus;
Synthesis identified

and increased malnutrition and consequent disorders.67 The NRC Hidden Costs of Energy reports damage assessment concluded
that the vast majority of the $120 billion per year were based on health damages,68 including an additional 10,00020,000 deaths
per year.69 By 2050, cumulative additional heat-related deaths from unabated climate change are predicted to be roughly 33,000 in
the forty largest U.S. cities, with more than 150,000 additional deaths by 2100.70 Weather extremes also threaten our national

security, which is premised on stability. In 2007, the CNA Corporations report National Security and the Threat of
Climate Change described climate change as a threat multiplier for instability and warned that:
Projected climate change poses a serious threat to Americas national security. The predicted effects of climate change over
the coming decades include extreme weather events, drought, flooding, sea level rise, retreating glaciers, habitat shifts, and the

increased spread of life-threatening diseases. These conditions have

the potential to disrupt our way of life and to

force changes in the way we keep ourselves safe and secure.71 The following year, in the first ever U.S.
government analysis of climate change security threats, the National Intelligence Council issued an assessment
warning, in part, that climate change could threaten U.S. security by leading to political instability, mass
movements of refugees, terrorism, and conflicts over water and other resources.72 2. When Frozen
Water Melts In 2007, the IPCC predicted that sea levels would rise by eight to twenty-four inches above current levels by 2100;73
since then, however, numerous

scientists and studies have suggested that the 2007 prediction is already outof-date and that sea levels will likely rise up to 1.4 meters (m), or 55 inches, given upwardly trending
CO2 emissions.74 The 2009 ACESA Report found that rising sea levels are: [A]lready causing inundation of low-lying lands,
corrosion of wetlands and beaches, exacerbation of storm surges and flooding, and increases in the salinity of coastal estuaries and
aquifers. . . . Further, about one billion people live in areas within 75 feet elevation of todays sea level, including many US cities on
the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico, almost all of Bangladesh, and areas occupied by more than 250 million people in China.75 This
year NASAs Chief Scientist testified to Congress that two-thirds of sea level rise from the last three decades is derived from the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the melting Arctic region; he then warned: [T]he West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS), an area
about the size of the states of Texas and Oklahoma combined . . . contains the equivalent of 3.3 m of sea level, and all that ice rests
on a soft-bed that lies below sea level. In this configuration, as warm seawater melts the floating ice shelves, causing them to retreat
and the glaciers that feed them to speed up, there is no mechanism to stop the retreat and associated discharge, if warming
continues. Thus the WAIS exhibits great potential for substantial and relatively rapid contributions to sea level rise. In Greenland,
the situation is not as dramatic, since the bed that underlies most of the ice is not below sea level, and the potential for unabated
retreat is limited to a few outlet glaciers. In Greenland, however, summer air temperatures are warmer and closer to ices melting
point, and we have observed widespread accumulation of meltwater in melt ponds on the ice sheet surface.76 In the West
Antarctic ice sheet region, glacier retreat appears to be widespread, as the air has warmed by nearly 6F since 1950.77 As for
Greenlands ice sheet, it also is at greater risk than the IPCC had thought. Recent studies with more complete modeling suggest
that the warming threshold leading to an essentially ice-free state is not the previous estimate of an additional 3.1C, but only 1.6C.
Thus, the 2C target may be insufficient to prevent loss of much of the ice sheet and resultant significant sea level rise.78 The
ACESA Report also identified the Arctic as one of the hotspots of global warming79 because *o+ver the past 50 years average
temperatures in the Arctic have increased as much as 7F, five times the global average.80 Moreover, in 2007, a record 386,000
square miles of Arctic sea ice melted away, an area larger than Texas and Arizona combined and as big a decline in one year as has
occurred over the last decade.81 Arctic sea ice is melting faster than climate models [had] predict[ed,] and is about [thirty] years
ahead of the 2007 IPCC predictions, thus indicating that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in the late summer beginning sometime
between 2020 and 2037.82 How is the Arctics plight linked to non-Arctic impacts? The Arctic region arguably has the greatest
concentration of potential tipping elements in the Earth system, including Arctic sea ice, the Greenland ice sheet, North Atlantic
deep-water formation regions, boreal forests, permafrost and marine methane hydrates.83 Additionally: Warming of the Arctic
region is proceeding at three times the global average . . . . Loss of Arctic sea ice has been tentatively linked to extreme cold winters
in Europe . . . . Near complete loss of the summer sea ice, as forecast for the middle of this century, if not before, will probably have
knock-on effects for the northern mid-latitudes, shifting the jet streams and storm tracks.84 Since 1980, sea levels have been
rising three to four times faster than the global average between Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and Boston, Massachusetts.85
*P+ast and future global warming more than doubles the estimated odds of century or worse floods occurring within the next 18
years for most coastal U.S. locations.86 Although land-based glacier melts are not major contributors to sea level rise, they do
impact peoples food and water supplies. Virtually all of the worlds glaciers, which store 75% of the worlds freshwater, are receding
in direct response to global warming, aggravating already severe water scarcityboth in the United States and abroad.87 While over
15% of the worlds population currently relies on glacial melt and snow cover for drinking water and irrigation for agriculture, the
IPCC projects a 60% volume loss in glaciers in various regions and widespread reductions in snow cover throughout the twenty-first
century.88 Likewise, snowpack has been decreasing, and it is expected that snow cover duration will significantly decrease in eastern
and western North America and Scandinavia by 2020 and globally by 2080.89 Climate change

thus increases food

insecurity by reducing yields of grains, such as corn and wheat, through increased water scarcity and
intensification of severe hot conditions, thereby causing corn price volatility to sharply increase.90 Globally, the
number of people living in severely stressed river basins will increase by one to two billion people in the 2050s. About two-thirds
of global land area is expected to experience increased water stress.91 3. When Liquid Water Warms Over the past century,
oceans, which cover 70% of the Earths surface, have been warming. Global sea-surface temperatures have increased about 1.3F
and the heat has penetrated almost two miles into the deep ocean.92 This increased warming is contributing to the destruction of
seagrass meadows, causing an annual release back into the environment of 299 million tons of carbon.93 Elevated

atmospheric CO2 concentrations also are leading to higher absorption of CO2 into the upper
ocean, making the surface waters more acidic (lower pH).94 *O]cean chemistry currently is
changing at least 100 times more rapidly than it has changed during the 650,000 years preceding our [fossilfueled+ industrial era.95 This acidification has serious implications for the calcification rates of
organisms and plants living at all levels within the global ocean. Coral reefshabitat for over a million
marine speciesare collapsing, endangering more than a third of all coral species .96 Indeed, temperature
thresholds for the majority of coral reefs worldwide are expected to be exceeded, causing mass bleaching and complete coral

mortality.97 *T]he

productivity of plankton, krill, and marine snails, which compose the base of the
ocean food-chain, [also] declines as the ocean acidifies,98 adversely impacting populations of everything from
whales to salmon99species that are also are being harmed by the oceans warming.100 Extinctions from climate change
also are expected to be significant and widespread. The IPCC Fourth Assessment found that approximately 20
30% of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average
temperature exceed 1.5 2.5C101a range likely to be exceeded in the coming decades. *R+ecent studies have linked global
warming to declines in such [] species as [] blue crabs, penguins, gray whales, salmon, walruses, and ringed seals[; b]ird extinction
rates are predicted to be as high as 38[%] in Europe and 72[%] in northeastern Australia, if global warming exceeds 2C above preindustrial levels.102 Between now and 2050, Conservation International estimates that one species will face extinction every
twenty minutes;103 the current extinction rate is one thousand times faster than the average during Earths history,104 in part
because the climate is changing more than 100 times faster than the rate at which many species can adapt.105 4. When Land Dries
Out The warming trends toward the Earths poles and higher latitudes are threatening people not just from melting ice and sea
level rise, but also from the predicted thawing of 30%50% of permafrost by 2050, and again as much or more of it by 2100.106
The term permafrost refers to soil or rock that has been below 0C (32F) and frozen for at least two years.107 Permafrost
underlies about 25% of the land area in the northern hemisphere, and is estimated to hold 30*%+ or more of all carbon stored in
soils worldwide which equates to four times more than all the carbon humans have emitted in modern times.108 Given the
increasing average air temperatures in eastern Siberia, Alaska, and northwestern Canada, thawing of the Northern permafrost would
release massive amounts of carbon dioxide (doubling current atmospheric levels) and methane into the atmosphere.109 Indeed,
there are about 1.7 trillion tons of carbon in northern soils (roughly twice the amount in the atmosphere), about 88% of it in thawing
permafrost.110 Permafrost thus may become an annual source of carbon equal to 15%35% of todays annual human emissions.111
But like seagrass meadows and unlike power plant emissions, we cannot trap or prevent permafrost carbon emissions at the
source. Similarly, forests, which cover about 30*%+ of the Earths land surface and hold almost half of the worlds terrestrial
carbon . . . act both as a source of carbon emissions to the atmosphere when cut, burned, or otherwise degraded and as a sink when
they grow.112 A combination of droughts, fires, and spreading pests, though, are causing economic and environmental havoc: In
2003 . . . forest fires in Europe, the United States, Australia, and Canada accounted for more global [carbon] emissions than any
other source.113 There have been significant increases in both the number of major wildfires and the area of forests burned in the
U.S. and Canada.114 Fires fed by hot, dry weather have killed enormous stretches of forest in Siberia and in the Amazon, which
recently suffered two once a century droughts just five years apart.115 Climate change also is exacerbating the geographic
spread and intensity of insect infestations. For example: [I]n British Columbia . . . the mountain pine beetle extended its range
north and has destroyed an area of soft-wood forest three times the size of Maryland, killing 411 million cubic feet of treesdouble
the annual take by all the loggers in Canada. Alaska has also lost up to three million acres of old growth forest to the pine
beetle.116 Over the past fifteen years the spruce bark beetle extended its range into Alaska, where it has killed about 40 million
trees more than any other insect in North Americas recorded history.117 The drying and burning forests, and other increasingly
dry landscapes, also are causing flora and fauna *to move+ to higher latitudes or to higher altitudes in the mountains.118 The
human and environmental costs

from failing to promptly reduce dependence on carbon-dioxide emitting sources

dire and indisputable. Rather than being the leader among major countries
in per capita GHG emissions, our country urgently needs to lead the world in cutting 80% of our emissions by 2050 and
for electricity, heating, and transportation are

using our renewable energy resources and technological advances to help other major emitting countries do the same. However,

significantly increasing our use of carbon-free renewable sources to protect current and future
generations of all specieshuman and non-humanrequires concrete changes in how our legal system
regulates and permits renewable energy sources. One source with the potential for significant energy
production and comparable elimination of fossil fueled GHGs near major American and global
population centers is offshore wind.

Warming is real and anthropogenic we need to start work towards an ideal

solution now.
Harvey 2013 Fiona, Guardian Environment Reporter, IPCC climate report: human impact is 'unequivocal', September 27
2013, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/27/ipcc-climate-report-un-secretary-general
World leaders must now respond to an "unequivocal" message from climate scientists and act with policies to cut greenhouse gas
emissions, the United Nations secretary-general urged on Friday. Introducing a major report from a high level UN panel of climate
scientists, Ban Ki-moon said, "The heat is on. We must act." The

world's leading climate scientists, who have been

there was no longer room for doubt that
climate change was occurring, and the dominant cause has been human actions in pouring
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In their starkest warning yet, following nearly seven years of new research
on the climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it was "unequivocal" and that even if
the world begins to moderate greenhouse gas emissions, warming is likely to cross the critical threshold of 2C
by the end of this century. That would have serious consequences, including sea level rises,
meeting in all-night sessions this week in the Swedish capital, said

heatwaves and changes to rainfall meaning dry regions get less and already wet areas receive more. In response to the
report, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, said in a statement: "This is yet another wakeup call: those who deny the science or
choose excuses over action are playing with fire." "Once again, the

science grows clearer, the case grows more

compelling, and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything that anyone with conscience or
commonsense should be willing to even contemplate," he said. He said that livelihoods around the world
would be impacted. "With those stakes, the response must be all hands on deck. It's not about one country making a demand of
another. It's the science itself, demanding action from all of us. The United States is deeply committed to leading on climate
change." In a crucial reinforcement of their message included starkly in this report for the first time the

IPCC warned
that the world cannot afford to keep emitting carbon dioxide as it has been doing in recent years.
To avoid dangerous levels of climate change, beyond 2C, the world can only emit a total of
between 800 and 880 gigatonnes of carbon. Of this, about 530 gigatonnes had already been emitted by 2011. That
has a clear implication for our fossil fuel consumption, meaning that humans cannot burn all
of the coal, oil and gas reserves that countries and companies possess. As the former UN commissioner
Mary Robinson told the Guardian last week, that will have "huge implications for social and economic development." It will also be
difficult for business interests to accept. The central estimate is that warming is likely to exceed 2C, the threshold beyond which
scientists think global warming will start to wreak serious changes to the planet. That threshold is likely to be reached even if we
begin to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, which so far has not happened, according to the report. Other key points from the
report are: Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are now at levels "unprecedented in at least
the last 800,000 years." Since the 1950's it's "extremely likely" that human activities have been the dominant cause of the
temperature rise. Concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased to levels that are
unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. The burning of fossil fuels is the main reason behind a 40% increase in C02 concentrations
since the industrial revolution. Global temperatures are likely to rise by 0.3C to 4.8C, by the end of the century depending on how
much governments control carbon emissions. Sea levels are expected to rise a further 26-82cm by the end of the century. The
oceans have acidified as they have absorbed about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted. Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the working
group on physical science, said the message that greenhouse gases must be reduced was clear. "We give
very relevant guidance on the total amount of carbon that can't be emitted to stay to 1.5 or 2C. We are not on the path that would
lead us to respect that warming target [which has been agreed by world governments]." He said: "Continued emissions of

greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate
system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of
greenhouse gas emissions." Though governments around the world have agreed to curb emissions, and at numerous
international meetings have reaffirmed their commitment to holding warming to below 2C by the end of the century, greenhouse
gas concentrations are still rising at record rates. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, said it was for governments to take action
based on the science produced by the panel, consisting of thousands of pages of detail, drawing on the work of more than 800
scientists and hundreds of scientific papers. The scientists also put paid to claims that global warming has "stopped" because global
temperatures in the past 15 years have not continued the strong upward march of the preceding years, which is a key argument put
forward by sceptics to cast doubt on climate science. But the IPCC said the

longer term trends were clear: "Each of

the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding
decade since 1850 in the northern hemisphere [the earliest date for reliable temperature records for the whole hemisphere]."
The past 15 years were not such an unusual case, said Stocker. "People always pick 1998 but [that was] a very special year, because
a strong El Nio made it unusually hot, and since then there have been some medium-sized volcanic eruptions that have cooled the
climate." But he said that further research was needed on the role of the oceans, which are thought to have absorbed more than
90% of the warming so far. The

scientists have faced sustained attacks from so-called sceptics, often

funded by "vested interests" according to the UN, who try to pick holes in each item of evidence for
climate change. The experts have always known they must make their work watertight against such an onslaught, and every
conclusion made by the IPCC must pass scrutiny by all of the world's governments before it
can be published. Their warning on Friday was sent out to governments around the globe, who convene and fund the IPCC. It
was 1988 when scientists were first convened for this task, and in the five landmark reports since then the research has
become ever clearer. Now, scientists say they are certain that "warming in the climate system is
unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout the climate system
that are unprecedented over decades to millennia." That warning, from such a sober body, hemmed in by the
need to submit every statement to extraordinary levels of scrutiny, is the starkest yet.
"Heatwaves are very likely to occur more frequently and last longer. As the earth warms, we expect to see currently wet regions
receiving more rainfall, and dry regions receiving less, although there will be exceptions," Stocker said. Qin Dahe, also co-chair of the
working group, said: "As the ocean warm, and glaciers and ice sheets reduce, global mean sea level will continue to rise, but at a
faster rate than we have experienced over the past 40 years." Prof David Mackay, chief scientific adviser to the Department of

Energy and Climate Change, said: "The far-reaching consequences of this warming are becoming understood, although some
uncertainties remain. The

most significant uncertainty, however, is how much carbon humanity will

choose to put into the atmosphere in the future. It is the total sum of all our carbon emissions
that will determine the impacts. We need to take action now, to maximise our chances of
being faced with impacts that we, and our children, can deal with. Waiting a decade or two before taking climate
change action will certainly lead to greater harm than acting now."

Absent cuts in emissions, warming causes extinction

Mazo 10 (Jeffrey Mazo PhD in Paleoclimatology from UCLA, Managing Editor, Survival and Research Fellow for
Environmental Security and Science Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, 3-2010, Climate Conflict:
How global warming threatens security and what to do about it, pg. 122)

The best estimates for global warming to the end of the century range from 2.5-4.~C above preindustrial levels, depending on the scenario. Even in the best-case scenario, the low end of the likely range
is 1.goC, and in the worst 'business as usual' projections, which actual emissions have been matching, the range of likely warming
runs from 3.1--7.1C. Even keeping emissions at constant 2000 levels (which have already been exceeded), global
temperature would still be expected to reach 1.2C (O'9""1.5C)above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century." Without
early and severe reductions in emissions , the effects of climate change in the second half of
the twenty-first century are likely to be catastrophic for the stability and security of countries
in the developing world - not to mention the associated human tragedy. Climate change could even undermine the
strength and stability of emerging and advanced economies, beyond the knock-on effects on
security of widespread state failure and collapse in developing countries.' And although they have
been condemned as melodramatic and alarmist, many informed observers believe that unmitigated climate
change beyond the end of the century could pose an existential threat to civilisation ." What is
certain is that there is no precedent in human experience for such rapid change or such climatic conditions, and even in the best
case adaptation to these extremes would mean profound social, cultural and political changes

No adaptation 4 degree temperature increase will breakdown civilization and

cause every impact
Roberts 13 (David, citing the World Bank Reviews compilation of climate studies, If you arent alarmed about climate, you
arent paying attention http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-alarmism-the-idea-is-surreal/)
We know weve raised global average temperatures around 0.8 degrees C so far. We know that 2

degrees C is where most

scientists predict catastrophic and irreversible impacts. And we know that we are currently
on a trajectory that will push temperatures up 4 degrees or more by the end of the
century. What would 4 degrees look like? A recent World Bank review of the science reminds us. First, itll get hot: Projections for a 4C
world show a dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of high-temperature extremes.
Recent extreme heat waves such as in Russia in 2010 are likely to become the new normal summer in a 4C world. Tropical South
America, central Africa, and all tropical islands in the Pacific are likely to regularly
experience heat waves of unprecedented magnitude and duration. In this new high-temperature climate
regime, the coolest months are likely to be substantially warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century. In regions such as the
Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Tibetan plateau, almost all summer months are likely to be warmer than the most extreme
heat waves presently experienced. For example, the warmest July in the Mediterranean region could be 9C warmer than todays warmest July.

Extreme heat waves in recent years have had severe impacts, causing heat-related deaths,
forest fires, and harvest losses. The impacts of the extreme heat waves projected for a 4C world have not been evaluated, but
they could be expected to vastly exceed the consequences experienced to date and potentially
exceed the adaptive capacities of many societies and natural systems. [my emphasis] Warming to 4
degrees would also lead to an increase of about 150 percent in acidity of the ocean, leading
to levels of acidity unparalleled in Earths history. Thats bad news for, say, coral reefs: The combination of
thermally induced bleaching events, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise threatens large fractions of coral reefs even at 1.5C global warming.
The regional extinction of entire coral reef ecosystems, which could occur well before 4C is reached, would have profound consequences for their
dependent species and for the people who depend on them for food, income, tourism, and shoreline protection. It

will also likely

lead to a sea-level rise of 0.5 to 1 meter, and possibly more, by 2100, with several meters more to be realized in the coming
centuries. That rise wont be spread evenly, even within regions and countries regions close to the equator will see even higher seas. There are
also indications that it

would significantly exacerbate existing water scarcity in many regions,

particularly northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, while additional countries in Africa would
be newly confronted with water scarcity on a national scale due to population growth. Also, more extreme weather events:
Ecosystems will be affected by more frequent extreme weather events, such as forest loss
due to droughts and wildfire exacerbated by land use and agricultural expansion. In Amazonia, forest fires could as much as
double by 2050 with warming of approximately 1.5C to 2C above preindustrial levels. Changes would be expected to be even more severe in a
4C world. Also

loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services: In a 4C world, climate change seems likely to
become the dominant driver of ecosystem shifts, surpassing habitat destruction as the
greatest threat to biodiversity. Recent research suggests that large-scale loss of biodiversity is
likely to occur in a 4C world, with climate change and high CO2 concentration driving a
transition of the Earths ecosystems into a state unknown in human experience. Ecosystem
damage would be expected to dramatically reduce the provision of ecosystem services on which society depends (for example, fisheries and
protection of coastline afforded by coral reefs and mangroves.) New research

also indicates a rapidly rising risk of

crop yield reductions as the world warms. So food will be tough. All this will add up to large-scale
displacement of populations and have adverse consequences for human security and
economic and trade systems. Given the uncertainties and long-tail risks involved, there is no certainty that
adaptation to a 4C world is possible . Theres a
civilization breaking down entirely.

small but

non-trivial chance of advanced

Now ponder the fact that some scenarios show us going up to 6 degrees by the end of

the century, a level of devastation we have not studied and barely know how to conceive. Ponder the fact that somewhere

along the
line, though we dont know exactly where, enough self-reinforcing feedback loops will be running to make
climate change unstoppable and irreversible for centuries to come. That would mean
handing our grandchildren and their grandchildren not only a burned, chaotic, denuded world, but a world that is
inexorably more inhospitable with every passing decade.

The latest climate models show that warming is real, models accurate, and El
Nio climate cycle later this year will rapidly accelerate warming.
Nuccitelli 7/21/14 (Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist writing for the Guardian, citing several of the most
recent possible peer reviewed studies on warming. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-percent/2014/jul/21/realistic-climate-models-accurately-predicted-global-warming <!--JAG-->)
Predicting global surface temperature changes in the short-term is a challenge for climate models. Temperature

changes
over periods of a decade or two can be dominated by influences from ocean cycles like El Nio
and La Nia. During El Nio phases, the oceans absorb less heat, leaving more to warm the
atmosphere, and the opposite is true during a La Nia. We can't yet predict ahead of time how these cycles
will change. The good news is that it doesn't matter from a big picture climate perspective, because over the long-term,
temperature influences from El Nio and La Nia events cancel each other out. However,
when we examine how climate model projections have performed over the past 15 years or
so, those natural cycles make a big difference. A new paper led by James Risbey just out in Nature Climate Change
takes a clever approach to evaluating how accurate climate model temperature predictions have been while getting around the
noise caused by natural cycles. The authors used a large set of simulations from 18 different climate models (from CMIP5). They
looked at each 15-year period since the 1950s, and compared how accurately each model simulation had represented El Nio and La
Nia conditions during those 15 years, using the trends in what's known as the Nio3.4 index. Each

individual climate
model run has a random representation of these natural ocean cycles, so for every 15-year
period, some of those simulations will have accurately represented the actual El Nio
conditions just by chance. The study authors compared the simulations that were correctly
synchronized with the ocean cycles (blue data in the left frame below) and the most out-ofsync (grey data in the right frame) to the observed global surface temperature changes (red)

for each 15-year period. The red dots on the thin red line correspond to the 15-year observed trends for each 15-year
period. The blue dots show the 15-year average trends from only those CMIP5 runs in each 15-year period where the model Nio3.4
trend is close to the observed Nio3.4 trend. The grey dots show the average 15-year trends for only the models with the worst
correspondence to the observed Nio3.4 trend. The size of the dots are proportional to the number of models selected. The
envelopes represent 2.597.5 percentile loess-smoothed fits to the models and data. Red: 15-year observed trends for each period.
Blue: 15-year average trends from CMIP5 runs where the model Nio3.4 trend is close to observations. Grey: average 15-year trends
for only the models with the worst correspondence to the Nio3.4 trend. The sizes of the dots are proportional to the number of
models selected. From Nature Climate Change The

authors conclude, When the phase of natural variability

is taken into account, the model 15-year warming trends in CMIP5 projections well estimate
the observed trends for all 15-year periods over the past half-century. It's also clear from the grey figure
that models that are out-of-sync with the observed changes in these ocean cycles simulate dramatically higher warming trends over
the past 30 years. In other words, the model simulations that happened not to accurately represent these ocean cycles were the
ones that over-predicted global surface warming. The claim

that climate models are unreliable is the 6thmost popular contrarian myth. The argument is generally based on the claim that climate
models didn't predict the slowdown in global surface warming over the past 15 years. That's
in large part because during that time, we've predominantly experienced La Nia conditions .
Climate modelers couldn't predict that ahead of time, but the models that happened to
accurately simulate those conditions also accurately predicted the amount of global surface
warming we've experienced. Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography published a
paper in Nature last year taking a similar approach to that of Risbey and colleagues. In that study, the authors ran
climate model simulations in which they incorporated the observed Pacific Ocean sea surface
temperature changes, essentially forcing the models to accurately reflect the influence from
these ocean cycles. When they did that, the authors found that the models simulated the
observed global surface temperature changes remarkably well. The results of these studies give us two
important pieces of information: When they reflect the actual changes in ocean cycles, climate models
are quite accurate even in their short-term temperature predictions. The short-term slowdown in the
warming of global surface temperatures is likely predominantly due to these ocean cycles. The second point is supported by many
recent studies finding that unprecedentedly strong Pacific trade winds have been churning the ocean and funneling more heat to the
deeper layers, leaving less to warm the surface. All signs point to this being a temporary change, and once

the oceans begin

to switch back to more frequent El Nio conditions, we expect to see less efficient ocean heat
absorption leading to accelerated warming of global surface temperatures. It's unfortunate that in the
meantime, people who don't understand how the climate or modeling work have used the surface warming slowdown to incorrectly
argue that climate models aren't reliable and that global warming is nothing to worry about. This new study shows once again that
climate models are indeed reliable, and if we don't soon act to slow down human-caused global warming and the risks it poses,
we're likely headed for a very bleak future.

2AC Climate Monitoring

Environmental sensors installed in repeaters contribute to climate change
research and cable protection
ITU 12 (International Telecommunications Union 2012 Using submarine cables for climate monitoring and disaster warning
Strategy and roadmap http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/4B/04/T4B040000150001PDFE.pdf <!--JAG-->)
The efforts to incorporate scientific environmental monitoring sensors into repeaters will take many years before coming to fruition.
It is important to raise public awareness of the potential for using submarine cables for ocean/climate and tsunami/earthquake
monitoring in order to build on the momentum generated by the Rome workshop. Continuous affirmation by ITU, WMO, and
UNESCO/IOC is necessary. There

is increasing public interest in being "green", and linking the

submarine cables with "green" science builds a reservoir of good will that may tapped by
commercial cable owners, manufacturers, and operators who participate. Ideally, it would beneficial to
create a public relations bonanza for the first telecom that implements a "green" submarine cable system. Toward this end, it is
crucial to publicize the Rome workshop and its "Call to Action". ITU, WMO, and UNESCO/IOC should take the opportunity to
highlight this new activity at every forum they attend and within the media. WMO and UNESCO/IOC should directly advise

national monitoring agencies for climate/weather, tsunami and earthquakes on the potential
prospects for new, real-time sensors within submarine telecommunications cables in the deep
ocean at seafloor in order to engage their interest and receptivity to the data. Integration of new
technology and data into the existing monitoring frameworks of countries takes time, and coordination with the established national
processes for improving sensor and data infrastructures must begin. WMO

has the capability to manage and

distribute the data collected from environmental monitoring repeaters. It would be helpful for
WMO to formally offer to provide data management services for the future data, thereby
giving recognition to the value and importance of the data. 16 Strategy and roadmap ITU, WMO, and
UNESCO/IOC should advise the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) about their efforts to
engage the private sector in ocean/climate and tsunami/earthquake monitoring through
submarine cables. Visibility of submarine cables with environmental monitoring sensors may
engender greater protection for all active cables. Recognizing essential societal benefit and
value for scientific monitoring by submarine telecommunication cables, local governments
may be more proactive in protecting them. In practical terms, once there is a security protocol
for one cable, it would be easier to convince a local navy to extend the same protection shield
(non-fishing areas, Vessel Monitoring System or radar monitoring, high penalties for those
fishing nearby, etc.) to other cables in its local waters. Finally, the sensor-cable engineering workshop, sensor
specification vetting, and scientific review of monitoring objectives present important public relations opportunities. Engaging active
talents of the scientific, engineering, and monitoring communities in open discussion also creates opportunities for proposing
possible pilot projects as follow-up to developments.

Climate monitoring sensors are key to mitigate tsunamis and prevent climate
change.
ITU 12 (International Telecommunications Union 2012 Using submarine cables for climate monitoring and disaster warning
Strategy and roadmap http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/4B/04/T4B040000150001PDFE.pdf <!--JAG-->)
Where we want to go Commercial submarine telecommunication cables crisscross hundreds of thousands of kilometers of the
oceans' seafloor (Figure 1a), providing the fundamental Internet and telecommunications infrastructure for mankind. These

cables are now blind, deaf, and dumb to the environment surrounding them, and simply
transport information between terminal stations near cities on the coasts. The vision is for
these submarine cables to perceive their environment, and transmit these data to mankind. As
global communications continue to expand and develop, older submarine cable systems are systematically
retired after a lifetime of about 25 years and replaced with more modern, capable equipment.
When submarine cable repeaters, which amplify optical data as it travels across the ocean, are
designed to include basic ocean observation sensors, this capability enables the possibility for
extensive networks of sensors crossing the oceans at the seafloor. Incorporating such repeaters into

future submarine telecommunications cable systems would lead over time to a progressive expansion of environmental monitoring.

These sensory data are fundamental to ocean and climate monitoring for global change and
for disaster risk reduction for tsunamis and earthquakes. The vision is for today's broad
telecommunications networks to morph over time into broader telecommunications networks
that also sense their ocean environment.Figure 1a: Global Submarine Telecommunication Cables. Source: TE
subcom, International Cable Protection Committee, 2012 Figure 1b: Abridged map of cable routes. Submarine cable repeaters (blue
dots) are symbolically plotted overlapping the cables (in red). Actual number of repeaters is about 4 times more than that plotted
with a distance of about 40-150 km apart. For example, a

typical transpacific cable would contain about 200

repeaters. Tsunami buoys and other ocean observatories are also plotted. Source: Y. You, 2011. Strategy and roadmap 5 1.2
What we need in order to get there To realize this vision ITU, WMO and UNESCO/IOC must sustain their positive engagement with
the submarine telecommunications companies, both cable owners and manufacturers. Representing people everywhere, the joint
action of ITU, WMO, and UNESCO/IOC brings necessary gravitas in finding mutual advantage in the way forward for all concerned.

Visibility for this vision is important for broadening the awareness of companies,
governments, agencies, and the public, and building their support. Currently the global
environmental monitoring systems for ocean, weather, climate, tsunami, and earthquakes are
developed, installed, and operated by governments. However, monitoring the environment of
the seafloor with submarine telecommunication cables relies exclusively on infrastructure
developed, installed, and operated by the private sector. Recognizing the primacy of
telecommunications on these systems and working through commercial companies, the
framework for adding sensors to submarine cable repeaters must necessarily reflect and be
congruent with the interests of the cable owners and manufacturers in minimizing cost and
risk. Acknowledging the leading role of the commercial sector is essential for building confidence. The cable repeater design and its
deployment mode by cable ships place very strong constraints on possible scientific sensors. It is important to keep it simple at this
initial stage to build confidence and success. Key sensors that meet scientific monitoring objectives must fully take into
consideration the repeater and its deployment environment. The scientific and monitoring communities must be engaged by ITU,
WMO, and UNESCO/IOC in order to vet the sensor specifications. Sensor spacing and integration of data from potentially many cable
systems must be reviewed with respect to science objectives by national science agencies or academies to better understand costbenefit trade-offs. Costs

for current global monitoring of the upper ocean by satellites, ships, and
buoys (including tsunami) must be weighed with respect to the incremental costs for adding
sensors to submarine cable repeaters for the deep ocean and seafloor. Cable system manufacturers and
sensor manufacturers must be invited by ITU, WMO, and UNESCO/IOC to meet for engineering discussions and to build necessary
contacts for beginning development of prototype repeaters incorporating ocean observation sensors. The use of submarine
telecommunications cables for environmental monitoring requires consideration of the United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLOS, 1982). According to UNCLOS, whereas the international legal regime for installation and maintenance of
submarine cables recognizes unique freedom to lay, maintain and repair submarine cables freedom not granted for any other
marine activities the international legal regime for marine data collection recognizes the right of the Coastal State to regulate
certain forms of marine data collection in the territorial sea, in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and on the continental shelf
where its consent is required to conduct marine scientific research (MSR). However, all

States have the right to

conduct MSR in the high seas and in the Area. Due to the newness of submarine telecommunication cables
equipped with scientific sensors for environmental monitoring, it is not mentioned in UNCLOS whether this activity falls into the
international legal regime for installation and maintenance of submarine cables, or whether it is subject to MSR regime. The lack of
international agreement on this issue might slow down this progress (see Bressie, 2012). 1.3 Where we are Global climate change is
recognized by the United Nations and impacts all of mankind.

Through the WMO Global Observing System,

extraordinary monitoring resources (many tens of USD Billion) using ships, buoys and
constellations of satellites (Figures 2 and 3) are focused upon the surface and upper ocean. 6
Strategy and roadmap Figure 2: Elements of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) implemented through April 2011. Source:
D. Meldrum, 2011. In comparison,

scant few resources are focused on monitoring the deep ocean

and seafloor (e.g., Garzoliet et al., 2010). The OceanObs09 conference in 2009 (www.oceanobs09.net) emphasized the
need for global sustained deep ocean observations. Figure 3: Satellite constellations of the WMO Global
Observing System (GOS) for monitoring weather and climate. Source: W. Zhang, 2011. Strategy and roadmap 7 The tsunamis of 2004
in the Indian Ocean and 2011 on the shore of Japan caused extreme damage and loss of life. Networks

of tsunami gauges
deployed on the seafloor at moored buoys now surround the edges of the Pacific, and are at
edges of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans (e.g., Figure 1b). However, buoy failures, vandalism
(Figure 4), long down time due to limited weather windows for repair, lack of coverage in the

vast open ocean, and high-maintenance costs by ships have abridged the effectiveness of this
resource. Tsunamigenic earthquakes are monitored almost exclusively on land, and there are
very few sensors on the seafloor near these earthquake zones. Figure 4: Vandalism is a major problem for
tsunami buoys in the Indian Ocean. Source: D. Meldrum, 2011. An extraordinary system of commercial submarine
telecommunication cables exists in oceans. In principle, governments could lay environmental monitoring cables themselves and
have to a limited extent done so near coastal areas of Japan, northwestern area of North America, and Europe but have not in the
vast open oceans. Although there is a recognized need, costs for laying cables are high (>USD 100M). Revenue generation offsets the
costs for commercial cables. Through working with the leadership of the telecommunication industry for expanding environmental
monitoring to the seafloor, it makes better sense to invest in a small, incremental change to the repeaters of submarine
telecommunication systems that will continue to be routinely deployed across the oceans. This last idea is at the heart of the Rome
workshop. The Call to Action (see Annex A.1) from the Rome workshop laid forth ten points for a joint ITU, WMO, and UNESCO/IOC
task force to pursue. To the extent that several other points interact directly or indirectly with the second point (ii) presented herein,
I have included discussion.

Global ocean heat content monitoring is necessary in climate change research.

Ravilious 14 (Ocean heat content is a better measure of climate change than surface temperature March 21, 2014. Kate
Ravilious is an independent earth science journalist who reports on peer reviewed research studies for major news outlets.
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/56643 <!--JAG-->)
Has climate change come to a halt? For the last decade or so the global average surface temperature has levelled off at around 0.5
C above the long-term average, prompting many to question whether global warming is really happening or not. But, as

a new
modelling study shows, measuring surface temperature is not the best way of taking the
Earths temperature. If instead we look at changes in ocean temperatures, we see that global
warming most definitely continues apace. Every day tens of thousands of temperature measurements are taken all
over the world, both on land and at sea. Averaged together they give us a snapshot measurement of the temperature at the Earths
surface, and by using historical records we can see how that temperature has changed over the last 160 years. For

most of the
last century surface temperatures have climbed steadily, but there have been occasional
plateaus, including the decade-long pause we are experiencing right now. To understand better whats
happening, Matthew Palmer and Doug McNeall, from the Met Office Hadley Centre, UK, analysed a large number of climate
simulations from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). The researchers investigated the
relationships between the net radiation at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), global ocean heat content (OHC) and global average
surface temperature (GST). TOA is the sum of the incoming short-wave solar radiation, the reflected short-wave radiation (for
example, from cloud tops and the Earths surface) and the outgoing long-wave radiation, re-emitted by the Earth. My view is that
net radiation (TOA) is the most fundamental measure of global warming since it directly represents the accumulation of excess solar
energy in the Earth system, explained Palmer.

The model simulations show substantial variability in

surface temperature trends over a decade, which doesnt correlate well with net radiation. The
lack of correlation tells us that surface temperature trends over the period of about 10 years are not a good indicator of how much
energy is accumulating in the Earth system over that period, Palmer told environmentalresearchweb. The simulations showed that
large trends in surface temperature around 0.3K per decade, compared with a contemporary surface warming rate of about 0.2K
per decade can arise from internal climate variability, and that these trends generally fail to correlate with net radiation over the
same time period. By

contrast, ocean heat content (OHC) correlated well with net radiation,
explaining 95% or more of the variance in net radiation for two-thirds of the simulations
analysed. This tells us that the ocean is the primary term in the Earths energy budget over
decadal timescales, said Palmer, whose findings are published in Environmental Research Letters (ERL). A recent study
published in the journal Nature Climate Change indicated that much of the current hiatus in surface
temperature may be due to unusually strong trade winds in the Pacific Ocean, which have
buried the surface heat deep underwater, reducing the amount of heat flowing back into the
atmosphere. Once those trade winds relax again, the heat is likely to be released and the
rapid rise of surface temperature could continue. That study is consistent with this model-based research by
Palmer and McNeall, who make a clear case for ocean heat rearrangement in explaining decadal variations in surface temperature.
As Palmer and McNeall have shown, measuring surface temperature alone provides little indication of how much energy is
accumulating in the Earth system. To

quantify the increase in energy we must better monitor global

ocean heat content because this represents the primary term in the Earths energy budget and
is a reliable indicator of changes in net radiation. However, measurements of ocean heat
content and net radiation are not as easy to gather as those for surface temperature; their

collection has only started relatively recently. Changes in net radiation have been monitored using satellite
measurements from CERES (Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System) since 2001, while ocean heat content has been calculated for
the upper 2 km of the open ocean since around 2005, using the Argo array of ocean profiling floats. For monitoring ongoing climate
change it is imperative to improve our observations of ocean heat content, pushing further to observe the deep ocean below 2 km,
said Palmer. It is also imperative to continue efforts to monitor changes in net radiation and its components from satellites.

2AC Green Energy

Submarine power cables have numerous applications key to energy.
Worzyk 9 (Submarine Power Cables. Design, Installation, Repair, Environmental Aspects Thomas Worzyk, with 25+yr
experience in power engineering field and employee of ABB, the top manufacturer of submarine cables.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-01270-9_1/fulltext.html <!--JAG-->)
Without Abstract Submarine

power cables have been around for more than a century and the
major use has shifted through the decades. In the early times, submarine power cables were
used to supply isolated offshore facilities such as lighthouses, infirmary ships, etc. Later, the
power supply of near-shore islands was the main objective of submarine power cables. The
connection of autonomous power grids for the sake of better stability and resource utilisation
has been pursued since the sixties of the last century. In modern days, the connection of
offshore facilities is again in the focus. Oil and gas production units ask for shore-generated
power, while offshore wind parks (OWP) need to bring their precious green power to the
onshore grids. 1.1 Power Supply to Islands Islands located closely to the mainland can be connected to
the mainland grid by submarine power cables. This is normally done with medium-voltage a.c. cables (52 kV) and
a transmission power of 1030 MW per cable. The submarine power cables replace island-stationed, ofteninefficient power generation such as diesel generators. The maximum economic length of these cables is 10
30 km. In response to increased power demand of the island, additional cables are often laid in
different routes to reduce risks and increase the power availability on the island. The island
supply can be secured by other cables even in the case of a cable failure. The archipelago of the North
Frisian Islands in Northern Germany was connected to the mainland by a grid of 20 kV submarine cables starting in 1944 [1]. Other
islands like Vancouver Island , Canada, and Long Island , NY, USA, have a large population and massive power The supply of distant
islands is difficult as losses in a.c. cables increase dramatically with distance. Islands located more than 50 km from the mainland
have not been connected for a long time. The German tourist island of Heligoland will be connected to the mainland only later this
year (2009). The Swedish island of Gotland is some 100 km off the Swedish mainland and had to rely on inefficient diesel power
generation for a long time. The island wasnt connected to the mainland grid until 1954, when the first submarine HVDC cable was
installed. The canal islands of Jersey and Guernsey were connected to the French mainland in 1987 and again 2000, and the Italian
islands of Sicily and Sardinia were connected to the Italian mainland by submarine power cables. Islands

with an
autonomous power supply are sometimes connected to the mainland or neighbour islands in
order to increase the power availability. The submarine cable has the function of a spare
power plant providing emergency power in case of a local generator outage. Owing to the
geographical character, some countries, such as Norway, the Philippines, Japan, and other countries, have a long tradition of
installing submarine power cables between their numerous islands. 1.2 Connection

of Autonomous Grids Since the

advent of powerful submarine cables many grids have been interconnected, using different
techniques. Submarine cables connect grids of different countries (To name a few: UK France, Sweden
Germany, Denmark Sweden, Morocco Spain, Greece Italy). Using HVDC techniques, regions with different
frequency control can be linked (Store Belt in Denmark, Sweden Germany, Norway the Netherlands). In the
mentioned cases, both sides have a 50 Hz grid but the frequency is controlled in different ways, rendering asynchronous grids. The
interconnection of national grids is a prime objective of the European Community. The

connection of autonomous
grids can have various purposes and objectives: The load peaks of the connected
countries/grids occur at different times of the day due to different time zones or due to
different habits of electricity use. With the submarine cable transmission it is possible to share
generation capacities to meet the power demand. The connected countries/grids may have
different electricity generation mixes with differences in availability and pricing patterns. Many
HVDC cables connect the NordEl grid system with its abundant hydropower to the European continental power grid (UCTE ), which
mostly relies on fossil and nuclear power. Green power can be traded across borders. Each power grid needs a certain amount of
spinning reserve, that is generation capacity that can be switched to the grid within minutes. Traditionally, generators (hydro or
thermal) provide spinning reserve while running idly. It is obvious that a submarine power cable making a connection to another grid
is a more efficient and maintenance-free spinning reserve, which can be used to dispatch power flow in either direction within
minutes. Since the deregulation of the power markets, the pricing pattern is highly volatile. Power traders can use submarine power

cables to earn money by exploiting the price difference in the connected countries/grids. Sometimes they change the direction of
power flow several times a day responding to the price fluctuations [3]. Submarine

HVDC power cables of extreme

length have been used to connect distant autonomous grids: The longest existing HVDC submarine cable
system is a pair of 580 km cables (NorNed), and a number of 200+ km systems are in successful operation (Baltic Cable , Swepol ,
Bass Link ) or under construction (BritNed , SAPEI ). 1.3 Offshore Wind Farms Offshore wind farms (OWP) consists of a number of
wind turbine generators (WTG). The distance between the WTGs is 300800 m. A grid of submarine cables interconnects the WTG
and bring the power to shore. The in-field cables are three-phase medium-voltage cables (1036 kV) with polymeric insulation. The
connection to shore can be achieved with medium-voltage cables for distances up to about 10 km. For OWP with many turbines,
large output power, or large distance to the shore, the losses in a medium voltage transmission to land would be quite high and a
high-voltage connection to land would be more economic. In larger offshore parks the WTG are connected to an offshore platform
that carries a step-up transformer. From the transformer platform, a submarine power cable (export cable ) sends the power to
shore. Three-phase cables with >100 kV operating voltage serve most often as export cables for distances exceeding 30 km (Fig. 1.2).
Export cables may also operate with HVDC, which requires converter stations both offshore and onshore. The erection of an
offshore converter station on a platform is expensive and can be motivated only when large amounts of power must be transmitted
over a long distance. The use of a.c. frequencies lower than 50 Hz for WTG has been considered, in order to reduce capacitive losses
in the cables, and mechanical requirements for the WTGs. 1.4 Supply of Marine Platforms Production

platform s in the
offshore oil and gas business have a large power demand to extract hydrocarbons from wells.
Energy use covers a range of activities including driving pumps to extract hydrocarbons and to
re-inject water for enhanced oil recovery, heating the output stream to allow separation of
the oil, gas and water, powering compressors and pumps for transporting oil and gas through
pipelines to processing plants or to shore, and supply of the electricity needed for on-site
operations and living quarters. Energy needs vary widely according to local circumstances and
operational conditions. The electric power for many platforms is generated from locally
produced gas in steam plants or gas turbines at rather low efficiency. The power plants
require precious space while their operation and maintenance staff needs additional
accommodation and transport. All this makes the onboard power production expensive. As the power need increases, it
becomes viable to connect the platform to onshore grids by submarine power cables. In Norway, the offshore industry
produced a quarter of the countrys total CO2 emission in 2006. As Norway has vast resources
of hydropower, there is a large potential to reduce the countrys CO2 emission by connecting
platforms to the onshore grid (Fig. 1.3). For these reasons, an increasing number of platform operators invest in
submarine power cables for the power supply of offshore platforms. The supply of floating platforms is a special challenge as the
repeated movements, induced by wind and waves, require certain design considerations. 1.5 Short-Haul Crossings Hundreds of
submarine power cables have been installed to transport power across rivers, channels, straits, fjords, or bays. Though overhead
lines can be used for crossings up to 3 km (e.g. Messina Strait, Italy ) in many cases submarine cables have been chosen instead of
overhead lines. The invisibility of cables is important in tourist resorts and natural resources. Allegedly, for the crossing of a 500 kV
d.c. power transmission over the St. Lawrence River, Canada, a 5.1 km submarine cable system was used to avoid optical impact.
Cables do not restrict the height of ships passing the river or strait. The overhead lines over the Ems River in Germany have to be
shut down each time when an upstream shipyard transports its new mega-size cruising ships to the North Sea. When the lines were
switched off the grid in 2006 for the passage of the M/S Norwegian Star a galloping instability blacked out millions of households
in Europe. Sub-river cables have been discussed for this river crossing but were not yet realized. Also the lifetime costs of a
maintenance-free cable can be lower than that of an overhead line threatened by storms, salt and ice deposition, etc. In short-haul
applications, submarine cables with very high voltage can be used when no joints are required. Often cables are available at higher
voltages than the corresponding joints. Crossings of some 14001800 m can be realized with trenchless horizontal directional drilling
methods from the shoreline. The bore is lined with pipes and the cables would simply be pulled through the pipes. Longer crossings
would require ordinary submarine cable laying techniques. 1.6 Other Applications of Submarine Power Cables There

are many
niche applications of submarine power cables that cannot be covered in this book. The submarine cables used
here are in the medium-voltage or low-voltage range. Here are mentioned a few: Oil and gas production cables. As production wells
are established in ever larger depths of water, more sophisticated equipment such as submersible pumps and compressors of all
kind is placed on the seafloor. Figure 1.4 illustrates different oil and gas installations all requiring submarine power cables. Umbilicals
are armoured flexible assemblies containing anything from power cable cores, signal cables, fluid conduits, hydraulic lines etc in the
same cable. They serve oil and gas equipment on the seafloor and remotely operated subsea vehicles (ROV). Pipeline heating cables
. Submarine pipelines sometimes need electric heating to prevent the formation of wax and hydrate deposits. The pipe itself is used
as the heating element, and the power supply is accomplished by XLPE-insulated power cables with large conductor size and without
metallic water barrier [4]. Subsea observatories . Tsunami pre-warning systems and military reconnaissance arrays require
underwater power. The increasing focus on oceanographic research has triggered the installation of subsea automatic research
stations to collect data. All these must have reliable submarine power supply [5].

Empirics: A power cable connecting Norway and the Netherlands increases

energy efficiency.
NYNAS no date (The world's longest underwater electricity cable NYNAS is a Swedish petroleum company specializing in
development of offshore transformer oils http://www.nynas.com/Segment/Transformer-oils/Case-stories/The-worlds-longestunderwater-electricity-cable/ <!--JAG-->)

A new underwater cable the world's longest for electricity has been installed between
Norway and the Netherlands. The cable will provide both countries with a more efficient and
assured energy supply whilst at the same time drastically reducing CO2 emissions. It runs for
580 km and was taken into commission in December 2007. In the transformers and smoothing reactors at
either end of the cable the main supplier, ABB, has elected to use oils from Nynas. This infrastructure project is called the NorNed
Transmission Project and now forms an important link in the power supply systems of, primarily, Norway and the Netherlands.
NorNed's project leader, Svante G. Svensson, of ABB's HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) unit, which is part of the groups Power
Systems Division that is based in Ludvika, Sweden, explains that for many years there were ongoing discussions between Norway
and the Netherlands about linking the two countries' power supply systems together. The

countries have totally

different preconditions for the project but there were great advantages to be gained for both
countries by linking together their power systems. The Dutch electric power system is mainly
based on coal powered stations, but imported nuclear energy from France is also significant.
The Norwegian system is based entirely on hydroelectric power. A problem the Netherlands
experienced was that since electric power usage varies throughout the day, their coal power
stations had to be run at different output levels, which is both ineffective and leads to greater
emissions of pollutants than if the plants are run at a steady level. "To simplify, you can compare it to
driving a car," explains Svensson. "If you accelerate and slow down often, your fuel consumption will be
higher than if you drive at a steady speed." From the perspective of the Netherlands,
therefore, there was a need both to even out the peaks and troughs in demand by importing
energy to achieve more efficient operation. They also wanted to increase the proportion of
renewable energy used. Norway is normally well supplied when it comes to electricity. The country has a well developed
system of dams and hydroelectric power plants. But occasionally there is a dry year and then electricity needs may become acute.
While the country is linked up to power systems in the other Scandinavian countries, the mutually available resources in these
countries were not considered to be sufficiently sure to meet the needs that could arise in the future. Instead they started to look
south, towards the European continent, for a solution. "So, there were needs on both fronts that one power cable between the two
countries could contribute to solving," continues Svensson. "The Netherlands can now import hydroelectric power from Norway to
reduce emissions of CO2 and run their coal-powered plant more efficiently, and Norway is assured of a supply of imported power
when needed." Svensson

adds that an additional effect is that now other power producers,

primarily in Scandinavia, can use the NorNed cable for export of power to other countries,
mainly in Western Europe. After the two countries needs had been investigated and established and a solution
formulated, there remained the question of how the cable should be laid. This question, says Svensson, was quickly answered: "In

Europe today it is almost impossible to get permits for overhead lines with voltages at these
levels. It would have required enormous efforts to get permission and approval. An overland
route would also have been more expensive." So the obvious solution was an underwater
cable that carries high voltage direct current. The reason for it being direct rather than alternating current is
basically that power transmission of alternating current means higher power losses when transmitted over long distances. Svensson
continues: "What is interesting about this cable is that it actually consists of two cables, both of +/- 450kV capacity, with full-scale
insulation on both cables. This means that no current seeps out into the sea and losses are very small, at most 3.7%. The solution has
thus resulted in a veritable motorway for power transmission." Although the general answer was simple the project still presented a
series of difficult challenges. The cable stretches between Feda in southernmost Norway and Eemshaven in the Netherlands, a
distance of 580km. In the sea to the north of the Netherlands the sand at the sea bed continually shifts. Underwater sand dunes
grow and disappear. In order for the cable to cope with these strong forces sometimes it might "hang" between two dunes over
distances of several hundred metres - the cables north of the Dutch coast are mounted together to form one unit for around 200km
in a flat mass impregnated cable. "The

result is that it is physically very robust," explains Svensson. "It is

even constructed to withstand fishing trawlers. But naturally it is much more expensive to manufacture." The
quality demands during manufacture were extremely high and the insulation, which is made from oil-soaked cellulose and surrounds
the conducting copper core, had to be perfect. The cable was laid in stretches of 70km at a time. Every metre of cable weighs around
50kg. The ends of the cables were spliced together at sea. This joining work is a highly specialized craft that can only be performed
by a handful of experts worldwide. The seams are 67 metres long and made on specially constructed vessels. Every joint takes

about 5 days to complete. Yet another challenge for Svensson and his team was coordination of the interfaces in Norway and the
Netherlands. "We had to conduct very thorough investigations of the respective countries' alternating current network and how
these should be linked together and coordinated with the power supplies of 700 MW coming from the cable - both physically and
from the point of view of system technology." To get the transmission to function ABB constructed converter stations at either end
of the cable. The stations are in principle identical. At the end of each cable there are four transformers, one for each phase and a
reserve. Each of these has a transport weight of about 244 tons, and they were each filled in situ with about 130 tons of oil from
Nynas. In every station there are also two smoothing reactors, each filled with 30 tons of oil, and a 12-pulse thyristor valve. "A rather
special demand from the customers was that they specified various types of overload based on surrounding temperatures,"
continues Svensson. This means the temperature was measured, for example, in the transformers and at several points along the
cable. Based on the given values it was calculated how much power could be transmitted through the cable without exceeding
stated threshold limits. The cable has been constructed to be used for 40 years, and at temperatures of between -40C and +40C.
Since NorNed was taken into commission Svensson

has started to turn his sights to new major projects,

among them a 300MW overhead line of 1000 km, and another of 800 kV, both in China.
"Generally speaking, from a worldwide perspective, the market for transmission projects,
especially HVDC, has never been better than it is now."

Specifics on environmental sensors to be deployed.

ITU 12 (International Telecommunications Union 2012 Using submarine cables for climate monitoring and disaster warning
Strategy and roadmap http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/4B/04/T4B040000150001PDFE.pdf <!--JAG-->)
The Rome workshop focused on a number of sensors to be considered for deployment in submarine cable repeaters. These
specifically include: temperature, pressure, salinity/conductivity, seismic, hydroacoustic, and cable voltage. These were selected as
key measurements with a focus on ocean and climate monitoring and disaster risk reduction. Additional sensors could be
considered, such as an inverted echo sounder, or for measurement of anthropogenic carbon, or even cameras. However, even
though there is merit in broadly considering the types of measures that could be performed on the seafloor, it is more important to
focus on keeping it simple at these beginning stages in order to build confidence and to insure success. In

addition to
sensors, the capability to communicate via an acoustic modem at a repeater could open up
future possibilities for deployment of sensors nearby and data transmission with nearby
gliders. Emplacement within a repeater places strong constraints on the types of sensors that are feasible (see also Lentz and
Phibbs, 2012). There is limited power, perhaps a few watts at most. If there is a dedicated science fiber pair, then there is potentially
great data bandwidth; however, other forms of telemetry, such as using out-of-band carriers, could be substantially more limited
and without any two-way communication for command and control. In-situ calibration that requires visits by ships is not simple, and
will be costly. The space available within the repeater is very limited, and the form and shape of the repeaters are partially dictated
by the requirements for laying and repair/recovery of cables with a standard cable ship (Figure 5). Any "wet" components of the
sensor are essentially limited to within the "bell" at each of the ends of the repeater where the cable enters the repeater bulkhead,
and must not interfere with the fiber tail. Figure 5: Optical repeaters are shown during a cable installation. System electronics and
lasers are located in the copper-hued housing. Source: P. Phibbs, 2011. Strategy and roadmap 9 The sensor system electronics must
be isolated at the bulkhead of the repeater. The repeater may experience shocks of ~40g during shipboard handling. The long-life
design of the repeaters at about 25 years argues for great instrument stability, proven reliability, and comparable lifetimes for
sensors that have been tested and deployed across several generations of development.

In addition to sensing
characteristics, the instrumentation should not raise security concerns. This last point is a
significant consideration in seismic and hydroacoustic sensing capabilities for potentially
monitoring submarines. Temperature and absolute pressure have been measured with great
precision and stability for many years, and served as the mainstays for physical oceanography.
Absolute pressure gauges (APGs) are also essential for tsunami measurement and are
deployed as part of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) network of buoys.
Highresolution APGs are also capable of recording earthquakes (Figure 6), and as such
contribute to tsunami warning, and earthquake location and hazard response. Using APGs for
earthquake monitoring has been implemented by the United States in its Cascadia ocean
bottom sensor system. Figure 6: A magnitude 6.7 earthquake in the Aleutian Is. (see map) is detected in California on a
highresolution absolute pressure gauge in Monterey Bay (left) and on a nearby seismometer on land. Source:
www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/geology/mars/nanoeq.html A thermistor installed in the bell would be partially shielded from the flow of
seawater, and as such would act as a low-pass filter of temperature. Engineering consideration will guide the placement of the
thermistor, whose response must be modeled. Because the repeater itself is a heat source, a parallel thermistor in the repeater
housing itself is needed to monitor internal temperature. Seismic sensors measure vibration, and as such do not require access to
the "wet" environment. In principle, they can be installed within the repeater housing. Normally installed to measure three
orthogonal components of motion (Z, NS, EW), a seismometer could require substantial space in the repeater. Furthermore, 10

Strategy and roadmap broadband seismometers used in seafloor applications require appropriate orientation to work properly, even
if only a vertical component is used. Broadband seismometers do not have long-term stability, require calibration and re-centering,
and are not considered rugged. All of these factors obstruct straightforward emplacement of standard seismometers into cable
repeaters. However, Micro-ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) accelerometers (used extensively for air-bag deployment systems in
cars) have the appropriate characteristics for placement in the repeater environment, and are used by the United States Advanced
National Seismic System (ANSS) for recording earthquake strong ground motions. Augmenting a highresolution APG with a MEMS
accelerometer provides a simple framework for seismic measurements. These sensors also provide important information for cable
owners and operators, where nearby earthquake faulting and turbidity flows may affect or damage the cable system. These three
sensors can operate passively and autonomously. The data rate is very small. Two thermistors may generate less than 1 bit per
second (bps) when sampled at 1 sample/minute. The APG and 3-component MEMS sensors generate less than 2 kbps, when
sampled at 20 sample/sec. Using

a sample rate of 20 sample/sec, pre-filtered to exclude data above

the 10 Hz nyquist frequency, also avoids national security issues with detection of submarines.
For example, in the Canadian NEPTUNE observatory the hydroacoustic and seismic data are
band-pass filtered from 10 Hz to 3 kHz to remove signatures of submarines. By excluding seismic and
acoustic monitoring in the 10 Hz to 3 kHz band, we lose the ability to monitor large marine mammals and earthquake T-phases but
avoid national security concerns. Nonetheless, the

principal earthquake and tsunami monitoring

functionalities are not abridged. Hydroacoustic sensors (hydrophones) when monitored above
3 kHz are very useful for monitoring rain and wind, and can hear smaller marine mammals.
However, it is not clear whether a hydrophone could effectively operate within the repeater bell without modifying the bell to be
acoustically more transparent. Mounting the transducer openly could lead to potential damage during deployment, or being located
in the seafloor mud if a repeater were unfortunately oriented on the seafloor. Including a hydrophone sampled at about 50 kHz will
increase the sensor data rates to over 1 Mbps. Conductivity/salinity

sensors would need to be more

substantially ruggedized to avoid damage during the deployment of the repeater. The lack of
seawater flow within the bell may be a problem for some designs. However, the principle limitation for conductivity/salinity sensors
is their requirement for in-situ sampling of seawater for their careful calibration. These factors argue against including a
conductivity/salinity sensor within cable repeaters at this initial stage. The voltage signal in a submarine cable is affected by a
motionally induced signal due to oceanic transport variations and by fluctuations of the magnetic field of the Earth. These signals are
also affected by the dielectric properties of the sediments on which the cables lay. In principle, the oceanic transport can be derived
with sufficient knowledge of the other variables. However, the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory notes
that a combination of magnetometers and careful in-situ calibration of the ocean transport and sediment properties are necessary
to resolve the ocean transport signal from the cable voltage. As much as the necessary ship time for calibrating each repeater is
large, the measurement of ocean transport between repeaters appears to be initially impractical. An acoustic modem installed
within the repeater bell could be of substantial benefit. Instrumentation that is ill suited to installation within a repeater, such as an
inverted echo sounder, could

communicate its data to shore when deployed nearby the repeater.

Gliders could, in principle, collect data along a traverse and download it at a repeater. If twoway communications were feasible on the system, new commands could be sent to the glider.
The acoustic modem also provides the opportunity to deploy future instruments in this
remote in-situ environment that do not exist today; e.g., for measurement of anthropogenic
carbon. However, the acoustic modem suffers from challenges similar to the hydrophone. The optimal acoustic transmission
location for the transducer is external on the repeater, where it can be damaged upon deployment and possibly buried in the mud.
Also, acting as a hydrophone, the acoustic modem potentially can Strategy and roadmap 11 detect submarines, and therefore its
range would need to be limited to avoid national security concerns. Data rates will depend upon proximity to the acoustic modem.
Implementing bi-direction communications may prove to be substantially more difficult for the ocean observation sensor system for
some repeater telemetry arrangements. Another challenge for the acoustic modem is that it may not be used, unless there is
specific follow-up in the future. This would mean that a key component of the scientific sensory system could be initially underutilized, but would still drive engineering design. Nonetheless, the future potential for including new instrumentation nearby a
repeater location strongly invites consideration of an acoustic modem if engineering is feasible. Reviewing the sensors suggested by
the Rome workshop, the simplest approach is to include thermistors, APGs, and MEMS accelerometers as the primary sensors within
the repeaters in any initial engineering integration. These

are low power, low data rate, rugged, small, and

can be passively monitored. Each of these sensors is also central to ocean/climate monitoring
and disaster risk reduction. On a secondary tier are the acoustic modem and hydrophone. It would be valuable to have
these, but their additional challenges in integration lowers their priority relative to the simplest approach. Nonetheless, cable
manufacturers should be encouraged to meet with manufacturers of acoustic modems and hydrophones in order to creatively
consider engineering possibilities for the future.

2AC Data Sharing

Antarctica climate data needs submarine cables in order to be shared globally.
Fisher et al 14 (Liam, Dani Mansfield, Darren Kingman, all part of the Editorial and Project Management team, and Robyn
Lodge and Katie Koutsavakis were Researchers operating through Builtvisible, a digital marketing company, "Messages in the Deep:
The Remarkable Story of the Underwater Internet", April 2014 was most recent cited date, builtvisible.com/messages-in-the-deep/)

Improving Internet connectivity in remote areas will not only have a profound effect on the billions of people in low to
middle income countries who are not currently plugged in it will also assist the communication of pivotal
research in remote locations such as the Antarctic, which currently struggles with intermittent
connection. More than 4,000 scientists in the Antarctic are producing significantly more data
than they can export using the existing communications infrastructure, which relies mostly on
geostationary satellites. These satellites tend to only work for stations along the coast and typically with
low data transfer rates and unreliable reception. With increasingly important data on climate
change being bottlenecked at ground level, international governments, the world of academia and big businesses
are working together to investigate and develop a number of possible solutions to solve the problem. These
include connecting Antarctica to the Internet backbones extensive network of submarine
cables and using new and improved satellite technology specifically designed for the task of extracting research data from the
region. Using cables to connect the icy continent to the global network is likely to be less
expensive than using satellites, and the fibre optic cables are capable of transferring larger
amounts of data. They would also provide access to stations away from the coastline. With only
three months of the year yielding high enough temperatures to provide access to the cable network under the ice, and the
challenges created by the movement of the ice shelf itself (around 10 metres of movement each year), cabling has not yet proven
feasible and the

antarctica remains a final frontier for the submarine cabling industry.

Green energy sharing via submarine cablesempirics.

Financial Times 12 (Irish Sea green power link goes live By Jamie Smyth, Sept 20, 2012.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/77897508-0322-11e2-a484-00144feabdc0.html <!--JAG-->)

Britain and Ireland turned on the first electricity interconnector be-tween the countries on
Thursday, opening the way for surplus Irish wind power to help the UK meet its green energy
targets. The 600m connection, running beneath the Irish Sea and carrying enough power for 300,000 homes,
marks a step forward in efforts to build a high-voltage network joining Britain and its
neighbours. Such links would allow the UK to import green energy in support of its carbon
reduction goals and export electricity when there is a surplus. The new undersea cable
between Deeside, north Wales, and Woodland, County Meath, in Ireland, can transport 500
megawatts of power either way. It was built by the Irish operator EirGrid, with support from EU funds, investments
from BNP Paribas and Barclays, and loans from the European Investment Bank. Combined with an existing interconnector between
Scotland and Northern Ireland, it brings the total capacity for electricity imports to Britain from across the Irish Sea to 1,000mw.
Ireland has some fantastic renewable energy resources and this interconnector will provide access to the massive UK customer
base, said Ed Davey, UK energy secretary. The

UK government says it can achieve an EU target to secure

15 per cent of electricity from renew-able sources by 2020 by building domestic capacity, such
as offshore wind farms. But with green energy currently accounting for only 3 per cent of the UK total, the government is
exploring whether it can use flexibility in the EU directive to import Irish wind power to help meet its targets at lower cost. Mr Davey
said Ireland

was one of the few countries in the EU likely to generate more renewable energy
than it needed to meet its targets, presenting opportunities for trading. Anlgo-Irish talks on agreeing a
framework for renewables trading began this year. Both sides hope to sign a memorandum of understanding soon. The UK is
struggling to find the estimated 110bn of investment needed to build enough green energy infrastructure to meet its targets, with
the threat of legal action and fines from the European Commission if it fails. The UK also has electricity interconnectors with France
and the Netherlands. Further links are planned with Norway, Spain and with Iceland, which has geothermal and hydroelectric
surpluses. Ireland

also has more interconnector projects in the planning phase as it seeks to take

advantage of its ocean winds by building more turbines. Ireland has the space and the planning system to
build out wind energy capacity quickly, whereas there have been lots of objections in the UK, said Eddie OConnor, chief executive
of Mainstream Renewable Power, which is conducting a feasibility study with REN of Portugal and the UKs National Grid on another
link beneath the Irish Sea. We plan to bypass the Irish grid and build an energy bridge direct to the UK, which will help it meet its
renewable energy targets, he said. An interconnector between north Wales and Arklow in Ireland has also been proposed by a
company called East West Cable One. Dermot Byrne, chief executive of EirGrid, said increased connectivity with Britain would help
promote investment in Irish wind farms by providing an export route at times when the wind was blowing strongly. Mr Davey said
the EU renewables target would be met. The UK does not renege on its international commitments, he said.

AT: Enviro Turn

Submarine cables have minimum environmental impacts.
ICPC 9 (International Cable Protection Committee, Submarine cables and the oceans: connecting the world
http://www.iscpc.org/publications/ICPC-UNEP_Report.pdf <!--JAG-->)
This report results from collaboration between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Cable
Protection Committee (ICPC), which represents the majority of ocean users within the submarine telecommunications cable
industry. Why is such a report required? The last 20 years have seen expo nen tial growth of and increasing reliance on the internet
for commu nication, commerce, finance, enter - tainment and education. That remarkable development has been accompanied by
rapid growth in international tele - phone communications. Whether sending an email, making an airline booking or simply
telephoning overseas, there is more than a 95 per cent probability that those actions will involve the international submarine cable
network. In recognition of its importance as the backbone of the internet, govern ments

now view the submarine

tele - com muni cations cable network as critical infrastructure that deserves a high level of
protection (e.g. ACMA, 2007). The communications revolution has occurred against a backdrop
of greater pressure on the ocean from increased human activities, which range from the
exploitation of re - sources to anthropogenic global warming (e.g., UNEPWCMC, 2009; IPCC, 2007). In
response to concerns about potential and actual impacts on the marine environment, govern ments and international
organizations have stepped up their efforts to ensure the conservation, protection and
sustainable management/use of coastal seas and deep offshore waters. In the light of recent scientific
discoveries (e.g. Masson et al., 2002; Freiwald et al., 2004), discussions about the risks to vulnerable and threatened marine
ecosystems and biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction have emerged. It was this increased inter - national awareness and
interest in the deep and high seas environments that led UNEP and the ICPC to collaborate in the preparation of this report in 2004,
with the shared objective of providing a factual context for discussions involv ing submarine fibre-optic cables and the environment.
As such, it allows for more informed decision making, especially when weighing the benefit of an activity against any potential
negative environmental impact (e.g. UNEP, 2007). It should be noted that Submarine Cables and the Oceans Connecting the World
focuses exclusively on fibre-optic telecommunications cables, and hence does not address submarine power cables. The opening
chapters of this report are a com - pendium of information that starts with a history of submarine telecommunications cables. The
first transoceanic cable came into full operation in 1866, when a link was established between Ireland and Newfoundland that
allowed trans mission of seven words per minute via telegraph. Today, a modern fibre-optic cable can transport vast amounts of
data and is capable of handling literally millions of simul taneous telephone calls. Even so, deepocean

fibre-optic cables
are no larger than 1721 mm diameter about the size of a domestic garden hose. Closer to shore
(in water depths shallower than about 1,500 m), a cables diameter may increase to 4050 mm due to the addition of protective
wire armouring. Chapter 3 focuses on submarine cable

operations and presents an insight into the

technology that permits accurate place - ment of a cable on or into the seabed. Modern
seabed mapping systems such as multibeam side-scan sonar and high-definition seismic
profilers, used in conjunction with satellite navigation equipment, permit submarine cables to
be installed with unprecedented precision. Thus, hazardous zones and eco lo gically sensitive
locations, such as volcanic areas and cold-water coral communities, can be avoided. All cables
eventually come ashore, and it is in these shallow coastal waters that they are at most risk from human activities, especially ships
anchoring and bottom trawl fishing, which are together responsible for most submarine cable faults. As a result, special protective
measures are needed that typically include the addition of steel armour to the cable exterior and, where possible, burial into the
seabed. Cable deployment within the waters of a coastal state generally requires some form of environ - mental impact assessment
(EIA) covering the potential effects of the survey and laying oper ations on the local en vironment, other seabed users and
underwater cultural heritage sites. The success and very existence of international sub - marine cable systems owe much to the
treaties that the nations of the world have introduced into customary inter - national law since 1884. These international norms are
widely accepted and followed by the cable industry as well as the global community. They are an excellent example of international
law working at its best in balancing competing uses in the ocean. Chapter 4 provides a basic restatement of the current international
legal regime that underpins the world's undersea communications network. Open-file information from environmental agencies,
together with published studies, forms the basis of Chapter 5, which examines the environmental impacts of modern submarine
cables and associated operations. The main threats to cables are found in water depths shallower than about 1,500 m, the present
limit of most bottom trawl fishing, although some boats are extending that limit to 2,000 m depth. In these conti nental shelf and
slope areas, cables require some form of protection. This may be achieved through legislation for the creation of protection zones
(e.g. ACMA, 2007), or by physical means such as burial beneath the seabed. In the case of designated and controlled protection
zones, there may be no need to bury cables, in which case they are exposed to waves, currents and the marine biota. How a cable
interacts with the environment depends on the many influences and factors that shape the ocean. However, the

small
physical size of a telecommunications cable implies that its environmental footprint is likely to

be small and local; a suggestion that is borne out by several studies, e.g. Kogan et al. (2006). Using a
combination of sediment samples and direct obser va - tions made with a remotely operated
vehicle (ROV), Kogan et al. con cluded that a telecommunications cable off Monterey Bay,
California, had minimal to no impact on the fauna living in or on the surrounding seabed, with
the exception that the cable locally provided a firm substrate for some organisms that
otherwise would not have grown on the mainly soft seafloor sediments. These results contrast with the
findings of an earlier study by Heezen (1957), who documented a significant impact on marine life, namely the entanglement of
whales with old telegraph cables. However, such distressing occurrences were restricted to the telegraph era (1850s to c.1950s).

With improved design, laying and maintenance techniques, which developed with the first
coaxial submarine cables in the 1950s and continued into the fibre-optic era beginning in the
1980s, no further entanglements with marine mammals have been recorded (Wood and Carter,
2008). The remainder of Chapter 5 considers the environmental effects of cable burial and recovery as well as broader issues
concerning the relationship between cables and ecologically sensitive areas, and the potential use of cable protection zones as de
facto marine sanctuaries.

Puerto Rico Advantage

1AC
Advantage ___ is Puerto Rico
Two scenarios, scenario one is the economy
Puerto Ricos economy is on the brink the status quo ensures collapse
David A. Patten and Matthew Lysiak 13, (Big Trouble in Paradise: Puerto Rico Faces $87B Collapse
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/puerto-rico-verge-collapse/2013/10/08/id/529991/)//IA

Puerto Ricos island paradise may be teetering on the precipice of a financial collapse that would
make Detroits implosion look modest by comparison, economists and analysts warn. Detroit, a
city of about 700,000, went bankrupt after piling up $18 billion in debt. Puerto Rico, by contrast, has 3.7 million
residents -- and faces a whopping $87 billion in debt and unfunded pension liabilities. The Puerto
Rican economy is near collapse, prominent Puerto Rican economist Gustavo Vlez tells Newsmax. The government
is running out of money and there is no end in sight. Puerto Rico Senate President Eduardo Bhatia told bond analysts in
New York on Monday that the Obama administration is wondering how they can help Puerto Rico send a very strong signal of
stability right now. He added that island officials are expecting an announcement soon from administration officials. But that
appears to be at odds with a Bloomberg report that a U.S. Treasury Department spokeswoman said no plan is afoot to bail out the
islands economy. In September, UBS AG and other U.S. brokerage firms warned some 40,000 U.S. investors and brokers to stay
away from the bonds that Puerto Rico uses to finance its deficit. Not long afterwards, the islands bond yield the amount it has to
offer to lure investors rose to 9.29 percent, surpassing even that of Greece. Predictably, Internet headlines began referring to the
beautiful tourist haven in the Caribbean as Americas Greece. Puerto Rico, however, probably still has some time to work out its
finances. Unlike Greece, very little of its debt is short term. But the New York Times reports Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla
and other officials are engaging in intense shuttle diplomacy between New York, Washington, and the Caribbean. Their objective: To
convince bankers, credit analysts, and political leaders that the island is on a path toward restoring financial stability. Since assuming
office in January, Gov. Padilla has taken several austerity measures. State employees contributions to their pension plans were
increased from 8.275 to 10 percent. The retirement age was increased. Utility rates were hiked sharply to bring in more revenue,
and new taxes have been imposed as well. So far, financial markets appear almost indifferent to the tough belt-tightening measures,
leaving island officials frustrated. Unlike Detroit, a declaration of bankruptcy for Puerto Rico may not be an option due to its status
as a territory, rather than a state. The Times reports the Northern Mariana Islands tried to seek bankruptcy protection in 2012, but
that effort was rejected by the courts. The way out of the legal limbo for Puerto Rico would be a financial plan of support enacted by
the U.S. Congress. But that would assume Congress is better equipped to deal with Puerto Ricos budget impasse than it has been
dealing with its own. The Times reports that the Presidents Task Force on Puerto Rico has been discussing whether the U.S.
Constitution gives Congress the power to impose special fiscal controls. One idea would be for Congress to designate a financial
control board led by an official with the power to overrule its local, politically elected leaders. But the legality of such a move has
reportedly not yet been established. Puerto Rico leaders, meanwhile, object to the aspersions cast upon their ability to plug their
fiscal liabilities, and insist the island is not on the verge of bankruptcy. Alan Schankel, a managing director for the Janney
Montgomery Scott investment firm, tells Newsmax that Puerto Rico will probably avoid a default in the near term. But, he adds,
this outcome isnt assured. The one assurance we make, is that volatility is likely to continue in the near term and perhaps
beyond, he says. Puerto Ricos unemployment rate hit 13.2 percent in September. A fourth of the islands residents receive
entitlements such as food stamps or income assistance. Tax revenues, meanwhile, have steadily dwindled. So how did Puerto Rico
lose its status as one of the richest spots in the Caribbean? Economists

cite the decline of its once-powerful

manufacturing sector. Fifty years ago, Puerto Rico relied primarily on exports of coffee, sugar
cane, and rum. The tourist industry, of course, brought in revenue as well. But the islands biggest boost arguably came in
1976, when Congress effectively exempted Puerto Rico-based companies from paying federal income taxes. The goal was to boost
the territorys economy, and it worked. The tax breaks, coupled with the islands proximity to the United States, made it a prime
destination for multinationals. Companies

lured by low taxes, gentle tropic breezes, and reliably sunny

weather made Puerto Rico a mecca of manufacturing. But the boom would be short-lived. In the 1990s,
critics attacked the tax breaks as too expensive. After an intense lobbying battle in 1996, Congress
repealed the tax abatement, which was phased out over a decade. As those tax breaks disappeared,
much of Puerto Ricos tax base disappeared with it. But Puerto Ricos entitlements and liabilities, which rapidly
expanded during the boom years, remained unchanged. The effect was immediate and crushing, says Vlez.

Our economic model was developed around these tax breaks, and after they were allowed to
lapse, investment just stopped, and that model just disappeared. As a result, hundreds of
thousands of Puerto Ricans lost their jobs.

About 100,000 Americans of Puerto Rican origin have relocated to the

mainland in search of better opportunities, according to Vlez. That Puerto Rico, whose name ironically translates to rich port, has
avoided calamity as long as it has may be thanks to its attractiveness to investors. As a territory,

Puerto Rico can offer

bonds that pay tax-exempt interest across the country. It offers special legal protections to investors and a
high rate of return. Investors gobbled up Puerto Ricos bonds to the tune of some $70 billion. But after markets were
spooked by the signal earlier this summer from the Federal Reserve that it would not continue to prop up the bond markets
interminably, Puerto Rico effectively found itself unable to sell its debt for less than outrageous
prices. Today, its credit is hovering at just one notch above junk-bond status, with the Wall Street agencies putting it on a negative
watch for more possible downgrades. Considering the austerity steps the island has already taken, Puerto Rico officials are more
than a little frustrated with the credit-rating analysts on Wall Street. I disagree with them and believe they are treating Puerto Rico
unjustly, Gov. Padilla said earlier this week. If

the credit-worthiness of the Commonwealths debt is

downgraded yet again, it could trigger another run on its solvency. The New York Times reports that
Puerto Rico has engaged in financial deals known as interest-rate swaps. These contracts force it to come up with additional cash as
collateral, should its credit fall to junk-bond status.

That could push the islands balance sheet closer to the

brink.

Puerto Ricos default crashes the United States stock market makes recovery
impossible
McDonald 14 (Larry McDonald, political risk consultant to hedge funds, Senior Director, Head US Policy Strategist at
Newedge, Could a Puerto Rico Default Hammer the $3.7 Trillion U.S. Muni Bond Market in 2014?, Forbes, 1/3/14,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymcdonald/2014/01/03/puerto-rico-default-to-re-price-the-3-7-trillion-municipal-bond-market-in2014/2///IA)

As we head into 2014, you may be asking why we are concerned about a small island located in the
Caribbean Sea, about a thousand miles southeast of Miami. Geographically, it is a mere speck on the map practically
irrelevant. In fact, 70 islands the size of Puerto Rico could fit comfortably into the state of Texas. However, the debt
burden currently burying this economy may eventually send nasty tremors into the United
States municipal bond market. Surprisingly, of all the US muni bond funds, a staggering 75% of them are
lending money to Puerto Rico, leaving millions of US investors and a large portion of US
brokerage accounts exposed to this beleaguered little island. We suspect Puerto Rico will become Americas
Greece. If swans could fly this far south, they would without question be the color of night. 2014 Tail Risk Texass state government
debt is relatively modest, near $40 billion, or $1,577 per resident. Puerto Ricos public debt of $53 billion is nearly $15,000 per
person, but when we add inter-governmental debt the mountain rises to $70 billion, or $17,500 per person. Throw in a violently
under-funded pension and healthcare obligations, the noose approaches $160 billion. Thats $46,000 per person, enough to make
one think about trying a swim for Miami. Quantitative Easing: Deadly Side Effects Puerto Rico, a mere rectangle 100 miles long by
35 miles wide, the smallest and most eastern island of the Greater Antilles, is

the 3rd largest municipal bond issuer

after California and New York. That is a mind-blowing statistic. But Puerto Rican bonds are free from all State, Federal
and local taxes, a very attractive investment for US investors with a thirst for yield. This is one side effect of low interest rates and
quantitative easing coming out of the Federal Reserve; American

investors have become this islands great

enabler from the north. Similar to 2007, when investors were reaching for yield in toxic
subprime mortgage CDOs, today this song is playing again. This time in Spanish. A colossal
reach for yield has enabled politicians in Puerto Rico to run up a dangerous bill, and the music
is about to stop. States with the Most Public Debt vs their Size of Population California $99B vs 38 million people New York
$62B vs 19 million people Puerto Rico $52B vs 3.6 million people Credit Contagion; Toxic Side Effects A default in Puerto
Rico would re-price the entire $3.7 trillion US Municipal bond market, costing states and
counties across America billions in additional interest rate charges. Once investor confidence is
lost, its like losing personal trust, and becomes almost impossible to get back. So far Puerto Ricos $52 billion
pile of bonds were off 20 points in 2013, already costing US investors nearly $10 billion. An unsustainable, systemic risk debt bomb

has been formed. If there was a picture of moral hazard in the dictionary, Puerto Ricos image would be right there next to Fannie
and Freddie, the US government sponsored entities that already received a $180 billion bailout from taxpayers.

No defense the US market is already on the verge of collapse Puerto Rico

would push the US over the brink.
Chang 14, (Ha-Joon Change, economics professor at Cambridge, This is no recovery, this is a bubble and it will burst, The
Gardian, 2/24/14, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/24/recovery-bubble-crash-uk-us-investors)

Most investors know that current levels of share

prices are unsustainable; it is said that George Soros has already started betting against the US stock market. They are
aware that share prices are high mainly because of the huge amount of money sloshing
around thanks to quantitative easing (QE), not because of the strength of the underlying real
economy. This is why they react so nervously to any slight sign that QE may be wound down on a significant scale. However,
stock market investors pretend to believe or even have to pretend to believe in those feeble and ephemeral
Few stock market investors really believe in these stories.

stories because they need those stories to justify (to themselves and their clients) staying in the stock market, given the low returns
everywhere else. The

result, unfortunately, is that stock market bubbles of historic proportion are

developing in the US and the UK, the two most important stock markets in the world, threatening
to create yet another financial crash. One obvious way of dealing with these bubbles is to take the excessive liquidity
that is inflating them out of the system through a combination of tighter monetary policy and better financial regulation against
stock market speculation (such as a ban on shorting or restrictions on high-frequency trading). Of course, the danger here is that
these policies may prick the bubble and create a mess. In

the longer run, however, the best way to deal with

these bubbles is to revive the real economy; after all, "bubble" is a relative concept and even a very high price can
be justified if it is based on a strong economy. This will require a more sustainable increase in consumption based on rising wages
rather than debts, greater productive investments that will expand the economy's ability to produce, and the introduction of
financial regulation that will make banks lend more to productive enterprises than to consumers. Unfortunately, these are exactly
the things that the current policymakers in the US and the UK don't want to do.

We are heading for trouble.

Economic decline increases the propensity for conventional and nuclear conflict
Harris and Burrows 09 PhD European History @ Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence Council (NIC) &
member of the NICs Long Range Analysis Unit
Mathew, and Jennifer Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial
Crisis http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf
Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of
intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the
Future opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history

may be more

instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great Depression is not likely to be repeated,
the lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects on fledgling democracies and
multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral
institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be
true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in
which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile
economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the
likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international
agenda. Terrorisms

appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and
youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of
technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the worlds most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist
groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures,
command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent
collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become

self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of

economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most
dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S. military presence
would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Irans acquisition of nuclear weapons is not

inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead

states in the region to develop new security

arrangements with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their
own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers
for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and
terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader
conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential
nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also
will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic
depth in neighboring states like Israel, short

warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian

place more focus on preemption rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating
crises. 36 Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources, could reemerge,
particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices.
Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In
the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to
energy resources, for example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their
regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are
intentions may

providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization efforts, such as Chinas and Indias development of blue water naval
capabilities. If the fiscal

stimulus focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one of the most
obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to
increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create opportunities for
multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the
Middle East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly
difficult both within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.

Scenario two is drug trafficking

Puerto Ricos drug trade opens the door to the United States for terrorists
theyll have access to WMDs
McCaul 12, (Michael, Congressman of Texas, Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management US Caribbean
Border: An Open Road to Drug Traffickers and Terrorist 6/21/12, http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/0621-12%20McCaul%20Open.pdf)//IA
Right now, somewhere on the streets of New York, Miami or maybe a few blocks away from where we sit in Washington, drug
dealers are selling cocaine, heroin or marijuana. These

drugs entered the United States through a wide open

back door. They didnt come across the US-Mexico or Northern border. Mr. Rodney Benson, Intelligence
Chief for the Drug Enforcement Agency, said that larger and larger loads of both cocaine and heroin were
transiting, and now staying, in Puerto Rico. And once these drugs are in Puerto Rico, they have
crossed our borders. This Caribbean region is Americas Third Border; an open door for
drug traffickers and terrorists.

Because Puerto Rico is a US Territory, illegal contraband that makes it to the island is

unlikely to be subjected to further US Customs inspections en route to the continental United States, meaning it is easily mailed or
placed on commercial aircraft without suspicion. In FY 2011, 165,000 metric tons of illegal drugs were seized in the Caribbean,
Bahamas and Gulf of Mexico, up 36% over four years. Up to 80%

of cocaine trafficked through Puerto Rico is

directed to US East Coast cities. The maritime smuggling routes widely used by international
drug trafficking organizations in the 1980s the Miami Vice Era, are utilized more and more today. These routes are
a threat to Americas national security . The Caribbean region is also susceptible to smuggling
nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological materials , and it could easily be used as staging
areas for violence against the United States. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan said, Puerto Ricans have borne the
responsibilities of US citizenship with honor and courage for more than 64 years. They have fought beside us for decades and have
worked beside us for generations. President Reagan added that Puerto Ricos strong tradition of democracy provides leadership

and stability for the Caribbean. These statements also apply to the US Virgin Islands. Today

that stability and the

millions of American citizens in the region are under siege. Puerto Rico and the US Virgin
Islands close proximity to the continental United States and their lack of effective security
infrastructures make them an appealing gateway for drug cartels. The Caribbean region is also
experiencing an escalation in trafficking of persons and firearms, as well as money laundering. As these networks and
drug routes evolve so do the potential links to terrorism and transnational crime. On average one
person is murdered on the islands every 7.5 hours, and at least half of those murders involve drug trafficking organizations. Last year
there were 30 homicides for every 100,000 Puerto Ricans. This rate is far higher than any state in the mainland. Drug

shipments from locations including Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic
are transported to the islands on board fast boats and submersibles. Cargo is then dropped at obscure port
locations or just simply unloaded into the water and flagged for later pick up. These locations are so remote that it can take federal
law enforcement officers hours to reach them. The Caribbean region Drug Trafficking Organizations have proven flexible, adaptable
and can change routes quickly. The US Postal Inspection Service seized hundreds of weapons hidden in packages postmarked for
Puerto Rico including assault rifles, AK-47s, AR 15s, and armor-penetrating cop-killer bullets. On June 6, 2012 the Drug
Enforcement Agency arrested thirty-six people in a drug-trafficking ring that used Puerto Ricos International Airport in San Juan to
smuggle large quantities of cocaine off the island aboard US-bound passenger flights. From San Juan, drugs were flown to Miami,
Orlando, and Newark. The drug ring had been operating for ten years inside the San Juan airport. The Caribbean region also has an
active black market selling fraudulent documents. According to the Department of State 40 percent of identity fraud in the United
States involved birth certificates from Puerto Rico. In January, fifty people were charged with conspiring to sell the identities of
hundreds of Puerto Ricans to illegal immigrants on the American mainland. This was the largest single fraud case uncovered by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Hundreds of birth certificates, social security numbers, and drivers licenses were sold for up
to $2500 a set. James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, recently testified, terrorists

and insurgents will

increasingly turn to crime and criminal networks for funding and logistics Criminal
connections and activities of Hezbollah and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb illustrate this
trend. These criminal networks in the region could potentially be exploited by terrorists
seeking to do us harm inside our borders. This type of exploitation was evidenced in the
thwarted plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in Washington. The Iranian Quds Force attempted to solicit a
Mexican Drug Cartel member to carry out the assassination. Iran and the Bolivarian states(Venezuela, Bolivia,
Ecuador, and Nicaragua)which are major drug producersbring a dangerous new set of
threats to the Western Hemisphere as they work together with transnational organized crime
enterprises and terrorist groups. This threat includes the potential for Weapons of Mass
Destruction-related trafficking. These activities are carried out with the participation of regional state actors who have
publicly articulated a doctrine of asymmetrical warfare against the United States and its allies explicitly endorsing the use of
weapons of mass destruction. This

is not a regional problem that wont reach our shores- these are our

shores. Earlier this month, the Attorney General was asked why the Office of National Drug Control Policy has a Southwest and
Northern border counternarcotics strategy but does not have a Caribbean border counternarcotics strategy. Attorney General
Holders response was, when one looks at the Caribbean, Puerto Rico in particular, I think we need a strategy. We have a task force
on Puerto Rico that the Associate Attorney General is co-chair of. I think to the extent it is not explicit, we should develop such a
plan. Without

a comprehensive strategy to counter the cartels increasing presence in the

Caribbean, the region could continue to spiral out of control. The American flag has flown over Puerto Rico
for more than a century. The people of the US Virgin Islands have been American citizens for almost as long. These islands are
American soil, and our fellow American citizens need our support now.

And attacks are coming in the status quo itll certainly be nuclear
Edelman 5/18, (Adam, A lot more terror attacks coming our way: former NSA chief, 5/18/14,
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/lot-terror-attacks-coming-nsa-chief-article-1.1797130)//IA

A former top U.S. security official fears the nation could be attacked again by terrorists. Gen.
Keith Alexander, who retired in March as director of the National Security Agency after eight years on the job, said the
probability of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil is increasing. The number of attacks that
are coming, the probability, its growing, Alexander said in a New Yorker magazine interview published over the
weekend. What I saw at N.S.A. is that there is a lot more coming our way. Were at greater risk,

Alexander said. Look at the way Al Qaeda networks. From Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, and
now in Syria, the al-Nusra front. Look

at the number of jihadists going into Syria and what they want
to do. When put all that together, you can say those are distant countries, but a lot of these
groups are looking to attack the United States. I take that threat very seriously, Alexander added,
stressing the need to use controversial spying tactics to help combat terrorism. Alexander claimed that such tactics including the
agencys bulk-metadata collection program (which many lawmakers have claimed is unconstitutional) have contributed to the
disruption to at least 54 terrorist plots. The program, along with another NSA strategy called reasonable

articulable
suspicion, may have even prevented the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Alexander said. We know we didnt stop 9/11.
People were trying, but they didnt have the tools, he said. This tool, we believed, would
help them. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney says the next terrorist attack in the U nited
S tates will be far deadlier than the September 11, 2001 attacks, adding that the threat
might come from a nuclear device.

And, Nuclear terrorism attacks escalate and cause extinction.

Morgan, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, 2009 (Dennis, World on fire: two scenarios of the
destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race Futures, Volume 41, Issue 10, December)
In a remarkable website on nuclear war, Carol Moore asks the question Is Nuclear War Inevitable?? In Section , Moore points out what most
terrorists obviously already know about the nuclear tensions between powerful countries. No doubt, theyve

figured out that the

best way to escalate these tensions into nuclear war is to set off a nuclear exchange. As Moore
points out, all that militant terrorists would have to do is get their hands on one small nuclear
bomb and explode it on either Moscow or Israel. Because of the Russian dead hand system,
where regional nuclear commanders would be given full powers should Moscow be destroyed, it is likely that any attack would
be blamed on the United States Israeli leaders and Zionist supporters have, likewise, stated for years that if
Israel were to suffer a nuclear attack, whether from terrorists or a nation state, it would retaliate with the suicidal
Samson option against all major Muslim cities in the Middle East. Furthermore, the Israeli Samson
option would also include attacks on Russia and even anti-Semitic European cities In that case, of
course, Russia would retaliate, and the U.S. would then retaliate against Russia. China would
probably be involved as well,

as thousands, if not tens of thousands, of nuclear warheads, many of them much more powerful than

those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would rain upon most of the major cities in the Northern Hemisphere. Afterwards,

for years to
come, massive radioactive clouds would drift throughout the Earth in the nuclear fallout,
bringing death or else radiation disease that would be genetically transmitted to future
generations in a nuclear winter that could last as long as a 100 years, taking a savage toll upon the
environment and fragile ecosphere as well. And what many people fail to realize is what a precarious, hair-trigger basis the nuclear web rests on. Any
accident, mistaken communication, false signal or lone wolf act of sabotage or treason
could, in a matter of a few minutes, unleash the use of nuclear weapons, and once a weapon
is used, then the likelihood of a rapid escalation of nuclear attacks is quite high while the
likelihood of a limited nuclear war is actually less probable since each country would act
under the use them or lose them strategy and psychology; restraint by one power would
be interpreted as a weakness by the other , which could be exploited as a window of
opportunity to win the war . In other words, once Pandora's Box is opened, it will spread quickly, as it will be the signal for
permission for anyone to use them. Moore compares swift nuclear escalation to a room full of people embarrassed to cough. Once one does, however,
everyone else feels free to do so. The bottom line is that as long as large nation states use internal and external war to keep their disparate factions
glued together and to satisfy elites needs for power and plunder, these nations will attempt to obtain, keep, and inevitably use nuclear weapons. And
as long as large nations oppress groups who seek self-determination, some of those groups will look for any means to fight their oppressors In other
words, as long as war and aggression are backed up by the implicit threat of nuclear arms, it is only a matter of time before the escalation of violent

it is very likely that many, if not all, will be

used, leading to horrific scenarios of global death and the destruction of much of human
conflict leads to the actual use of nuclear weapons, and once even just one is used,

civilization while condemning a mutant human remnant, if there is such a remnant, to a life of
unimaginable misery and suffering in a nuclear winter. In Scenarios, Moore summarizes the various ways a nuclear
war could begin: Such a war could start through a reaction to terrorist attacks , or through the need to protect
against overwhelming military opposition, or through the use of small battle field tactical nuclear weapons meant to destroy hardened targets. It might
quickly move on to the use of strategic nuclear weapons delivered by short-range or inter-continental missiles or long-range bombers. These could
deliver high altitude bursts whose electromagnetic pulse knocks out electrical circuits for hundreds of square miles. Or they could deliver nuclear
bombs to destroy nuclear and/or non-nuclear military facilities, nuclear power plants, important industrial sites and cities. Or it could skip all those
steps and start through the accidental or reckless use of strategic weapons

Only undersea cables solve the plan acts as a catalyst for the economy by
bringing down energy prices
JOHN MARINO 14,( Northern Illinois University, Caribbean Business, Florida to Puerto Rico undersea power cable will
bring big benefits, 3/13/14, http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/prnt_ed/thinking-big-9623.html)//IA

The CARIBBEAN BUSINESS plan to bring electric power to Puerto Rico from Florida via a 1,000-mile
undersea cable is the quickest and surest way we have to bring down electricity rates in
Puerto Rico. One of CB's "Think Big" initiatives aimed at getting Puerto Rico out of its decade-long
economic decline, the undersea cable could deliver cheap power quickly and provide time for
a complete reform of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (Prepa), including its generation, transmission and distribution
systems, as well as its administration. Top Puerto Rico political leaders have already embraced the initiative. House Speaker Jaime
Perell said the CB plan should be incorporated into Puerto Rico's long-term energy plan. "This is an island, 100 miles by 35 miles,
and we aren't connected with anybody. I am totally in agreement. I think an underwater power cable is a great idea," Perell said. "I
think there is a lot of logic in doing this. This should be part of our long-term energy plan." In

addition to bringing cheap

power to Puerto Rico, Perell said the line could also be used as a vehicle for Prepa to sell its
power offshore around the Caribbean. "We are burning more oil than we should because we don't have backup
power. If we had an underwater line, whether to Florida or somewhere else, we could also sell the excess power we produce. This
would bring more revenue to Prepa and allow us to share the costs of the line with other jurisdictions in the Caribbean," the House
speaker said. Senate

President Eduardo Bhatia said the undersea cable should be seriously considered, as it
could serve as a catalyst for Puerto Rico to become an energy leader in the Caribbean. "The undersea line
makes great sense regionally, and is directly in accordance with the President's Task Force report, which stated that Puerto Rico
should be at the center of the region's electric grid," Bhatia added. "If it's feasible, I'm all for it." For his part, Secretary of State David
Bernier also said an undersea power cable could be part of a broader push for increased economic ties throughout the region, and
could be used to both transport inexpensive power to Puerto Rico and enable local energy producers to sell in offshore markets.
With last month's downgrading of the government's credit to noninvestment grade, Puerto

Rico's economic and

financial problems have only become all the more challenging to resolve. That is why it is time to
act on the undersea-power-cable proposal, which will attack one of the main shadows
hanging over the economythe high cost of electricity for businesses and residents alike.

And that solves drug trafficking economic stability is key to strengthening

their defenses against illegal activity
Perera 14, (David Perera, executive editor of Fierce Homeland Security, reports on federal stories since 04,Island economy
prevents easy resolution of Puerto Rico's drug trafficking problem, says report , 2/2/14,
http://www.fiercehomelandsecurity.com/story/island-economy-prevents-easy-resolution-puerto-ricos-drug-trafficking-probl/201402-02?)//IA

A prerequisite to tackling the drug trafficking threat to the United States mainland posed by
Puerto Rico is resolving systemic economic problems, says a report published by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. Drug trafficking comprised 10 percent of the island's gross national product in
2011, for a total value of $5 billion, estimates San Juan-based consulting firm Estudios Tcnicos. In August, the U.S. Attorney for
the District of Puerto Rico indicted 126 defendants for conspiracy to distribute drugs. Puerto Rico in effect is a "third
border of the United States,"

says Carl Meacham, director of the CSIS Americas Program, in the report forward; the

report itself is authored by Jos Villamil, chairman of the board of Estudios Tcnicos. Since 2007, the

Puerto Rican
economy has been in a period of economic contraction unrivaled for the past six decades. The

report estimates that by the fall of 2013, it diminished in real terms by 15 percent relative to the fall of 2007. Money transfers from
off-island workers now constitute about 22 percent of personal income, and the labor force participation rate stands at around just
40 percent, it adds. Unfortunately, the commonwealth's government finds itself limited in its ability to stimulate the economy. The
island also faces an ongoing and "paralyzing" debate over its status with the United States, the report says. A 2012 plebiscite on
island status produced unclear results. Only

with pursuit of a mid- and long-term economic strategy, "will

issues of great importance to the United States get resolved: the trafficking of illegal narcotics
through the island, and its implications for U.S. security and policy," the report concludes.

**Economy**

UQ US Econ on Brink
The US market is nearing the brink of collapse.
Farrell 13, ( Paul B. Farrell, CornellU, Carnegie Institute of Technology, UVaLaw, MRP, BArch, PhD, JD, Psychology, Law,
Regional Planning, executive vice president of the Financial News Network, New Doomsday poll: 98% risk of 2014 stock crash,
Market Watch, 6/29/13, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-doomsday-poll-98-risk-of-2014-stock-crash-2013-06-29//IA)
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) Yes,

2014 is an absolute total disaster just waiting to ignite. In

Doomsday poll: 87% risk of stock crash by year-end we analyzed 10 major crash warnings
since early this year. Since then, more incoming bogies raced across our radar screen. Ticking time bombs from Congress,
the Supreme Court, sex, carbon emissions, Big Oil, NSA, IRS, Tea Party austerity. Relentless. Mind-numbing. Shutterstock Ticking
time bombs from Congress, the Supreme Court, sex, carbon emissions, Big Oil, NSA, IRS, Tea Party austerity. So many are tuning out.
Denial. Truth is, bubbles are everywhere. Ready to blow. The evidence is accelerating, with only one obvious conclusion: Max 98%
risk at a flashpoint. This 2014 crash is virtually guaranteed. Theres but a narrow 2% chance of dodging this bullet. Here are the 10
bogies, drones targeting markets, stocks, bonds and the, global economy: 1. Bubble With No Name Yet triggers the biggest crash in
30 years All

three of the big worldwide financial bubbles that have blow up in the last three
decades have been fueled by the Fed keeping policy rates below the nominal growth rate of
the economy far too long, says global strategist Kit Juckes of the French bank Societe
Generale. The three bubbles: The Asian Bubble in the early 90s, Dot-com Bubble of the late 90s and what Juckes calls the Great
Big Credit Bubble that triggered the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. Juckes warns that were now trapped in the
fourth megabubble fueled by the Federal Reserve in the last 30 years, since the rise of conservative
economics. He calls this one, the Bubble With No Name Yet. OK, we invite you to send in your nomination to name the new bubble.
But whatever you call it, do it fast, its close to popping, like the Asian, Dot-com and Credit crashes the last 30 years. 2. Marc Fabers
Doomsday warning on Bernankes disastrous QE scheme Faber laughs at Bernankes remark that the economy would be strong
enough later this year so he could take his foot off the gas, that is begin tapering, or scaling back its stimulative quantitative easing
(QE) program later this year. Yes, laughed. According to BusinessInsider.com, embracing hyperbole, Faber suggested that QE
would basically be a part of everyday life for the rest of our lives, adding that back in 2010 in the early days of Bernankes disastrous
experiment, Faber warned the Feds headed for QE99. 3. Economy is already crashing, GDP will get even worse in 2014-2016 Over
at Huffington Post Mark Gongloff warns: That

dramatic downgrade of U.S. economic growth in the first

quarter revealed the economys lingering weakness, exposed the folly of Washingtons
austerity obsession and slapped the Federal Reserves newfound optimism right in the face.
And with politics deteriorating, itll get worse. Gongloff piles on the bad news about 2014: GDP grew at a 1.8%
annualized pace in the first quarter ... revising down its earlier estimate of 2.4% growth ... The first quarters dismal growth was at
least better than the 0.4% GDP growth of the fourth quarter of 2012. But it was

still far from healthy, and

economists dont see it getting much stronger any time soon. And thats real bad news for
the markets going into 2014.

Internal Puerto Rico Key

Puerto Ricos economic crisis has a direct impact on the US economy.
Elizabeth Llorente 13, (University of Missouri, Politics Editor and Writer, Puerto Rico's Economic Crisis Spurs Exodus
From Island, Fears About American Retirement Plans, 12/6/13, http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2013/12/06/puerto-ricoeconomic-crisis-spurs-exodus-from-island-fears-about-american/)//IA
While all eyes have focused on Detroits record bankruptcy, an

economic crisis is deepening in Puerto Rico that many

be far more harmful to the U.S. economy. Puerto Rico has been mired in
economic recession for almost eight years, with public debt skyrocketing to $70 billion and unemployment
climbing to 14 percent, higher than that of any U.S. state. The islands debt load accounts for 93 percent of its GDP. Many
economic experts worry that Puerto Rico could default on its debt, having a potential direct
experts say may

impact on mainland [the] United States.

In September, Puerto Rico's Government Development Bank announced it

would cut bond sales after investors pushed the yield on Puerto Rico bonds above 10 percent. The

island's general
obligation bonds have been hovering at just above near-junk status. That worries economic
experts who note that many Americans retirement funds include Puerto Rico bonds. Its not
just the residents of Puerto Rico who are affected, said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government
Waste, based in Washington D.C. Its Americans across the country who are at risk as well. The
situation on the island is so critical that residents are fleeing in the largest numbers in decades, ushering a quiet
exodus. Tens of thousands have left for ma JOHN MARINOinland U.S. between 2010 and 2012, according to The Washington Post.

Impact Extn Econ Collapse

History proves that a volatile economic environment risks conflictradical
terrorist groups and tension over shared energy resources could unintentionally
result in a pre-emptive nuclear strike
Mathew Harris and Jennifer Burrows, National Intelligence Council, in 2009
[Mathew, PhD European History at Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and Jennifer, member of the
NICs Long Range Analysis Unit Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis
http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf]
Increased Potential for Global Conflict Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future
is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes,
each with ample Revisiting the Future opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so,

history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great Depression is
not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects on fledgling
democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the
sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason
to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century.
For that reason, the ways in which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more
apt in a constantly volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In
surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as
resource issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorisms

appeal will decline if economic growth

continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that
remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the worlds most
dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long
established groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to
conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become

selfradicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become narrower in
an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced
drawdown of U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Irans
acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the
region to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire additional
weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable
deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle
East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes

of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear

umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those
states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with
underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent
difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The
lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and
uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than defense,
potentially leading to escalating crises. 36 Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over
resources, could reemerge,particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to neomercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to
assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if
government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for
maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will
have important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval
buildups and modernization efforts, such as Chinas and Indias development of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal

stimulus focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding
targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to increased
tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create opportunities for multinational
cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle East,
cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both
within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.

**Drug Trade**

UQ Trafficking Increasing
Drug trafficking doubled in the Caribbean Latin American drug trade
increasing.
Fieser 13, (Ezra, DEA: Drug trafficking doubles in Caribbean 10/3/13
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/03/3668173/dea-drug-trafficking-doubles-in.html)//IA
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic --

More of the cocaine smuggled to the United States is passing

through the Caribbean , officials said, representing a shift in which drug traffickers are returning to a region they largely
abandoned decades ago. A full 14 percent of cocaine bound for the U.S. was trafficked through the
Caribbean in the first half of 2013, double the 7 percent that came through the region during the
same period a year earlier, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. What were seeing is that traffickers are
increasing the amount of cocaine in each shipment, said Vito S. Guarino, special agent in charge of the DEAs
Caribbean division, based in Puerto Rico. This is a shift toward the Caribbean. ... And the picture were looking at
right now will be the picture for the next few years. Underscoring Guarinos point, the FBI on Tuesday said it had dismantled one of
the most powerful gangs to operate in the Caribbean over the past two decades. The Puerto Rico-based drug trafficking group
allegedly moved drugs from the Dominican Republic to users in the United States, earning more than $100 million along the way.
Twenty-seven suspects were arrested. Federal officials have consistently warned that such groups were likely to become more
active in the Caribbean. But the new DEA numbers are among the first concrete evidence to show such a shift is underway.
Governments in the region, which have already seen a spike in drug-related crime, are receiving more U.S. aid and military
assistance, but they appear ill-prepared to fight an increase in drug trafficking. Criminal

organizations are
establishing a series of trafficking points in the Caribbean to move products both to North
America and to Europe directly or via West Africa, said Daurius Figueira, a Trinidad-based researcher and
author of Cocaine Trafficking in the Caribbean and West Africa in the Era of the Mexican Cartel. In the Caribbean, there have been
two strategies in response: The first is total denial and suppression of reality, he said. The second is to simply sit and wait for their
territory to be switched on. Last month, William R. Brownfield, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law
enforcement affairs, told the Miami Herald that the Caribbean trafficking corridor of the 1970s and 1980s is still around and will
begin to look more attractive to criminal organizations as they search for an alternative to Central America and Mexico. The
Dominican Republic the largest transshipment point in the Caribbean received 27 metric tons of cocaine in 2013, up from 22
tons a year earlier, according to the DEA figures. The

increase in the Caribbean came even amid an overall

drop in the amount of cocaine shipped in the hemisphere, suggesting smugglers are confident
they can take advantage of weak security in the region. South American and Mexican criminal groups are
using the islands largely unguarded coasts as landing points for high-speed boats carrying bundles of cocaine. Once on land, the
drugs are moved on to the United States and Europe through shipping containers, mules (drug-carrying individuals) or by boat
through Puerto Rico, Guarino said. Were starting to see 1,000-kilo [2,200-pound] loads off the coast of Puerto Rico and the U.S.
Virgin Islands, he said. It suggests that, No.1, the capability to move those size shipments is there, and No.2, the *traffickers] are
more confident. The larger, more valuable shipments, have been accompanied by an increase in drug-related violence as cartels
and their agents work to establish themselves and control territory. In mid-September, for example, Dominican authorities found a
burned pickup truck with three bodies inside, including that of Juan Felix Cordero Febles, a cartel hit man allegedly responsible for as
many as 50 murders. The men were killed, according to authorities, as part of a turf war between groups operating in the eastern
part of the country. Maj. Gen. Julio Csar Souffront Velzquez, head of the National Drug Control Agency, said the Dominican
Republics location in the Greater Antilles, just 240 miles west of Puerto Rico, makes it a prime target.

presence of people that belong to Mexican and Colombian cartels,

We have the

he said at a press briefing last week.

Dominican authorities have set records for cocaine seizures in each of the past three years, and are on pace to top the nine tons
they seized last year. Those seizures have led criminal groups to adjust their routes within the Caribbean. The DEA said agents in the
Caribbean and Bogot have intelligence obtained throughout numerous investigations *indicating+ that go-fast vessels departing
Venezuela and Colombia were heading straight to Puerto Rico and Haiti. The amount of cocaine shipped to Puerto Rico doubled to
six tons in the past year, the DEA said. As a U.S. territory, Puerto

Rico is a key prize for traffickers, who can

move illicit shipments to the U.S. mainland without the added risk of a customs inspection.

Internal Puerto Rico Key

Puerto Rico is becoming key to the Latin American drug trade.
Hogan 14, (Clare, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs ,PUERTO RICAN DRUG TRAFFICKING AS THE U.S
MISDIRECTS ITS FOCUS ON THE WAR ON DRUGS
misdirects-its-focus-on-the-war-on-drugs/)//IA

6/30/14,http://www.coha.org/puerto-rican-drug-trafficking-as-the-u-s-

Though never having been fully embraced as a state, Puerto

Ricos auspicious location in the central

Caribbean has made it a longstanding interest of the United States. The area is respectably selfgoverning, yet still remains answerable to the United States in many aspects of its defense and foreign policy. U.S. Federal
departments control the islands international commerce, military operations, travel governances, transport regulations, and other
countless legalities.[1] Thus, it is fair to assert that the United States should preserve its influence over the affairs of the
commonwealth, especially with regards to trade, commerce, and international aspects of finances. Nonetheless, the

territory
is ominously proving to be a principal actor in the illegal trafficking of drugs from Latin
America into the U.S. mainland, indicating a noticeable failure of the national government to manage its own
proprietary. Puerto Ricos fundamental role in the illicit drug trade is particularly poignant
considering the United States exorbitantly expensive War on Drugs. Evidently, Washington has no
problem apportioning billions of tax dollars to pay for the unpopular internal drug war, yet an obvious need for funds and resources
to secure the Puerto Rican border is being conveniently overlooked. The

federal government demonstrates an

irresponsible oversight by misallocating these valuable resources, and this error in judgment is
proving increasingly devastating as drug trafficking routes through Puerto Rico grow.

Puerto Rico is a hub for drugs to get into the United States.
Alvarez 14, (Lizette, Miami bureau chief for The New York Times , national correspondent covering domestic military
affairs,In Puerto Rico, Cocaine Gains Access to U.S. 5/29/14, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/us/in-puerto-rico-cocainegains-access-to-us.html)//IA

It was one in a string of increasingly common high-profile drug hauls and arrests playing out in
and around Puerto Rico and nearby Caribbean islands, a trail mythologized in the cocaine cowboy era of the
1980s, when a seemingly endless supply of drugs flowed from this region into Miami. Seizures of cocaine, the most profitable drug
for smugglers, have nearly quadrupled here since 2011. Over the past three years, the seizures of cocaine headed for the United
States from South America have risen by as much as 20 percent, according to federal drug enforcement officials. The

sharp
increase in the drug trade [in Puerto Rico] here is a sign of shifting patterns by traffickers in
Colombia and Venezuela who are looking for new ways to import cocaine into the United
States. The shift comes amid continuing violence among drug gangs along the United StatesMexico border, where most drugs continue to enter the United States, and a law enforcement crackdown that has made
smuggling there an increasingly risky proposition. Seizures and arrests in and around the island continue to mount. In April, a boat
made landfall in Puerto Rico. Three passengers fled, but agents found 1,530 kilograms of cocaine on the boat. Days earlier, another
boatload, this one with 1,774 kilograms of cocaine, was intercepted. Continue reading the main story Uptick in Cocaine Seizures
Seizures of cocaine headed for the United States have nearly quadrupled in recent years, with increasing amounts coming from
South America through Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. But Mexico and Central America remain the most popular funnel of
drugs. UNITED STATES Cocaine seizures in metric tons, from Dec. 2013 to Jan. 2014 Gulf of Mexico CUBA DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 54
MEXICO PUERTO RICO 22 OTHER ISLANDS 9 JAMAICA AND HAITI 5 Caribbean Sea THE CARIBBEAN 91 MEXICO AND CENTRAL
AMERICA 227 VENEZUELA COLOMBIA Source: Drug Enforcement Administration

Much of the cocaine being

smuggled here now bypasses other surrounding islands and is taken directly from South
America to Puerto Rico , a prized transshipment hub because it is on United States land. Once
inside, packages that conceal drugs do not need to clear customs. The overwhelming majority
of drugs that enter Puerto Rico end up in the United States mainland, passing through
airports, seaports or mail parcels, said Vito S. Guarino, the United States Drug Enforcement Administrations special agent in
charge in San Juan and a veteran of the 1980 Caribbean-Miami drug wars. You are seeing 1,200 keys, 1,000 keys, said Mr. Guarino,
a former police officer who could have easily stepped out of an Elmore Leonard novel, using slang for kilograms. Thats an increase
from 5 to 15 and 20 percent. Wow. What does that say? It increased fourfold. It also shows the confidence they have to get the dope
in. They send 1,200 keys, and they still have a good shot to get it in. The

cocaine that remains here is fought over

by gangs, a chief contributor to Puerto Ricos sky-high murder rate. In 2011, the island logged 1,135
murders, roughly six times the national average. The murder rate, while still high, has declined as federal and state law enforcement
agents have used new policing strategies and gotten more resources to crack down on the violence. Many

Puerto Ricans
say they still feel under siege and destabilized by the violence, although they are encouraged by the dip in
crime. Federal officials said there was no question smugglers are becoming more active in the
area. The sheer size of the boatloads being seized is an indication that the smugglers believe the odds are with them, officials say.
In 2011, 5,820 kilograms of cocaine were seized in the region by Operation Caribbean Guard, a maritime interagency task force
made up of the Coast Guard, and federal and local agencies. So far this year, the number is 17,510 kilograms, according to the latest
task force figures. Figures from the Drug Enforcement Administration show similar jumps. Most

of the cocaine ends up

along the Eastern Seaboard in cities like Boston; Newark; New York; Orlando, Fla.; and
Philadelphia. Only a small amount is being intercepted, military officials add. Photo Vito S. Guarino, who works for the D.E.A. in
San Juan, P.R., says smugglers have shown increased confidence. Credit Dennis Rivera for The New York Times The recent spike in
drug trafficking has proved so worrisome that Gen. John F. Kelly, the leader of the Southern Command, warned the Senate Armed
Services Committee at a hearing in March that the government was not doing enough to stop smugglers between South America
and the Caribbean. He told senators that his forces, hit hard by budget cuts and a reshuffling of priorities, are ill-equipped to handle
the increase in trafficking. The

general told the panel that the Coast Guard and law enforcement are
failing to capture an estimated 80 percent of the drugs, almost all of it cocaine, that are
flowing through the Caribbean Sea to the United States. He blamed a scarcity of resources, saying the
government lacks enough aircraft and vessels to spot and stop smugglers. I simply sit and watch it go by, General Kelly told the
Senate panel, adding that he receives about 5 percent of the resources he needs. Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Ricos representative in
Congress, said he has complained for several years to federal officials about the jump in smuggling. There has been no overall
strategy in the fight against drug trafficking in this region, he said. And it has been getting worse. Unlike in the 1980s, today the
cocaine leaving South America is not coming by plane but by so-called go-fast speedboats with several huge engines. Often they
travel to the Dominican Republic first. More and more, though, they go directly to the shores of Puerto Rico, officials say. The odds
of escaping detection in the vast Caribbean Sea are significantly better than along the highly scrutinized United States-Mexico land
border. Photo A vehicle was inspected by United States Drug Enforcement Administration agents during a raid in Puerto Rico in
March 2013. Credit Dennis Rivera With the exception of the powerful boats and their GPS units, the smuggling is decidedly low-tech.
Smugglers leave after nightfall, often from the shores along the porous border between Colombia and Venezuela. They throw a blue
tarp over the boat to conceal the craft during the day, Mr. Guarino said. They sometimes transfer the shipments to smaller craft,
which pull up along Puerto Ricos considerable shore line and offload. Tarps and go-fast boats they dont have to alter that
method for now, he said. Sometimes, they send a decoy, he said. Four boats go out, one is caught, and the rest make it, he added.
From land, they stash the drugs, with the bulk going to the mainland by mail, suitcase or cargo. On May 20, officials arrested 24
people on charges of trying to smuggle cocaine out in DVD players, suitcases and toys the inside of a Lite-Brite was a favorite.
Airport workers also have been arrested in the past. Despite the shortage of resources, federal law enforcement agencies and the
Puerto Rico Police Department have doubled their efforts. They have formed task forces that facilitate a team approach both at sea
and on land. Puerto Rico units are getting more outside help, equipment and staff. The police are adding helicopters. A Puerto Rico
radar unit, Aerostat, which was battered in 2011 by a storm, is working again. The Coast Guard has gotten more help, too, and next
year will receive six new fast-response cutters to replace an aging fleet, said Capt. Drew W. Pearson, the San Juan sector Coast Guard
commander. In addition, 11 federal agencies expect to finish an antidrug strategy next year, Mr. Pierluisi said. The United States
attorneys office also has made a dent. The islands constitution entitles everyone to bail, which allows drug dealers to quickly make
bond and disappear. In late 2011, the prosecutors office began using its power to arrest some of the dealers on federal weapons
charges, making it far more difficult for them to get bond. The program now encompasses nearly the entire island, said Rosa Emilia
Rodrguez-Vlez, the United States attorney for Puerto Rico.

The key, though, she said, is keeping drug

smugglers out of Puerto Rico, off United States soil.

free.

All too often, she said, When you are here, you are home

**Terrorsim**

UQ Attacks Coming Now

Attacks coming now
Edelman 5/18, (Adam, A lot more terror attacks coming our way: former NSA chief, 5/18/14,
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/lot-terror-attacks-coming-nsa-chief-article-1.1797130)//IA

A former top U.S. security official fears the nation could be attacked again by terrorists. Gen.
Keith Alexander, who retired in March as director of the National Security Agency after eight years on the job, said the
probability of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil is increasing. The number of attacks that
are coming, the probability, its growing, Alexander said in a New Yorker magazine interview published over the
weekend. What I saw at N.S.A. is that there is a lot more coming our way. Were at greater risk,
Alexander said. Look at the way Al Qaeda networks. From Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, and
now in Syria, the al-Nusra front. Look

at the number of jihadists going into Syria and what they want
to do. When put all that together, you can say those are distant countries, but a lot of these
groups are looking to attack the United States. I take that threat very seriously, Alexander added,
stressing the need to use controversial spying tactics to help combat terrorism. Alexander claimed that such tactics including the
agencys bulk-metadata collection program (which many lawmakers have claimed is unconstitutional) have contributed to the
disruption to at least 54 terrorist plots. The program, along with another NSA strategy called reasonable

articulable
suspicion, may have even prevented the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Alexander said. We know we didnt stop 9/11.
People were trying, but they didnt have the tools, he said. This tool, we believed, would
help them.
Former US Vice President Dick Cheney says the next terrorist attack in the U nited S tates will
be far deadlier than the September 11, 2001 attacks, adding that the threat might come
from a nuclear device.

Attacks coming Puerto Ricos weak position make US vulnerable.

Press TV 6/25,( Next terrorist attack will be far deadlier than 9/11, Dick Cheney says, 6/25/14,
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/06/25/368517/the-nuclear-911-coming-cheney-says/)//IA
Cheney made the remarks on Tuesday during an interview with the US-based Salem Radio Network. Cheney, who was the vice
president from 2001 to 2009, under President George W. Bush, said that he believes there will be another major terrorist attack on
the homeland before the end of the decade. "I think

there will be another attack. And next time, I think its

likely to be far deadlier than the last one," Cheney told radio host Hugh Hewitt. "You can just
imagine what would happen if somebody could smuggle a nuclear device, put it in a shipping
container, and drive it down the Beltway outside of Washington, D.C." Many observers believe the 9/11 was a false-flag operation
and that some segments within the US administration orchestrated the attack in order to reverse the declining US economy and to
save the Zionist regime. In an interview with Press TV in April, US academic Dr. Kevin Barrett said that the intelligence agencies of
the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia played important roles in planning and orchestrating the September 11 attacks. He

added that
the 9/11 was not a hijacking incident but a military attack. There was in fact no hijacking in
9/11. It was a simulated hijacking and in fact it was a military attack. Gordon Duff, the senior editor of
Veterans Today, has discussed the 9/11 issue in his several articles and interviews. In one of his articles, Duff writes
that Israels Mossad worked with the Bush administration to plan and execute the 9/11
atrocity.

Impact Extn Terrorism

Even a failed nuclear attack leads to extinction.
Sid-Ahmed 04 (Mohamed, political analyst for the Al-Ahram newspaper, one of Egypts leading political writers and
intellectuals, Extinction! 8/26/04, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm)//IA

The devastating attack of 11 September 2001, which claimed nearly 3,000 victims, is a case in
point. What provoked the attack? Why that particular type of anticipatory blow? Is there an explanation for the sequence of
events that began with raids against two US embassies in Africa, followed by the attack on an American destroyer close to Aden and
climaxed with 9/11? It was a

practice run for an even more devastating attack involving nuclear

weapons. But if Osama Bin Laden was in possession of nuclear weapons at the time, why did he choose to go for an intricate plan
entailing the hijacking of four passenger planes, tight synchronisation and split-second timing? Surely triggering a nuclear device
would have been easier. Settling for the low-tech alternative of turning planes into missiles indicates that Bin Laden was not then in
possession of nuclear weapons. Actually, the idea of linking terrorism to prohibited weapons of mass destruction came from Bush,
not from the terrorists themselves, and was aimed at establishing some sort of link between Iraq and terrorism to legitimise his war
against Saddam Hussein. We

have reached a point in human history where the phenomenon of

terrorism has to be completely uprooted, not through persecution and oppression, but by removing the
reasons that make particular sections of the world population resort to terrorism. This means that
fundamental changes must be brought to the world system itself. The phenomenon of terrorism is even more dangerous than is
generally believed. We are in for surprises no less serious than 9/11 and with far more devastating consequences. A

nuclear
attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if -- and this is far
from certain -- the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no knowledge of nuclear
technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So

far, except for the two

bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at
a stage where they can be detonated.

This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point

where anticipatory measures can determine the course of events. Allegations

of a terrorist connection can be

used to justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it
turned out, these allegations, as well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be unfounded. What
would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further
exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living.
Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense
of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts
would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a
different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more
critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no
one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs
over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the
whole planet, we will all be losers.

**Warming**

Internal Trafficking = Deforestation

Drug trafficking causes deforestation.
Schoon 14, (Robert, Latin Post, Latin American Drug Trade Ruining Ecosystems in Central America 2/1/14,
http://www.latinpost.com/articles/6722/20140201/latin-american-drug-trade-ruining-ecosystems-in-central-america.htm)//IA

The illegal drug trade in Latin America is hurting precious rainforests in more ways than
previously known about, according to a scientific new study released this week. Land in Central and South
America is often clear-cut to grow coca plants to make cocaine -- that, we already knew. But a new
study published this week in the journal Science shows that the illegal drug trade is hurting
rainforests in Central America in a different way: secretly transporting illegal drugs and the process
of laundering money made in the drug trade are destroying ecologically important rainforests
as well.

Lead author Kendra McSweeny, a geographer from Ohio State University who has worked in Honduras for the last 20

years to learn how the population interacts with their environment, published the study. She says the deforestation rate in Eastern
Honduras has more than quadrupled from 2007 to 2011, and forests are disappearing faster

in Eastern Nicaragua and

Northern Guatemala, as well, according to io9. "We started seeing a pattern of deforestation
at a pace that seemed unprecedented," McSweeney told io9. "We saw large areas of 100 to
500 hectares being cleared in a short amount of time." McSweeney's investigation into why the forests were
disappearing at a never-before-seen rate led her to drug smugglers -- "los narcos" to the local population. She found drug
traffickers are hurting Central American rainforest ecosystems in two ways -- one direct and
the other, and much more harmful, more indirect. SHARE THIS STORY Like Us on Facebook First, drug
smugglers are directly responsible for some deforestation after clearing areas in Central
American rainforests to build illicit roads and landing strips for easier drug distribution. The
second and more pernicious effect the drug trade has on Central American rainforests has to do with power, politics, money, and
fear. Obviously there is a lot of money in the drug trade -- so much so that it often makes drug traffickers in the poor Central
American nation of Honduras untouchable. Drug cartels launder their immense profits by buying land in these areas, paying officials
to keep silent, and proceed to clear the land to build plantations and ranches as fronts for their illicit operations. "They transformed
their dirty money into assets," said McSweeny to io9. And having vast swaths of territory in Central American front plantations also
protects their real assets from rival drug organizations. Once

the land is (illegally) cleared and used for

agriculture for a while, that land is basically now commercial, and often drug traffickers make
additional profits -- and make their ecological damage permanent -- by later selling the highlyvalued new agricultural land to legitimate agricultural businesses. The local authorities are bought off,
but what about outside conservationists? According to NBC, conservationists mostly left the region around 2007, citing safety
concerns. With

local officials being paid more money than most Hondurans will ever see and
violent drug cartels at the root of the problem, there's little conservationists could do to prevent deforestation
anyway.

Internal Deforestation = Warming

Deforestation causes extinction
Watson, 6 (Captain Paul, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has a show on Animal Planet, Last
Mod 9-17, http://www.eco-action.org/dt/beerswil.html)
The facts are clear. More plant and animal species will go through extinction within our generation than have been lost
thorough natural causes over the past two hundred million years. Our single human generation, that is, all people born between
1930 and 2010 will witness the complete obliteration of one third to one half of all the Earth's life forms, each and every one of
them the product of more than two billion years of evolution. This

is biological meltdown, and what this really means is

the end to vertebrate evolution on planet Earth. Nature is under siege on a global scale. Biotopes, i.e.,
environmentally distinct regions, from tropical and temperate rainforests to coral reefs and coastal estuaries, are disintegrating in
the wake of human onslaught. The destruction of forests and the proliferation of human activity will remove more than 20 percent
of all terrestrial plant species over the next fifty years. Because

plants form the foundation for entire biotic

communities, their demise will carry with it the extinction of an exponentially greater number of
animal species -- perhaps ten times as many faunal species for each type of plant eliminated. Sixty-five million years
ago, a natural cataclysmic event resulted in extinction of the dinosaurs. Even with a plant foundation intact, it took more than
100,000 years for faunal biological diversity to re-establish itself. More importantly, the resurrection of biological diversity assumes
an intact zone of tropical forests to provide for new speciation after extinction. Today, the tropical

rain forests are

disappearing more rapidly than any other bio-region, ensuring that after the age of humans, the Earth will
remain a biological, if not a literal desert for eons to come. The present course of civilization points to ecocide
-- the death of nature. Like a run-a-way train, civilization is speeding along tracks of our own manufacture towards the stone wall of
extinction. The human passengers sitting comfortably in their seats, laughing, partying, and choosing to not look out the window.
Environmentalists are those perceptive few who have their faces pressed against the glass, watching the hurling bodies of plants and
animals go screaming by. Environmental activists are those even fewer people who are trying desperately to break into the fortified
engine of greed that propels this destructive specicidal juggernaut. Others are desperately throwing out anchors in an attempt to
slow the monster down while all the while, the authorities, blind to their own impending destruction, are clubbing, shooting and
jailing those who would save us all. SHORT MEMORIES Civilized humans have for ten thousand years been marching across the face
of the Earth leaving deserts in their footprints. Because we have such short memories, we forgot the wonder and splendor of a virgin
nature. We revise history and make it fit into our present perceptions. For instance, are you aware that only two thousand years
ago, the coast of North Africa was a mighty forest? The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians built powerful ships from the strong
timbers of the region. Rome was a major exporter of timber to Europe. The temple of Jerusalem was built with titanic cedar logs,
one image of which adorns the flag of Lebanon today. Jesus Christ did not live in a desert, he was a man of the forest. The Sumerians
were renowned for clearing the forests of Mesopotamia for agriculture. But the destruction of the coastal swath of the North African
forest stopped the rain from advancing into the interior. Without the rain, the trees died and thus was born the mighty Sahara, sired
by man and continued to grow southward at a rate of ten miles per year, advancing down the length of the continent of Africa. And
so will go Brazil. The precipitation off the Atlantic strikes the coastal rain forest and is absorbed and sent skyward again by the trees,
falling further into the interior. Twelve times the moisture falls and twelve times it is returned to the sky -- all the way to the Andes
mountains. Destroy the coastal swath and desertify Amazonia -- it is as simple as that. Create a swath anywhere between the coast
and the mountains and the rains will be stopped. We did it before while relatively primitive. We learned nothing. We forgot. So too,
have we forgotten that walrus once mated and bred along the coast of Nova Scotia, that sixty million bison once roamed the North
American plains. One hundred years ago, the white bear once roamed the forests of New England and the Canadian Maritime
provinces. Now it is called the polar bear because that is where it now makes its last stand. EXTINCTION IS DIFFICULT TO APPRECIATE
Gone forever are the European elephant, lion and tiger. The Labrador duck, gint auk, Carolina parakeet will never again grace this
planet of ours. Lost for all time are the Atlantic grey whales, the Biscayan right whales and the Stellar sea cow. Our children will
never look upon the California condor in the wild or watch the Palos Verde blue butterfly dart from flower to flower. Extinction is
a difficult concept to fully appreciate. What has been is no more and never shall be again. It would take another creation and billions
of years to recreate the passenger pigeon. It is the loss of billions of years of evolutionary programming. It is the destruction of
beauty, the obliteration of truth, the removal of uniqueness, the scarring of the sacred web of life To be responsible for an extinction
is to commit blasphemy against the divine. It is the

greatest of all possible crimes, more evil than murder,

more appalling than genocide, more monstrous than even the apparent unlimited perversities of the human mind. To be
responsible for the complete and utter destruction of a unique and sacred life form is arrogance that seethes with evil, for the very
opposite of evil is live. It is no accident that these two words spell out each other in reverse. And yet, a reporter in California
recently told me that "all the redwoods in California are not worth the life on one human being." What incredible arrogance. The
rights a species, any species, must take precedence over the life of an individual or another species. This is a basic ecological law. It is
not to be tampered with by primates who have molded themselves into divine legends in their own mind. For each and every one of
the thirty million plus species that grace this beautiful planet are essential for the continued well-being of which we are all a part,
the planet Earth -- the divine entity which brought us forth from the fertility of her sacred womb. As a sea-captain I like to compare
the structural integrity of the biosphere to that of a ship's hull. Each species is a rivet that keeps the hull intact. If I were to go into

my engine room and find my engineers busily popping rivets from the hull, I would be upset and naturally I would ask them what
they were doing. If they told me that they discovered that they could make a dollar each from the rivets, I could do one of three
things. I could ignore them. I could ask them to cut me in for a share of the profits, or I could kick their asses out of the engine room
and off my ship. If I was a responsible captain, I would do the latter. If I did not, I would soon find the ocean pouring through the
holes left by the stolen rivets and very shortly after, my ship, my crew and myself would disappear beneath the waves. And that is
the state of the world today. The political leaders, i.e., the captains at the helms of their nation states, are ignoring the rivet poppers
or they are cutting themselves in for the profits. There are very few asses being kicked out of the engine room of spaceship Earth.

With the rivet poppers in command, it will not be long until the biospheric integrity of the Earth
collapses under the weight of ecological strain and tides of death come pouring in. And that will be
the price of progress -- ecological collapse, the death of nature, and with it the horrendous and mind numbing specter of massive
human destruction.

Impact Extn Warming

Warming is real and anthropogenic causes extinction and access every impact
Kaku 11 (Michio, co-creator of string field theory, a branch of string theory. He received a B.S. (summa cum laude) from
Harvard University in 1968 where he came first in his physics class. He went on to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the
University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in 1972. In 1973, he held a lectureship at Princeton University. Michio
continues Einsteins search for a Theory of Everything, seeking to unify the four fundamental forces of the universethe strong
force, the weak force, gravity and electromagnetism. He is the author of several scholarly, Ph.D. level textbooks and has had more
than 70 articles published in physics journals, covering topics such as superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic
physics. Professor of Physics He holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New
York, where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, as
well as New York University (NYU). Physics of the Future http://213.55.83.52/ebooks/physics/Physics%20of%20the%20Future.pdf)
By midcentury, the full impact of a fossil fuel economy should be in full swing: global warming. It

is now indisputable that the earth

is heating up . Within the last century, the earths temperature rose 1.3 F, and the pace is accelerating. The signs are
unmistakable everywhere we look: The thickness of Arctic ice has decreased by an astonishing 50 percent in
just the past fifty years. Much of this Arctic ice is just below the freezing point, floating on water. Hence, it is acutely sensitive to small
temperature variations of the oceans, acting as a canary in a mineshaft, an early warning system. Today, parts of the northern polar ice
caps disappear during the summer months, and may disappear entirely during summer as early as 2015. The polar ice cap
may vanish permanently by the end of the century, disrupting the worlds weather by altering the flow of ocean and
air currents around the planet. Greenlands ice shelves shrank by twenty-four square miles in 2007. This figure jumped to seventy-one square
miles in 2008. (If all the Greenland ice were somehow to melt, sea levels would rise about twenty feet around the world.) Large chunks of Antarcticas
ice, which have been stable for tens of thousands of years, are gradually breaking off. In 2000, a piece the size of Connecticut broke off, containing
4,200 square miles of ice. In 2002, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island broke off the Thwaites Glacier. (If all Antarcticas ice were to melt, sea levels
would rise about 180 feet around the world.) For every vertical foot that the ocean rises, the horizontal spread of the ocean is about 100 feet.
Already, sea levels have risen 8 inches in the past century, mainly caused by the expansion of seawater as it heats up. According to the United Nations,
sea levels could rise by 7 to 23 inches by 2100. Some scientists have said that the UN report was too cautious in interpreting the data. According to
scientists at the University of Colorados Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, by 2100 sea levels could rise by 3 to 6 feet. So gradually the map of the
earths coastlines will change. Temperatures started to be reliably recorded in the late 1700s; 1995, 2005, and 2010 ranked among the hottest years
ever recorded; 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade. Likewise, levels

of carbon dioxide are rising dramatically . They are

at the highest levels in 100,000 years . As the earth heats up, tropical diseases are gradually
migrating northward. The recent spread of the West Nile virus carried by mosquitoes may be a harbinger of
things to come. UN officials are especially concerned about the spread of malaria northward. Usually, the eggs of many harmful insects die
every winter when the soil freezes. But with the shortening of the winter season, it means the inexorable spread of dangerous insects northward.
CARBONDIOXIDEGREENHOUSEGAS According to the

UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, scientists

have concluded with 90 percent confidence that global warming is driven by human activity ,

especially the production of carbon dioxide via the burning of oil and coal. Sunlight easily passes through carbon dioxide. But as sunlight heats up the
earth, it creates infrared radiation, which does not pass back through carbon dioxide so easily. The

energy from sunlight cannot

escape back into space and is trapped. We also see a somewhat similar effect in greenhouses or cars. The sunlight warms the air,
which is prevented from escaping by the glass. Ominously, the amount of carbon dioxide generated has grown
explosively , especially in the last century. Before the Industrial Revolution, the carbon dioxide content of the air was 270 parts per million
(ppm). Today, it has soared to 387 ppm. (In 1900, the world consumed 150 million barrels of oil. In 2000, it jumped to 28 billion barrels, a 185-fold
jump. In 2008, 9.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide were sent into the air from fossil fuel burning and also deforestation, but only 5 billion tons were
recycled into the oceans, soil, and vegetation. The remainder will stay in the air for decades to come, heating up the earth.) VISIT TO ICELAND

The

rise in temperature is not a fluke , as we can see by analyzing ice cores. By drilling deep into the ancient ice of
the Arctic, scientists have been able to extract air bubbles that are thousands of years old. By chemically
analyzing the air in these bubbles, scientists can reconstruct the temperature and carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere going back more than
600,000 years. Soon, they will be able to determine the weather conditions going back a million years. I had a chance to see this firsthand. I once gave a
lecture in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, and had the privilege of visiting the University of Iceland, where ice cores are being analyzed. When your
airplane lands in Reykjavik, at first all you see is snow and jagged rock, resembling the bleak landscape of the moon. Although barren and forbidding,

the terrain makes the Arctic an ideal place to analyze the climate of the earth hundreds of
thousands of years ago. When I visited their laboratory, which is kept at freezing temperatures, I had to pass through thick refrigerator

doors. Once inside, I could see racks and racks containing long metal tubes, each about an inch and a half in diameter and about ten feet long. Each
hollow tube had been drilled deep into the ice of a glacier. As the tube penetrated the ice, it captured samples from snows that had fallen thousands of
years ago. When the tubes were removed, I could carefully examine the icy contents of each. At first, all I could see was a long column of white ice. But
upon closer examination, I could see that the ice had stripes made of tiny bands of different colors. Scientists have to use a variety of techniques to
date them. Some of the ice layers contain markers indicating important events, such as the soot emitted from a volcanic eruption. Since the dates of
these eruptions are known to great accuracy, one can use them to determine how old that layer is. These ice cores were then cut in various slices so
they could be examined. When I peered into one slice under a microscope, I saw tiny, microscopic bubbles. I shuddered to realize that I was seeing air
bubbles that were deposited tens of thousands of years ago, even before the rise of human civilization. The carbon dioxide content within each air
bubble is easily measured. But calculating the temperature of the air when the ice was first deposited is more difficult. (To do this, scientists analyze the
water in the bubble. Water molecules can contain different isotopes. As the temperature falls, heavier water isotopes condense faster than ordinary
water molecules. Hence, by measuring the amount of the heavier isotopes, one can calculate the temperature at which the water molecule
condensed.) Finally, after painfully analyzing the contents of thousands of ice cores, these scientists

have come to some

important conclusions. They found that temperature and carbon dioxide levels have oscillated in
parallel, like two roller coasters moving together, in synchronization over many thousands of years. When one curve rises or falls, so does the
other. Most important, they found a sudden spike in temperature and carbon dioxide content
happening just within the last century . This is highly unusual, since most fluctuations occur slowly over millennia. This
is a direct indicator of human activity . There are
other ways to show that this sudden spike is caused by human activity, and not natural cycles. Computer simulations are now so
advanced that we can simulate the temperature of the earth with and without the presence of human
activity. Without civilization producing carbon dioxide, we find a relatively flat temperature curve. But with
unusual spike is not part of this natural heating process, scientists claim, but

the addition of human activity, we can show that there should be a sudden spike in both temperature and carbon dioxide. The predicted spike fits the
actual spike perfectly. Lastly, one can measure the amount of sunlight that lands on every square foot of the earths surface. Scientists

can

also calculate the amount of heat that is reflected into outer space from the earth. Normally, we expect these
two amounts to be equal, with input equaling output. But in reality, we find the net amount of energy that is currently
heating the earth. Then if we calculate the amount of energy being produced by human activity, we find a
perfect match. Hence, human activity is causing the current heating of the earth. Unfortunately, even if we
were to suddenly stop producing any carbon dioxide, the gas that has already been released into the atmosphere is enough to continue global warming
for decades to come. As a result, by midcentury, the situation could be dire. Scientists have created pictures of what our coastal cities will look like at
midcentury and beyond if sea levels continue to rise. Coastal

cities may disappear. Large parts of Manhattan may have to be

evacuated, with Wall Street underwater. Governments will have to decide which of their great cities and capitals are
worth saving and which are beyond hope . Some cities may be saved via a combination of sophisticated dikes and water
gates. Other cities may be deemed hopeless and allowed to vanish under the ocean, creating mass migrations of people. Since
most of the commercial and population centers of the world are next to the ocean, this could have a disastrous effect on the
world economy . Even if some cities can be salvaged, there is still the danger that large storms can send surges of water into a city, paralyzing
its infrastructure. For example, in 1992 a huge storm surge flooded Manhattan, paralyzing the subway system and trains to New Jersey. With
transportation flooded, the economy grinds to a halt. FLOODING BANGLADESH AND VIETNAM A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change isolated three hot spots for potential disaster: Bangladesh, the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, and the Nile Delta in Egypt. The worst situation is that
of Bangladesh, a country regularly flooded by storms even without global warming. Most of the country is flat and at sea level. Although it has made
significant gains in the last few decades, it is still one of the poorest nations on earth, with one of the highest population densities. (It has a population
of 161 million, comparable to that of Russia, but with 1/120 of the land area.) About

50 percent of the land area will be

permanently flooded if sea levels rise by three feet. Natural calamities occur there almost every year, but in September 1998, the world
witnessed in horror a preview of what may become commonplace. Massive flooding submerged two-thirds of the nation, leaving 30 million people
homeless almost overnight; 1,000 were killed, and 6,000 miles of roads were destroyed. This was one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.
Another country that would be devastated by a rise in sea level is Vietnam, where the Mekong Delta is particularly vulnerable. By midcentury, this
country of 87 million people could face a collapse of its main food-growing area. Half the rice in Vietnam is grown in the Mekong Delta, home to 17
million people, and much of it will be flooded permanently by rising sea levels. According to the World Bank, 11

percent of the entire

population would be displaced if sea levels rise by three feet by midcentury. The Mekong Delta will also be flooded with salt water,
permanently destroying the fertile soil of the area. If millions are flooded out of their homes in Vietnam, many will flock to Ho Chi Minh City seeking
refuge. But one-fourth of the city will also be underwater. In

2003 the Pentagon commissioned a study, done by the

Global Business Network, that showed that, in a worstcase scenario, chaos could spread around the world due
to global warming. As millions of refugees cross national borders, governments could lose all
authority and collapse, so countries could descend into the nightmare of looting, rioting, and chaos. In this desperate situation,
nations, when faced with the prospect of the influx of millions of desperate people, may resort to nuclear weapons . Envision
Pakistan, India, and Chinaall armed with nuclear weaponsskirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land, the
report said. Peter Schwartz, founder of the Global Business Network and a principal author of the Pentagon study, confided to me the details of this
scenario. He told me that the biggest hot spot would be the border between India and Bangladesh. In a major crisis in Bangladesh, up to 160 million

people could be driven out of their homes, sparking one of the greatest migrations in human history. Tensions could rapidly rise as borders collapse,
local governments are paralyzed, and mass rioting breaks out. Schwartz sees that nations may use nuclear weapons as a last resort. In a worst-case
scenario, we

could have a greenhouse effect that feeds on itself. For example, the melting of the tundra
in the Arctic regions may release millions of tons of methane gas from rotting vegetation. Tundra
covers nearly 9 million square miles of land in the Northern Hemisphere, containing vegetation frozen since the last Ice Age tens of thousands of years
ago. This tundra contains more carbon dioxide and methane than the atmosphere, and this poses an
enormous threat to the worlds weather. Methane gas, moreover, is a much deadlier greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It does not stay in the
atmosphere as long, but it causes much more damage than carbon dioxide. The

release of so much methane gas from the

melting tundra could cause temperatures to rapidly rise , which will cause even more methane gas to be released,
causing a runaway cycle of global warming.

All authors who doubt warming do so because they are epistemologically and
psychologically flawed
Gardiner 12 (Beth, Freelance journalist, citing: Robert Gifford, psychologist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia who studies the behavioral barriers to
combating climate change, Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, specializes in the psychology of risk perception, Were All
Climate-Change Idiots, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/opinion/sunday/were-all-climate-change-idiots.html?_r=0, 7/22/12)

CLIMATE CHANGE is staring us in the face . The science is clear, and the need to reduce planet-warming emissions
has grown urgent. So why, collectively, are we doing so little about it? Yes, there are political and economic
barriers, as well as some strong ideological opposition, to going green. But researchers in the
burgeoning field of climate psychology have identified another obstacle, one rooted in the very ways
our brains work . The mental habits that help us navigate the local, practical demands of day-to-day life,
they say, make it difficult to engage with the more abstract, global dangers posed by climate
change. Robert Gifford, a psychologist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia who studies the behavioral barriers to combating climate
change, calls these habits of mind dragons of inaction. We have trouble imagining a future drastically
different from the present. We block out complex problems that lack simple solutions. We dislike
delayed benefits and so are reluctant to sacrifice today for future gains. And we find it harder to
confront problems that creep up on us than emergencies that hit quickly. You almost couldnt
design a problem that is a worse fit with our underlying psychology, says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the
Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Sometimes, when forming our opinions, we grasp at whatever
information presents itself, no matter how irrelevant . A new study by the psychologist Nicolas Guguen, published in
last months Journal of Environmental Psychology, found that participants seated in a room with a ficus tree lacking foliage were considerably more

We also tend to pay attention

to information that reinforces what we already believe and dismiss evidence that would
require us to change our minds, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias. Dan M. Kahan, a Yale Law School professor who studies
risk and science communication, says this is crucial to understanding the intense political polarization on
climate change. He and his research colleagues have found that people with more hierarchical, individualistic worldviews (generally
conservatives) sense that accepting climate science would lead to restraints on commerce, something they highly
value, so they often dismiss evidence of the risk.
likely to say that global warming was real than were those in a room with a ficus tree that had foliage.

AT: Alt Cause to Warming

Deforestation is the main cause of global warming outweighs global emissions
SA 12 (Scientific American news service, citing: Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a non-profit green group, Deforestation and
Its Extreme Effect on Global Warming, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=deforestation-and-global-warming,
11/13/12)
From logging agricultural production and other economic activities, deforestation adds more atmospheric CO2 than the sum total of
cars and trucks on the world's roads Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that cutting and burning trees adds more global warming pollution
to the atmosphere than all the cars and trucks in the world combined? Mitchell Vale, Houston By most accounts,

deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the
sum total of cars and trucks on the worlds roads. According to the World Carfree Network (WCN), cars and
trucks account for about 14 percent of global carbon emissions, while most analysts attribute upwards of 15 percent to
deforestation. The reason that logging is so bad for the climate is that when

trees are felled they release the

carbon they are storing into the atmosphere, where it mingles with greenhouse gases from other
sources and contributes to global warming accordingly. The upshot is that we should be doing as much to prevent deforestation as
we are to increase fuel efficiency and reduce automobile usage. According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a leading
green group, 32 million acres of tropical rainforest were cut down each year between 2000 and 2009and the

pace of
deforestation is only increasing. Unless we change the present system that rewards forest destruction, forest clearing
will put another 200 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere in coming decades, says EDF. Any realistic plan to
reduce global warming pollution sufficientlyand in timeto avoid dangerous consequences must rely in
part on preserving tropical forests , reports EDF. But its hard to convince the poor residents of the Amazon basin and
other tropical regions of the world to stop cutting down trees when the forests are still worth more dead than alive. Conservation
costs money, while profits from timber, charcoal, pasture and cropland drive people to cut down forests, adds EDF.

Solvency

1AC
Contention_is Solvency
US keypositioning, information processing and security make it the best actor
Burghardt 13Police State America Researcher (Tom Burghardt, Documents Show Undersea Cable Firms Provide
Surveillance Access to US Secret State, Global Research, http://www.globalresearch.ca/documents-show-undersea-cable-firmsprovide-surveillance-access-to-us-secret-state/5343173, 7/18/14, AMJ)
Whatever submarine operations NSA still carry out with the US Navy and Five Eyes surveillance partners (Australia, Britain,
Canada, New Zealand and the US), access

to information flowing through undersea cables mean that

the US government is well-positioned to scoop-up virtually all global communications. Since
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began spilling the beans last month, it should be clear that the American
governments capabilities in amassing unprecedented volumes of information from cable
traffic, also potentially hands the US and their corporate collaborators a treasure trove of sensitive economic secrets from
competitors. Reporting by Australian journalists confirm information published July 6 by The Washington Post. There we learned
that overseas submarine cable companies doing business in the United States must maintain an internal corporate cell of American
citizens with government clearances, a cadre of personnel whose job is to ensure that when

US government agencies
seek access to the massive amounts of data flowing through their networks, the companies
have systems in place to provide it securely . Inked just weeks after the 9/11 provocation, the 23-page
Telstradocument specifies that access to undersea cable traffic by the FBI and any US governmental authorities entitled to effect
Electronic Surveillance, is an explicit condition for doing business in the United States. Similar agreements were signed between
1999 and 2011 with telecommunication companies, satellite firms, submarine cable operators and the US government and were
published earlier this month by the Public Intelligence web site. It has long been known that the Australian secret state agency, the
Defence Security Directorate (DSD), is a key participant in US global surveillance projects. Classified NSA maps provided by Snowden
and subsequently published by Brazils O Globonewspaper, revealed the locations of dozens of US and allied signals intelligence sites
worldwide. DSD currently operates four military installations involved in a top secret NSA program called X-Keyscore. Snowden
described X-Keyscore and other programs to Der Spiegel as the intelligence communitys first full-take Internet buffer that doesnt
care about content type . . . Full take means it doesnt miss anything, and ingests the entirety of each circuits capacity. According
to The Sydney Morning Herald, along with the US Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, three other DSD
facilities, the Shoal Bay Receiving Station near Darwin, the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Facility at Geraldton and
the naval communications station HMAS Harman outside Canberra, were identified as X-Keyscore contributors. The paper also
reported that a new state-of-the-art data storage facility at HMAS Harman to support the Australian signals directorate and other
Australian intelligence agencies is currently under construction. The Herald described the project as an intelligence collection
program that processes all signals before they are shunted off to various production lines that deal with specific issues and the
exploitation of different data types for analysisvariously code-named Nucleon (voice), Pinwale (video), Mainway (call records) and
Marina (internet records). US intelligence expert William Arkin describes X-Keyscore as a national Intelligence collection mission
system. Two of the Australian bases illustrated on the X-Keyscore map sit adjacent to major undersea cable sites transiting the
Pacific and Indian Oceans. Cozy arrangements with Telstra and other firms however, hardly represent mere passive acceptance of
terms and conditions laid out by the US government. On the contrary, these, and dozens of other agreements which have come to
light, are emblematic of decades-long US corporate-state public-private partnerships. As Bloomberg reported last month,
thousands

of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with US

national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits
that include access to classified intelligence. Its a two-way street, Bloomberg noted. Firms providing US
intelligence organizations with additional data, such as equipment specifications use it to help infiltrate computers of its
adversaries. In return, companies are given quick warnings about threats that could affect their bottom line. Such sensitive data
can also be used to undermine the position of their foreign competitors. We now know, based on documents provided by
Snowden, that the infiltration of computer networks by US secret state agencies are useful not only for filching military secrets
and mass spying but also for economic and industrial espionage. That point was driven home more than a decade ago in a
paperprepared by journalist Duncan Campbell for the European Parliament. By the end of the 1990s, Campbell wrote, the US
administration claimed that intelligence

activity against foreign companies had gained the US nearly

$150 billion in exports. Although US intelligence officials and spokespeople have admitted using Comint
[communications intelligence] against European companies . . . documents show that the CIA has been directly involved in obtaining
competitor intelligence for business purposes.

The construction of more cables is crucial current cables can only meet half of
the worlds demand
Martin 12 (Richard Martin, editorial director of Navigant Research, providing content management and editorial direction for
the Navigant Research Blog and other publications. Martin has more than 20 years of journalism experience covering energy,
technology, and international affairs. An expert on the conjunctions of technology, the energy industry, and foreign policy, Martin
has written for Wired, Time, Fortune,The Atlantic, The Asian Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Writer of SuperFuel
Submarine Electricity Cable Market Will Not Have Enough Suppliers to Meet Market Demand During the Next Several Years August
15, 2012)<http://www.navigantresearch.com/newsroom/submarine-electricity-cable-market-will-not-have-enough-suppliers-tomeet-market-demand-during-the-next-several-years>~BCai

Demand for submarine cables for electricity transmission is growing steadily, as national
governments and regional organizations ramp up efforts to build offshore renewable power
generation facilities, link remote landmasses, and interconnect their national grids. Even the
most conservative models of existing and planned cables show that the industry will continue
to experience substantial growth. According to a new report from Pike Research, a part of Navigants Energy Practice,
however, this growth will be impossible to realize using only the current, already strained ,
channels of supply. Purchasers and developers have proposed installing an additional 6,800
kilometers of high-voltage submarine cables in almost 70 new projects around the world over
the next six years, says chief research director Bob Gohn. This is nearly double the level of construction
during the previous five-year period. There are very few companies capable of performing
each step in the installation process, from surveying to final installation. Gohn adds that the
primary limitation on the growth of this industry is the constricted supply of the cables
themselves. Only a handful of manufacturers are capable of delivering cables at the capacity
and length often required by todays grid operators, and as projects become more ambitious
in terms of cable depth, the field of suppliers becomes even smaller. The current supply chain
is only capable of fulfilling half of the planned cables over the next five years, the report
concludes. Barriers to entry in this sector are steep, meaning that the submarine cable
manufacturing market is unlikely to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming five years.
Responding to projected shortfalls, major manufacturers are expanding existing
manufacturing plants, opening new facilities, and continuing to research better and more
efficient methods for manufacturing the products required for high-voltage submarine cable
deployments. The development of a vibrant second tier of manufacturers that act as subcontractors to the major companies
could also help offset the supply bottlenecks. Still, such upgrades to the supply chain will not be enough to
keep up with demand if a majority of the planned cables comes to fruition in the next five
years, the report finds. The report, Submarine Electricity Transmission, provides a comprehensive analysis of the
worldwide market opportunity for submarine HVDC and HVAC power cable projects, including an assessment of demand drivers and
supply chain dynamics, both currently and in the years ahead. The

study features in-depth profiles of more than

25 key industry players and case studies of more than 30 notable high-voltage submarine

cable projects . Market forecasts are provided for submarine cable projects through 2021,
segmented by world region and including three different growth scenarios. An Executive Summary of
the report is available for free download on the Pike Research website.

Increased development key to prevent disruptions --- it specifically resolves

clustering
Connely et. al 13 (Chairman of Group 8 of the CSRIC, The Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability
Council's mission is to provide recommendations to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ensure, among other things,
optimal security and reliability of communications systems, including telecommunications, media, and public safety. CSRIC IV
Working Group Descriptions and Leadership CSRIC Chair Larissa Herda CEO TW Telecom Steering Committee Chair Mike Rouleau
TW Telecom, Chair Kent Bressie, North American Submarine Cable Association, FCC Liaison Michael Connelly Working Group 8 -

Submarine Cable Landing Sites Working Group July 29,

2013)<http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/advisory/csric4/wg_descriptions.pdf>~BCai

As demonstrated by recent events in other parts of the world, the clustering in close
geographic proximity of cable landing station facilities and associated submarine cables
increases the risk that a single external event whether snagged fishing gear, a dragged vessel
anchor, an earthquake, or a terrorist attack could damage multiple submarine cables and
severely disrupt U.S. connectivity. Such disruptions would harm U.S. economic and security
interests, as submarine cables provide almost all of U.S. international connectivity and
significant domestic connectivity for certain U.S. states and territories. Industry has focused
largely on geographic diversity and mesh networking as means of promoting network
resilience. At present, however, several factors, including the expense and time requirements
for permitting of new cable stations, other shore-end facilities, and terrestrial backhaul often
encourages new cable landings using existing landing facilities. Moreover, increasing
authorization and development of alternative energy facilities near submarine cable facilities
could foreclose submarine cable routing and landing in particular marine and shore areas. The
working group shall recommend industry practices, government policies, and interagency
coordination mechanisms to promote a more resilient submarine cable infrastructure. For
example, it will develop best practices and recommendations on the appropriate separation
distance between existing or planned undersea cables and other objects on the seabed floor
that could adversely impact those cables and cause communications disruption. In doing so,
the working group shall take into account the Commissions statutory jurisdiction under the
Cable Landing License Act and the Communications Act and the existing interagency
coordination process established in Executive Order 10,530.

Undersea cables are at risk now and federal action needed

Sechrist 12Fellow at the Belfer Center (Michael Sechrist, Vulnerabilities In Undersea Communications Cable Network
Management Systems, New Threats, Old Technology, http://ecir.mit.edu/images/stories/sechrist-dp-2012-03-march-5-2012final.pdf, 2/12, AMJ)

Undersea cables are among the most critical technologies supporting todays global data and voice
communications. Long-standing physical vulnerabilities to attack persist: cable landing stations, for example,
cluster high-value cable systems at single geographic points, but without the physical
protections provided to other critical infrastructure such as telecommunication data centers. With an increasing
number of cable operators using remotely-controlled network management systems, operators have introduced
additional risk of large-scale cyber attacks, adding new urgency to securing all potential points
of compromise, both the physical sites and well as the logical infrastructure. While individually governments and industries
have taken some steps to address such matters, much work remains. Collaboration on fortifying security
with new regulatory and voluntary action, working through existing bodies such as Team
Telecom under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and the
International Cable Protection Committee, should accelerate.

The plan solvesminimizes cyber security risks

Sechrist 12Fellow at the Belfer Center (Michael Sechrist, Vulnerabilities In Undersea Communications Cable Network
Management Systems, New Threats, Old Technology, http://ecir.mit.edu/images/stories/sechrist-dp-2012-03-march-5-2012final.pdf, 2/12, AMJ)
Today, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency group chaired by the United States
Treasury, has a direct role in reviewing all applications for cable landing licenses. Through a CFIUS subgroup, dubbed Team
Telecom, the U.S. reviews all undersea cable landing license applications for national security purposes. Ultimately, the Federal
Communications Commission receives and must approve all such applications. The FCC refers all applications to Team Telecom for
prior review. Applicants must clear Team Telecoms national security review before the FCC will consider granting a cable landing

license.33 34 Team

Telecom is therefore one of the most important gatekeepers in the U.S.

regulatory scheme established to address the national security requirements for cable
systems. As the U.S. government considers whether additional regulations might be required, Team Telecom could be
the appropriate body to implement policies to minimize cyber security risks to cable
systems. For starters, Team Telecom could mandate that cable operators use secure management
systems, or use them only with significant encryption/security protocols in place. Team Telecom should also
ensure that computers operating cable management system software be patched
continuously with the latestersecurity fixes in order to avoid glaring gaps. The group could require
cable operators who use management systems to immediately upgrade security software in line
with the most advanced security protections afforded to other critical national infrastructure systems. High-security SCADA systems
are on the market. For instance, one company recently launched an ultra secure 3rd generation networked SCADA system, which
uses a mutual authentication system to verify the remote management server and the controller to each other before allowing the
software to be upgraded on the remote SCADA device.

No alt causeslack of cables is the biggest problem

Brandon 13(John Brandon, Protecting the Submarine Cables That Wire Our World, Popular Mechanics,
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/infrastructure/protecting-the-submarine-cables-that-wire-our-world15220942, 3/15/13, AMJ)

The real problem with undersea cables and infrastructure security is not that cables break and
need to be repaired. Most of the experts said natural disasters will continue to break undersea cables and ships
will drop anchor in the wrong places. Instead, Blum says, the real issue has to do with a lack of diversity on the
Internet. "There is no doubt [that] as more and more things connect to the Internet, everything becomes the Internet," Blum says.
"The

best way to embrace the health and safety of the Internet is to embrace the inter'to
embrace this network of networks. The more networks there are, the more robust it is. The
greatest risk is any single network getting too large. It is the Googles and the Verizons and the Comcasts that are the greatest risk to
the Internet," he says, because having so few companies in control means you lose checks and balances. The Internet should not
be viewed as a single holistic thing. It is a place with great diversity, with many different ideas and people groups. The

diversity
is what ensures safety and redundancy, he says. The more a network spreads out, like a contagion that crosses
geographic boundaries, the more powerful it becomes. That's ultimately the goal: more lines and more companies
involved.

Now is keydelay risks capacity deficit

Sechrist, Vaishnav, Goldsmith, and Choucri 2012Office of Naval Research (Michael Sechrist, Chintan
Vaishnav, Daniel Goldsmith, and Nazli Choucri, The Dynamics of Undersea Cables: Emerging Opportunities and Pitfalls
http://ecir.mit.edu/images/stories/The%20Dynamics%20of%20Undersea%20Cables%20Final%20(3).pdf, 7/22/14, AMJ)
The result shows that as

the delays grow in investing in undersea cables, far more capacity has to be
built to maintain the desired margin of unutilized capacity, and to keep up with the growing
bandwidth usage. As shown in Figure 14, up the 50% more of utilized capacity may be required when
delays in investment are very large.

2AC US Key
A coordination system for cable protection is necessary, and the US can lead
the globe.
Matis 12 (The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat Commander Michael Matis, United States Navy,
Master of Strategic Studies degree thesis at the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, PA
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf <!--JAG-->)
This paper examined undersea cables and their impact on U.S National security, as well as the global community. Insights into
vulnerable areas that are in need of protection were identified. The absence

of an international organization
tasked with providing global oversight for undersea cable protection and security was noted.
Since an overarching organization tasked to coordinate information amongst the various
governmental, civilian and commercial cable entities do not exist, one may assume there is an
increased possibility that the ramifications of any future cable attack would be highly
undetectable, disruptive and possibly catastrophic to the current and future network. The lack
of any agreed-upon international, tiered-protection scheme for global undersea cable routes
or a global grid restoration plan represents critical global infrastructure vulnerability. An
option to pursue is a new undersea cable construction regulatory regime potentially modeled
after the Maritime Safety & Security Information System MSSIS. The author was exposed to the MSSIS
program while mobilized to active duty to support the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) fusion cell for United States Fleet Forces
Command (USFFC), Norfolk, VA. MSSIS was conceived by the Commander of U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet and the U.S. Department of
Transportations Volpe Center as an unclassified, multinational, freely shared, automatic identification system (AIS) network that
tracks the location of merchant ships.69 MSSIS provides clients with real-time AIS data derived from shore side, waterborne, and
airborne platforms.

By sharing data on vessel locations near undersea cable locations, MSSIS

participant countries can view a picture of the maritime domain that far exceeds the data they
can gather alone. Currently, there are 69 countries around the globe sharing AIS data via
MSSIS. If these countries are able to share and monitor data of cable locations, they have the
capacity to prevent or mitigate a cable break by sending a warning message to the vessel from
the regional operating center that monitors these particular cables. Utilizing a program similar
to MSSIS, countries would be able to provide a baseline to share data freely on undersea cable
locations through a common, open exchange that promotes international trust, and improves
cable security and access to global cable information. The MSSIS model can be the trigger for
undersea cable mitigation and response coordination amongst cable repair ships, industry and
government entities responsible for cable network management.

US keycommerce and Internet bandwidth

Bressie 12Counsel for the North American Submarine Cable Association (Kent D. Bressie, Comments Of The North American
Submarine Cable Association, http://wiltshiregrannis.com/siteFiles/News/F7FE3C69FE76D28CD58D601E45D5C56B.pdf, 5/30/12,
AMJ)

Undersea cables play a critical role both in ensuring that the United States can communicate
with itself and the world, and in supporting the commercial and national security endeavors of the United
States and its citizens. Undersea cables support U.S.-based commerce abroad and provide access to
Internet-based content, a substantial proportion of which is located in the United States, as
evidenced by international bandwidth build-out. They also carry the vast majority of civilian and military U.S.
Government traffic, as the U.S. Government does not generally own and operate its own undersea cable systems for
communications purposes.

US key to cable securityTeam Telecom

Sechrist 12 New Threats, Old Technology: Vulnerabilities in Undersea Communications Cable Network Management
Systems http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/sechrist-dp-2012-03-march-5-2012-final.pdf Michael Sechrist is a Former Project
Manager and Research Fellow for Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR) at Harvards Belfer Center. (KQ)
Today, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency group chaired by the United States
Treasury, has a direct role in reviewing all applications for cable landing licenses. Through

a CFIUS subgroup, dubbed

Team Telecom, the U.S. reviews all undersea cable landing license applications for national
security purposes. Ultimately, the Federal Communications Commission receives and must approve all such applications.
The FCC refers all applications to Team Telecom for prior review. Applicants must clear Team Telecoms national security review
before the FCC will consider granting a cable landing license.33 34 Team

Telecom is therefore one of the most

important gatekeepers in the U.S. regulatory scheme established to address the national security
requirements for cable systems. As the U.S. government considers whether additional regulations might be required,
Team Telecom could be the appropriate body to implement policies to minimize cyber security
risks to cable systems. For starters, Team Telecom could mandate that cable operators use
secure management systems, or use them only with significant encryption/security protocols
in place. Team Telecom should also ensure that computers operating cable management system software be patched
continuously with the latest cybersecurity fixes in order to avoid glaring gaps. The group could require cable
operators who use management systems to immediately upgrade security software in line with the most
advanced security protections afforded to other critical national infrastructure systems. High-security SCADA systems are on the
market. For instance, one company recently launched an ultra secure 3rd generation networked SCADA system, which uses a
mutual authentication system to verify the remote management server and the controller to each other before allowing the
software to be upgraded on the remote SCADA device.35 Such systems seek to stem the rising SCADA vulnerabilities by
protecting it from locally installed malware and securing the connection at all times. Further, Team

Telecom could
require cable operators to consider removing access to the ROADM portion of these systems,
or increase security measures in order to get to them on management systems. Air gapping
computers that are allowed to add/drop wavelengths from the Internet might be one cost effective way to
safeguard that aspect. It might also be prudent for the U.S. government to provide some sort
of financial incentives for companies to help reduce the costs associated with improving
network management system security. As a direct incentive, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security could
provide monetary grants to the cable companies offering these products. As an indirect incentive, the U.S. Federal
Communications Commission might be able to decrease the initial permitting costs cable operators pay to land a system on U.S.
soil.

2AC US Key Puerto Rico

US Key Puerto Rico cant afford to fund the plan.
Caribbean Business 14, ( Undersea power cable is an investment-grade project, 3/11/14,
http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/prnt_ed/undersea-power-cable-is-an-investment-grade-project-9621.html)//IA

the CARIBBEAN BUSINESS

plan to bring electric power to Puerto Rico from Florida via a 1,000-mile undersea cable. It is a
The cover of the newspaper you are holding in your hands may seem familiar because it revisits

"THINKING BIG" idea whose time has come, given that we are at a critical juncture after the downgrading of Puerto Rico's credit to
junk status. Puerto

Rico can ill-afford to continue with the highest cost of electricity in the U.S. if
we are to reignite an economy that is entering its ninth year of negative growth. At this writing,
Puerto Rico's top political leaders have expressed their support for such an initiative because it would deliver low-cost power to the
people and businesses on the islandquickly and safely. The points in favor of the undersea cable are too many to ignore. For one,

the cable would allow us to tap directly into a jurisdiction that has one of the lowest powergeneration costs in this hemisphere. Florida, the place of origin for the cable, averages 11.4 per kilowatt-hour (kWh),
compared with 26.8 per kWh, the average in Puerto Rico for 2012some months peaking at 30 per kWh. Puerto Rico's businesses
and consumers can't continue to shoulder such a tremendous burden. The

undersea cable would provide federally

regulated electricity drawing from multiple energy sourcesfrom nuclear power to natural gas, coal and
hydrowithout the risks associated with nuclear-power generation and the concerns about the
construction of natural-gas pipelines running through populated areas. Skeptics will say the cable is too
complex and impossible. There are already 30 undersea power grids, and more being planned, to prove them wrong. Undersea
cables are a growing trend that has seen entire regions thriving, due in part to lower power costs. The technology is there on display
between Corsica and Sardinia, where the cables are laid at depths of up to 5,400 feet. The cable from Florida to Puerto Rico would
run across a path at a depth of 1,000 feet, with occasional drops to 2,000 feet. Other naysayers say the cable is too expensivebut
not as expensive as replacing our powerplants, which are already more than 50 years old. This cable would turn Puerto Rico into a
regional leader selling power to other islands in the Caribbean, a fixed-income source that would help guarantee our bond
payments. Most

importantly, with so many partnersincluding Florida power companies looking for other
marketsthe project would obtain financing. In fact, the solid financial support underpinning the
cable would make it much more attractive to Wall Street investors. Instead of a cash-strapped
Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (Prepa), we would have bonds on the level of the island's best-rated Sales Tax
Financing Corp. bonds, none backed by the sales & use tax. The undersea power cable could be completed
swiftlythree years is the time it would take to build. That is about half the time it would take to retrofit
Puerto Rico's plants for natural gas. In fact, already in the works for six years, the natural-gas-conversion plan will only begin to
function in a handful of units starting in 2017. Meanwhile, replacing Prepa's most obsolete units for natural gas would cost $1
billion; replacing the entire 50-year-old system would cost $5 billion. That is time and money that Puerto Rico doesn't have. In the
ongoing legislative debate to reform Prepa, there is already too much time-consuming arm wrestling between the legislative and
executive branches. The back-and-forth arguments over details are costing Puerto Rico's people and businesses millions of dollars,
as the cost of electricity continues to hinder economic development, and in some cases, force businesses to close or file for
bankruptcy. Puerto

Rico needs a swift solution that can help to deliver low-cost power and buy
time for a transcendent reform of Prepa. The CB undersea-cable idea is the answer.

2AC Physical Security Key

Physical security keyattacks will penetrate electronic defenses
Woodall 13 (Jessica, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Australias Vulnerable Submarine Cables,
http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australias-vulnerable-submarine-cables/)

The physical dimensions of cyber security are as important as the virtual ones, but are often
overlooked . Australia is actively working towards building its cyber resilience; the ability to anticipate, withstand, and recover
from cyberattacks. But there is a significant hole in the protection of our physical cyber
infrastructure. Scattered across the ocean floor in intricate webs, submarine cables transfer high data
volumes between onshore nodes. Five main international cables connect Australia to cyberspace and global voice
networks. They carry 99% of Australias total internet traffic, dwarfing the capacity of satellites. Submarine cables are vital
to our communications, economic prosperity, and national security. They also tend to break.
A lot. In most regions of the world this isnt unexpected, or particularly worrying. Submarine cables arent much
thicker than a garden hose and for the most part sit untethered and unprotected on the sea
floor. Inadvertent breakages from ship anchors, nets and natural phenomena such as undersea earthquakes occur
frequently, averaging at least one a week. To mitigate this risk, international agreements between cable operating companies
are extensive, repair ships are quickly deployed and traffic is usually rerouted through other cables. Unfortunately, the situation for
Australia is more complicated. Sitting in the Southern Hemisphere, were largely isolated from the busy network of Transatlantic and
North Asian Cable lines. Were also unable to use overland fibre optic cables from other countries, leaving us reliant upon just a
handful of international undersea cables. The physical placement of these cables also creates risks. The majority
of the cables are gathered closely together within protection zones, located off Perth (PDF )and Sydney. While protection zones are
an effective means to warn responsible boat users of the presence of cables, they also create vulnerabilities. Several

key
cables gathered together present a greater chance of simultaneous cable breakages, whether
accidental or deliberate. And such accidents arent without precedent. In December 2008, near the
notoriously crowded Alexandria cable station off the Egyptian coastline, an anchor cut three of the four cables connecting Europe to
the Middle East. These three cables carried over 90% of the total internet and voice traffic between the two continents. Internet
speeds ground to a trickle, and there were knock-on effects across the region. Fourteen countries lost some degree of connectivity,
India lost up to 80% and the Maldives 100%, completely cutting them off from the global data network. APEC modelling indicates
that if Australia were to lose 100% of its connection, this would cost the economy over $152 million every day until the cables were
repaired, which can take anywhere from a few days to a few months. While the majority of cable breakages are accidental,

several cables have fallen victim to deliberate targeting . The state-backed sabotage of
undersea cables during World War Two was commonplace. Australia itself participated, with the Royal
Australian Navy hindering Japanese communications by cutting telegram cables off Indochina. The U.S. even managed to wiretap
Soviet undersea cables in the 1970s during the Cold War. But

fast forward 40 years and decades of technological

advancements, and non-state actors now pose the greatest threat to cable security . Piracy and the
cutting of cables for scrap is an ongoing issue, but politically motivated attacks arent out the
realm of possibility. The U.S. has already conducted war-gaming for such a scenario. This critical infrastructure
warrants effective protection and physical monitoring, particularly because Australian cables are organised so
neatly together. And under current legislation, harsh penalties exist for tampering with submarine cables within protection zones.
But the AFP, which has responsibility for ensuring compliance with these laws, operates on a reactive complaint-based model,
performing no active preventative monitoring. They distanced themselves from this role in a submission to an Australian
Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report on the submarine cable protection regime: The AFPs responsibility for the
enforcement of prohibitions and restrictions does not extend to the monitoring of the protection zones to prevent or supervise the
safekeeping of the submarine cables in Australian maritime zones. The AFP is not physically equipped with the resources to monitor
the protection of cables in Australian waters. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority and the Fisheries Management Authority
perform some surveillance of cable protection zones. But the cable owners and operators who responded to the same ACMA report
unanimously indicated that current protection zone monitoring arrangements were unsatisfactory. In contrast, New Zealand finds
itself in a similar strategic position, but is far more conscious of protecting its physical cyber infrastructure. New Zealand has a total
of ten cable protection zones compared to Australias three, providing more options to cable laying companies and reducing the risk
of simultaneous breakages. Protection officers and Maritime Police not only patrol their zones with ships and helicopters, in some
cases they operate for up to 24 hours a day. The risk created by Australias dependency upon a few highly concentrated submarine
cables jeopardises our cyber and communications resilience. We already have comprehensive legislation to help protect these

cables, but by spreading them out and preventatively monitoring the protection zones, we would significantly lower the risk to
Australias communication infrastructure.

Power grid vulnerable to physical attackterrorist attacks and natural disasters

Wells 13 Apocalypse: Threat of massive grid shutdown increasing in face of terrorism, natural disasters
http://gazette.com/apocalypse-threat-of-massive-grid-shutdown-increasing-in-face-of-terrorism-natural-disasters/article/1509048
Garrison Wells is a reporter for the Gazette, former reporter for the Denver Business Journal. Internally quotes Massoud Amin,
director of the Technological Leadership Institute.

The nation's aging, vulnerable power grid and the threat of natural disasters and terrorist activity make

a long-term collapse that could leave millions of Americans in the dark a growing likelihood. To experts, it's not if, it's when. - Parts of the nation's system have gone down. - In 2003, human error and a
computer bug plunged 50 million people into darkness for up to two days after high voltage
lines brushed against foliage in Northern Ohio. Multiple interconnected systems went down
as one failure led to another in a cascade of collapse that sparked about $6 billion in economic
damages in the northern U.S. and Canada. Eleven deaths were attributed in part to the failure. - No system is
immune. "The sky is not falling, but we're not bulletproof," says Massoud Amin, director of the Technological
Leadership Institute and professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota. Aminalso is chairman of
the Smart Grid Newsletter for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The

nation's power grid problems

are fixable, he says, but that would require a change in culture in the utilities industry, which is more focused on short term
goals and scrimps on research and development. It also would require policy changes at top levels of
government and a broader view of a segmented industry.

Patching physical vulnerabilities are key the US has existing bodies to solve
the problem internationally
Sechrist 12 (Michael, Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Expert, Former Associate, Explorations in
Cyber International Relations, NEW THREATS, OLD TECHNOLOGY VULNERABILITIES IN UNDERSEA COMMUNICATIONS CABLE
NETWORK MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, https://citizenlab.org/cybernorms2012/sechrist.pdf)

Undersea cables are among the most critical technologies supporting todays global data and voice
communications. Long-standing physical vulnerabilities to attack persist : cable landing stations, for
example, cluster high-value cable systems at single geographic points, but without the physical
protections provided to other critical infrastructure such as telecommunication data centers. With an
increasing number of cable operators using remotely-controlled network management
systems, operators have introduced additional risk of large-scale cyber attacks, adding new
urgency to securing all potential points of compromise, both the physical sites and well as the logical infrastructure.
While individually governments and industries have taken some steps to address such matters, much work remains .
Collaboration on fortifying security with new regulatory and voluntary action, working through existing
bodies such as Team Telecom under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and the
International Cable Protection Committee, should accelerate.

Physical vulnerabilities accelerate every risk provides a disruption and hacking

point to the worlds Internet
Sechrist 12 (Michael, Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Expert, Former Associate, Explorations in
Cyber International Relations, NEW THREATS, OLD TECHNOLOGY VULNERABILITIES IN UNDERSEA COMMUNICATIONS CABLE
NETWORK MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, https://citizenlab.org/cybernorms2012/sechrist.pdf)
While the financial services industry eventually moved to address this ,

there remain today numerous single

points of physical risk : the places where cables make landfall, often clustered regionally. The
U.S. State Department listed the worlds cable landing sites as among the most critical of

infrastructures for the United States.21 With good reason: by gaining access to terminals located
within cable landing sites, or to control systems managing the fiber-optic wavelengths themselves, a hacker could
acquire control over portions of international data and voice traffic and, potentially, the power
to disrupt or degrade significant portions of states cyber infrastructure . That capability is
prized by defense and intelligence agencies the world over. Nor are governments alone: cyber
criminals, hackers, terrorists and other non-state actors are determined to acquire this
capability. With the risk of attack and the cost of compromise high, it is critical that industry and
government treat cable system physical security and access with the utmost seriousness and
concern

even to the same five nines they accord other critical infrastructure, like nuclear power plants. To date,

however, that has not occurred.

2AC Redundancy Key

Greater redundancy in submarine cable networks is key.
Brandon 13 (March 15, 2013 Protecting the Submarine Cables That Wire Our World John Brandon, writing for Popular
Mechanics http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/infrastructure/protecting-the-submarine-cables-that-wireour-world-15220942 <!--JAG-->)
Redundancy is another reason the seafloor cable-building craze continues. On Valentine's Day, according to Internet monitoring
company Renesys, a fire in Alexandria, Egypt, severed six of the submarine cables on the coast. There was a widespread Internet
outage in several East African countries, including Kenya. "That

was a reminder, when the Kenyan cable went

down, that you really need two or threethat one [cable] is not enough to build an
economy," Blum says. "It made everyone nervous because the cables were too close together
there is a greater risk." Breaks occur most often when a ship drops anchor near a submarine
cable, snags the cable, and ruptures it. (Ships use maps that show the cable lines, but sometimes ignore them or
forget.) Anchors cause about 70 percent of all breaks, Palmer-Felgate says. Another 10 percent come from fishermen who are
unaware they're dragging up more than just tuna. Natural disasters can also cause major breakages, such as what happened in
Japan. What

hasn't happened yet, according to the firm TeleGeography, is a terrorist attack

though given their status as crucial infrastructure, the cables would be tempting targets . Blum
says the cables are designed for redundancy, especially in areas like L.A. and New York City, where there might be 10 lines running
into multiple landing stations. "Cutting submarine cables is as hard as cutting off all air traffic to New York," Blum says. "To cut off
New York, you'd have to cut at least 10 cables. There is still a possibility to bring traffic in around Asia and Europe. You could isolate
a place like Australia or a Pacific island.

If you succeed in cutting five cables, you'd be perceived as

cutting off the global economy.

Unless you were fully successful, you'd have negligible impact." Palmer-Felgate says

companies like Verizon install multiple submarine cables and automatically reroute web traffic when a break occurs. Although

there have not been attacks, these cables are at the center of national security disputes. For
example, the proposed $300 million trans-Atlantic Hibernian Express project is delayed
because of rising cybersecurity tensions between China and the U.S. Diversify, Diversify, Diversify The
real problem with undersea cables and infrastructure security is not that cables break and need to be repaired. Most of the experts
said natural disasters will continue to break undersea cables and ships will drop anchor in the wrong places. Instead, Blum says,

the real issue has to do with a lack of diversity on the Internet. " There is no doubt [that] as more and
more things connect to the Internet, everything becomes the Internet," Blum says. "The best way to embrace the
health and safety of the Internet is to embrace the inter'to embrace this network of
networks. The more networks there are, the more robust it is . The greatest risk is any single network
getting too large. It is the Googles and the Verizons and the Comcasts that are the greatest risk to the Internet," he says, because
having so few companies in control means you lose checks and balances.

More--A national coordination system for cable protection is necessary.

Matis 12 (The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat Commander Michael Matis, United States Navy,
Master of Strategic Studies degree thesis at the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, PA
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf <!--JAG-->)
The U.S. should continue with the current cable protection policy utilizing the legal regimes of UNCLOS, GCHS, GCCS, and ICPSC that
target responsive responses to cable disruptions. The legal regime governing submarine cables are old and date back to 1884. The

current legal issues can be summarized by four major problems: (1) Many states have not
enacted measures to protect cables from competing activities both within territorial and
outside of territorial waters; (2) there exists an ongoing threat of international terrorism
against undersea cables; (3) states have not adjusted laws to reflect the vulnerability that
undersea cables possess regarding critical communication; and (4) there needs to be an
establishment of a lead international agency via UNCLOS for the coordination of permit
requirements and cable security monitoring. Thus, the global undersea cable network is a
global critical infrastructure that is the central nervous system of the globalized economy .

Despite the potentially severe impact of a major disruption to undersea cables, the importance of the undersea cable infrastructure
in ensuring continuity of U.S. government, military, economic activity and global communication is not well understood. The
message of this paper is that these are all issues worthy of further discussion and analysis, and should be the focus of deeper
strategic thought and planning.

2AC Plan solves Econ Stability

Access to Internet helps developing countries reach stable economies.
UN News 12, (UN News Centre, 11/9/12, Advancing Internet access in developing countries can help achieve sustainable
economies UN official, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=43459#.U8h8HY1dUrE)//IA
9 November 2012 Helping

developing countries build their citizens access to the Internet is akin

to giving them a tool that boosts their chances of achieving sustainable economic growth, a
senior United Nations official told a global meeting on Internet governance today. The Internet offers a lot of
potential and opportunities for sustainable development,

said the Director of the Division for Public

Administration and Development Management of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Haiyan Qian. Ms.
Qians remarks, delivered on her behalf, were addressed to more than 1,600 delegates from 128 countries at the conclusion of a
four-day conference of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The Forum included the participation
of governments, intergovernmental organizations, business representatives, the technical community, civil society organizations, as
well as any individual Internet users interested in Internet governance issues. The theme for this years Forum was Internet
Governance for Sustainable Human, Economic and Social Development, reflecting the increasing role of the Internet in the
evolution of the various aspects of development, across all countries. We

need to build capacities to address

challenges and implement strategies, not only in our own countries and organizations, but also to assist others,
especially those in developing and the least developed countries, as well as countries with economies in
transition, Ms. Qian urged.

AT: Volcanoes
Volcanoes dont mattercables avoid them
Carter 13 Professor of Marine Geology at Victoria University of Wellington, NIWA Ocean Behavior Scientist (Lionel Carter,
Submarine Cables and Natural Disasters,
http://books.google.com/books?id=LQDXAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=submarine+cables+the+handbook+of+law+and+polic
y+google+books&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XnvNU46bE4byASTwIDIAQ&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=undersea%20cables%20and%20
natural%20hazards&f=false, AMJ)

Despite the hazardous potential of active volcanoes via explosive eruptions, lava and hot debris flows, seismic
activity and landslides, their risk to cables is minor. This is because volcano locations are generally
obvious and cable route planners are able to avoid them. However, cables do land in regions of active
volcanism, including Hawaii, Lesser Antilles, Japan and New Zealand amongst others. With respect to the larger islands, cables
can be routed through non-active zones. However, avoidance may not be possible with small islands, as was the
case in 1902 when the volcanoes. La Soufrire, St Vincent, and Mont Pelee, Martinique erupted; an occurrence that was followed by
the loss of cable connectivity. Although there was no determinative finding as to the cause of the cable damage, it is reasonable to
conclude that it resulted from an avalanche of volcanic debris from Mont Pelee.

AT: Alt Causes to Cyberwar

Terrorists will target cables specificallyterrorism is changing to target the
Internet
DNA 11(Cyber Terrorism is the Next Big Threat, Say Experts, Daily News Analysis, http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/reportcyber-terrorism-is-the-next-big-threat-say-experts-1598677, 8/14/11, AMJ)
50 techies, police officials attend Cyber Safety Awareness Week event. Cyber

terrorism is the new face of terror

that can take a toll on critical national infrastructure as this is a soft target, said international security
specialist Michael Kemp on Tuesday while speaking at a programme on Cyber Safety Awareness Week (October 10 to 15), in the
city. The event was organised by Pune city polices cyber cell along with Data Security Council India (DSCI) and National Association
of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) for police officers at the commissionerate. More then 50 IT experts and critical
infrastructure heads, defence officials and senior police officers were present. A security consultant from the UK, Kemp has
specialised in penetration testing of web application. He spoke on Attack on critical infrastructures and security measures.
Another talk was given by security expert Fyodor Yarochkin, a security analyst and software architect of Armorize Technologies, who
spoke on Organised cyber crime and international cyber terrorism. Kemp said that future

wars wont be fought on

geographical territories, but in the intellectual terrain. There are eight critical infrastructures, whose
services are so vital that their incapacity and destruction would have a debilitating impact on
the defence as well as economic security. These infrastructures rely on computer networks
including public Internet, for their continued operation and daily management. These soft targets included
electrical power, gas and oil production, storage, telecommunications, banking and finance,
water supply systems, transportation, emergency services and government operation, all of which
need to be safeguarded. Yarochkin elaborated on the cyber crime groups and said there is a huge market for sharing of data that is
related to credit card information, land or other things.

AT: Natural Disasters

New cables are being designed to withstand natural disasters.
JOHN MARINO 14,( Northern Illinois University, Caribbean Business, Florida to Puerto Rico undersea power cable will
bring big benefits, 3/13/14, http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/prnt_ed/thinking-big-9623.html)//IA

The undersea power cables have proven effective and reliable throughout the world, losing only 1% of the
energy they carry for hundreds of miles, according to experts. They are also "earthquake-proof, hurricaneproof

and terrorist-proof ," and can be laid with minimum environmental impact. They work at depths of up to 7,000 feet. From

Florida to Puerto Rico, the route of the cable we would be receiving our electricity from would be at depths of no more than 2,000
feet at any point; most of the distance would be below 1,000 feet.

AAG Cables give more protection from natural disasters and ships.
PIA Archive News Reader08, (Presidential Communications Operations Office $550million AAG cable network gives Cyber Corridor big boost
http://archives.pia.gov.ph/?m=12&sec=reader&rp=2&fi=p080528.htm&no=11&date=)//IA
"The AAG international cable system and landing station represent a big boost to the
continued growth of our ICT-related industries, especially off-shoring and outsourcing which depend on reliable
international broadband services," she said. "Our call centers cannot afford a few seconds of redundancy," the President said, as

she stressed that the AAG fiber optic cable network would "provide us with a resiliency and
redundancy of service that is not easily disrupted by natural disasters, such as the Taiwan
earthquake of December 2006," she added. "The IT companies can breathe easier now," the President said. The
President recalled that in her 2007 State of the Nation Address (SONA), she mentioned that "no Taiwan tremor can cut off our cyber
services from their global clients, PLDT and Globe are investing P47 billion in new international broadband links through other
regional hubs." "And here it is," the President said, as she underscored the need to invest in vital transport, digital and human
infrastructure which "remains central to the ability of our nation to break the historic cycle of despair and to meet the challenges of
the future." As of last year, 300,000 Filipinos were employed in the BPO industry, which also generated $5 billion in revenues. The
industry target is to create one million new jobs and generate $13 billion in revenues by 2010. The President vowed that the
government would continue investing heavily in new infrastructure, as she cited the help and support of private companies in
building vital infrastructure projects. With

the private sector like the AAG Network spending on vital

infrastructure, the government is spared the need to undertake the construction of these
facilities, thus boosting its goal of balancing the budget. The AAG project will link Malaysia to the US via
Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and the US West Coast through an undersea cable
system. Scheduled to be completed this year, the project will provide the much-needed direct access and diverse routing between
Southeast Asia and the US. Geof

Holland, Alcatel-Lucent survey and engineering manager, said the undersea cable
will be embedded two and a half meters below the surface of the seabed to avoid any damage
from fishermen and typhoons.

Add Ons

Economy
Disruption of US cables causes international economic panic
RAND No Date Submarine Cable Infrastructure
http://www.prgs.edu/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1395/MR1395.appi.pdf RAND Corporation (Research ANd
Development) is a nonprofit global policy think tank formed to offer research and analysis on global policy issues and decision
making. (KQ)
Security is an important issue, because these

cables are an increasingly vital element of the global economy.

As one analyst has noted, the increase in demand is being driven primarily from data traffic from Webenabled applications undersea cables are becoming an integral part of the everyday
telecommunications infrastructure in a world that has no boundaries. In short, an intentional systemwide disruption of
fiber optic cables could cause significant commercial damage . In particular, the ability of overseas
firms to get reliable, real-time data regarding U.S. marketsand vice versacould be
substantially curtailed, potentially sparking a panic . In addition, an increasing amount of U.S. military communications
occurs over these commercial networks. Disruption could significantly impede these communications. In all case, of course, action would be
taken to shift transmissions from the disrupted networks to other cables and satellite
transmissions. But, as discussed above, the current satellite capacity is far exceeded by bandwidth
demand. As we will see below, this problem becomes even more marked when examining the case of an island, such as Taiwan.

Cable breakage leads to economic haltits immediate

Matis 12 The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf
Michael Matis is a Commander in the US Navy who has more than 20 years of experience providing strategic management solutions
to the Navy. (KQ)

In the last 25 years, there has been a stunning growth in undersea cables because of the
communications revolution triggered by the internet. Undersea cables account for 95% of the worlds
international voice and data traffic (Military, Government, Emergency Response, Air Traffic
Control, Subway, Rail, and Port Traffic). Financial markets utilize undersea cables to transfer
trillions of dollars every day. In 2004 alone, nine million messages and approximately $7.4 trillion a day
was traded on cables transmitting data between 208 countries. As a result, submarine (undersea)
cables are vital infrastructure to the global economy and the world's communication system. Douglas Burnett,
a legal expert on undersea cables notes that international banking institutions process over $ 1 trillion
dollars per day via undersea cables. Any disruptions of these cables would severely impact
global banking. Indeed, Stephen Malphrus, Chief of Staff to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke,
recently noted, When communication networks go down, the financial services sector does
not grind to a halt, rather it snaps to a halt . Even though there are hundreds of cables crossing the global seabed,
there are just not enough undersea communication network redundancies available to handle
the vast amount of bandwidth needed to keep global banking transactions in check.

Sea-cables key to the economyone outage costs $64 million and any incident
risks devastating consequences
Franz-Stefan 10Foreign Policy Analyst (Gady Franz-Stefan, Undersea Cables: The Achilles Heel of our Economies,
Huffington Tech, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/franzstefan-gady/undersea-cables-the-achil_b_799808.html, 12/21/2010, AMJ)
In December 2008 within milliseconds, Egypt lost 70 percent of its connection to the outside Internet. In far away India, 50 to 60
percent of online connectivity similarly was lost. In Pakistan, 12 million people were knocked offline suddenly, and in Saudi Arabia,
4.7 million were unable to connect to the Internet. The

economic costs of this 24-hour outage: approximately

64 million dollars . The recent revelations by WikiLeaks of U.S. national security interests in critical infrastructure

vulnerabilities mention the often neglected underpinning of the current connectivity

revolution sweeping the planet--undersea cables. In December 2008, four undersea cables were cut
simultaneously, affecting Internet users all over the world. While cable cuts happen from time to time nothing, the scope of the cuts
illustrate the exposure of our economies to disruption once we lose connectivity . Hardly any people
know that our global digital connectivity rests upon a relatively few fiber optic cables lying at the bottom of the Atlantic, Pacific, and
Indian Oceans. They wrongly believe that their international communications are carried via satellite links. The truth is that 99

percent of transcontinental Internet traffic travels through these connecting cables; these are
the lifelines of our economies. For proof, simply take a quick look at the financial services sector. In 2004 alone, nine
million messages and approximately $7.4 trillion a day were traded via undersea cables worldwide. The Society for Worldwide
Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a provider of financial messaging, sends about 15 million messages a day over
cables. 1 million of these are financial transactions, amounting to over $4.7 trillion dollars a day commuting via the same undersea
cables. The finance hub Hong Kong doubles its dependency, i.e. the volume of messages going through these cables, every 18
months. Most of the cable cuts occur because of ship anchors, natural disasters such as earthquakes or fishing nets. While the
technical reliability of these cables is very high, international

politics have created three particular problem

zones in the world -- three cable chokepoints where undersea cables converge and where if cut, outages could have
severe consequences . The first is in the Luzon Strait, the second in the Suez Canal-Red Sea-Mandab Strait passage, and the
third is in the Strait of Malacca. Let's take a closer look at the Luzon Strait. The reason why cables go through the Luzon Strait rather
than taking an alternative route through the Taiwan Strait to avoid this single point of failure is because of the ongoing political
tensions between Taiwan and China. The result is that Hong Kong, a major financial hub, is one of the most vulnerable spots to
outages in the world. The Hengchun earthquake in 2006 severed the Luzon Strait cables, which, according to Chinese newspapers,
"catastrophically affected financial transactions, particularly in the foreign exchange market." Simultaneous cuts in the Luzon Strait
or the Suez Canal-Red Sea-Mandab Strait chokepoints -- again largely the result of the political unwillingness of the countries on the
Arabian Peninsula to cooperate with regard to overland cables through their territories -- could cut Hong Kong off from New York or
London, as terrestrial routes would have insufficient capacity to carry the undersea cable load. Payments suddenly could not be
made, orders not processed, and bond trading halting on the stock exchange. Given

our volatile economic climate,

an incident where a number of these cables are cut could have devastating consequences.
When cables are cut at one chokepoint, the loss of connectivity might last from a few days to a few weeks depending on how well
the cable system owner, the operator of the repair vessel, and the national government involved

Submarines
Public security concerns over submarine cables hampers US competitiveness
Bressie 14 (Kent Bressie is a partner and head of international practice at the law firm of Wiltshire & Grannis LLP
in Washington, D.C. He works extensively in the undersea cable sector and has led various industry-wide regulatoryreform and cable-protection initiatives. Snapshot of US Undersea Cable Regulation 2014 March
2014)<http://subtelforum.com/articles/wp-content/STF_75.pdf>~BCai

2. Disclosures About NSA Surveillance Create Fallout for Undersea Cable Operators The
challenges to undersea cable operators and their customers posed by the disclosures about
NSA surveillance are not limited to effects in the Team Telecom process. Although the
substance of the disclosures is mostly old news much of the information first came to light in
2006the disclosures have impaired customer assurance efforts of providers regarding data
protection. They have threatened competitiveness of U.S. providers particularly Internet
and cloud businesses and carriers that earn most of their revenues outside the United States.
They have led governments and politicians to demand that existing and new undersea cable
operators cease or limit participation in such efforts, or creation of bypass routes (the utility of
which remains highly questionable). And they have increased concerns that the U.S.
Government may shift data storage obligations, costs, and legal risks to industry. The legality
(under U.S. law) of these surveillance activities remains hotly debated and could be the
subject of new legislation limiting such activities, although the timing and likelihood of such
legislation remain highly uncertain. It also remains to be seen whether foreign governments
might engage in similar surveillance activitiesto the extent they do not alrpadv do so.

Submarine Cable Disruptions disrupt trade, political stability, and amplifies

problems in the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Luzon and the South China Sea.
APEC 12 (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Policy Support Unit, a forum for 21 Pacific Rim member economies
that seeks to promote free trade and economic cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific region. APEC Policy Support
Unit Economic Impact of Submarine Cable Disruptions December 2012)
<http://www.suboptic.org/uploads/Economic%20Impact%20of%20Submarine%20Cable%20Disruptions.pdf>~BCai

The present study and the economic impact model were prepared for the Policy Support Unit
of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). They serve to fulfil the goals of the APEC
Supply Chain Connectivity Framework Action Plan (SCFAP), resolved by the APEC member
economies, which contains under its Chokepoint 7 the protection of submarine cables. The
objective is to enhance the security and quality of cross-border communications. The amount
of data and information generated, sent and received through the global submarine
telecommunications cable network in recent years has experienced unmatched growth and
exceeded any kind of information transmission previously known by far. Deployed
international bandwidth increased at a compound annual rate of 57 percent between 2007
and 2011. The situation is no different in the Asia-Pacific region. Submarine cables carry over
97% of intercontinental data traffic as they provide a more efficient means of transmitting
telecommunications than satellites. Two reasons account for the superiority of submarine
cables: They are the only technology that can transmit large amounts of information across
bodies of water with low latencies (delays), and they do so at low costs. It is important for all
APEC member economies to recognize the fact that modern economies and societies are very

much dependent on uninterrupted global data connectivity. Member economies should be

aware of the importance of submarine cables and the risk to trade in goods and services,
international financial markets, social welfare, political stability, and domestic security posed
by submarine cable disruptions. Despite being examples of advanced technology, submarine
cables are susceptible to damage. Cable systems may be disrupted for a number of reasons,
each of which has a different profile in terms of the likelihood that their occurrence could
damage the overall network performance of an economy. The hazards to submarine cablebound communication can be categorized into three groups: natural hazards to the cables
themselves, man-made hazards to the cables themselves, and hazards to the remaining
infrastructure, especially landing stations and IT network management systems. Insufficient
availability of repair vessels is a further hazard. Three especially vulnerable choke points that
require special attention were identified: the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia, Singapore
and Indonesia; the Strait of Luzon between Chinese Taipei and the Philippines; and the South
China Sea.

Increased development key to prevent disruptionsSpecifically it resolves

clustering
Connely et. al 13 (Chairman of Group 8 of the CSRIC, The Communications Security, Reliability and
Interoperability Council's mission is to provide recommendations to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
to ensure, among other things, optimal security and reliability of communications systems, including
telecommunications, media, and public safety. CSRIC IV Working Group Descriptions and Leadership CSRIC Chair
Larissa Herda CEO TW Telecom Steering Committee Chair Mike Rouleau TW Telecom, Chair Kent Bressie, North
American Submarine Cable Association, FCC Liaison Michael Connelly Working Group 8 - Submarine Cable Landing
Sites Working Group July 29, 2013)<http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/advisory/csric4/wg_descriptions.pdf>~BCai

As demonstrated by recent events in other parts of the world, the clustering in close
geographic proximity of cable landing station facilities and associated submarine cables
increases the risk that a single external event whether snagged fishing gear, a dragged vessel
anchor, an earthquake, or a terrorist attack could damage multiple submarine cables and
severely disrupt U.S. connectivity. Such disruptions would harm U.S. economic and security
interests, as submarine cables provide almost all of U.S. international connectivity and
significant domestic connectivity for certain U.S. states and territories. Industry has focused
largely on geographic diversity and mesh networking as means of promoting network
resilience. At present, however, several factors, including the expense and time requirements
for permitting of new cable stations, other shore-end facilities, and terrestrial backhaul often
encourages new cable landings using existing landing facilities. Moreover, increasing authorization and
development of alternative energy facilities near submarine cable facilities could foreclose submarine cable routing and landing in
particular marine and shore areas. The

working group shall recommend industry practices, government

policies, and interagency coordination mechanisms to promote a more resilient submarine
cable infrastructure. For example, it will develop best practices and recommendations on the
appropriate separation distance between existing or planned undersea cables and other
objects on the seabed floor that could adversely impact those cables and cause
communications disruption. In doing so, the working group shall take into account the Commissions statutory
jurisdiction under the Cable Landing License Act and the Communications Act and the existing interagency coordination process
established in Executive Order 10,530.

Failed States
The Internet is key to preventing failed states
Ordon and Klopfer 9 High speed internet is key to economic growth and job creation in developing countries, says
new World Bank Group report
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:22231347~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html
Karolina Ordon and Alexandra Klopfer are Communications Officers at the World Bank. Internally quotes World Bank Group Director
for Global Information and Communication Technologies Mohsen Khalil, World Bank Economist Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang, and
World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development. (KQ)

access to affordable, high quality internet and mobile

phone services enables development across all levels of the economy and society. Information and
A new report from the World Bank Group finds that

Communications for Development 2009: Extending Reach and Increasing Impact takes an in-depth look at how ICT impacts
economic growth in developing countries. The report finds that for

every 10 percentage-point increase in high

speed Internet connections there is an increase in economic growth of 1.3 percentage points.
It also identifies the mobile platform as the single most powerful way to reach and deliver
public and private services to hundreds of millions of people in remote and rural areas across
the developing world. Internet users in developing countries increased tenfold from 2000 to
2007, and there are now over four billion mobile phone subscribers in developing countries,
says Mohsen Khalil, World Bank Group Director for Global Information and Communication Technologies. These
technologies offer tremendous opportunities. Governments can work with the private sector
to accelerate rollout of broadband networks, and to extend access to low-income consumers.
Broadband also provides the basis for local IT services industries, which create youth employment, increase
productivity and exports, and promote social inclusion. Developing countries should seize this largely
untapped opportunity, with less than 15 percent of the potential global market for IT services industries currently being exploited. In
2007, this market represented nearly US$500 billion. Governments

should proactively encourage the

development of local IT services industries through policies and incentives directed at
entrepreneurs and the private sector, and through investments in skills and infrastructure, says
World Bank Economist Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang, editor of the report. The report also contains new empirical evidence
from Brazil, Ghana, India and other countries demonstrating that modern, technology-enabled
governments can become more efficient, transparent and responsive. A survey of over 30 countries
shows that successful e-government requires organizational and behavioral changes that must be driven by high-level political
commitment and effective coordination. Access to

broadband completes the information foundation for

a modern economy and should be a priority in national development plans . says Katherine Sierra,
World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development. Governments can play a key role in expanding
broadband access by policies and incentives that encourage competition and private investment. The report builds on experience
drawn from the Banks own significant involvement in the sector. The Bank Group is the largest international donor in the field of ICT
for development and supports ICT activities projects in over 100 countries with a portfolio amounting to more than US$3 billion.

Failed states risk global extinctionviolent conflicts, power projection,

migration, murder, terrorism, civil war, weak institutions, corruption, collapsed
health care, food shortages, and anarchy
Rotberg 02President of the World Peace Foundation, Professor in Foreign Affairs (Robert I. Rotberg, Failed States in a
World of Terror, Council of Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/fragile-or-failed-states/failed-states-worldterror/p4733, 8/02, AMJ)
In the wake of September 11, the threat of terrorism has given the problem of failed nation-states an immediacy and importance
that transcends its previous humanitarian dimension. Since the early 1990s, wars in and among failed

states have killed

about eight million people, most of them civilians, and displaced another four million. The number of those
impoverished, malnourished, and deprived of fundamental needs such as security, health care, and education has
totaled in the hundreds of millions. Although the phenomenon of state failure is not new, it has become

much more relevant and worrying than ever before. In less interconnected eras, state weakness could be isolated and
kept distant. Failure had fewer implications for peace and security. Now, these states pose dangers not only to
themselves and their neighbors but also to peoples around the globe. Preventing states from failing, and resuscitating
those that do fail, are thus strategic and moral imperatives. But failed states are not homogeneous. The nature of state failure
varies from place to place, sometimes dramatically. Failure and weakness can flow from a nation's geographical, physical, historical,
and political circumstances, such as colonial errors and Cold War policy mistakes. More than structural or institutional weaknesses,
human agency is also culpable, usually in a fatal way. Destructive decisions by individual leaders have almost always paved the way
to state failure. President Mobutu Sese Seko's three-plus decades of kleptocratic rule sucked Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of
Congo, or DRC) dry until he was deposed in 1997. In Sierra Leone, President Siaka Stevens (1967-85) systematically plundered his
tiny country and instrumentalized disorder. President Mohamed Siad Barre (1969-91) did the same in Somalia. These rulers were
personally greedy, but as predatory patrimonialists they also licensed and sponsored the avarice of others, thus preordaining the
destruction of their states. Today's

failed states, such as Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Somalia, are incapable of
projecting power and asserting authority within their own borders, leaving their territories governmentally empty.
This outcome is troubling to world order, especially to an international system that demands -- indeed, counts on -- a
state's capacity to govern its space. Failed states have come to be feared as "breeding grounds of instability,
mass migration, and murder" (in the words of political scientist Stephen Walt), as well as reservoirs and exporters
of terror. The existence of these kinds of countries, and the instability that they harbor, not only threatens the
lives and livelihoods of their own peoples but endangers world peace. The road to state failure is marked by several
revealing signposts. On the economic side, living standards deteriorate rapidly as elites deliver financial rewards only to favored
families, clans, or small groups. Foreign-exchange shortages provoke food and fuel scarcities and curtail government spending on
essential services and political goods; accordingly, citizens see their medical, educational, and logistical entitlements melt away.
Corruption flourishes as ruling cadres systematically skim the few resources available and stash their ill-gotten gains in hard-to-trace
foreign bank accounts. On the political side, leaders and their associates subvert prevailing democratic norms, coerce legislatures
and bureaucracies into subservience, strangle judicial independence, block civil society, and gain control over security and defense
forces. They usually patronize an ethnic group, clan, class, or kin. Other groups feel excluded or discriminated against, as was the
case in Somalia and Sierra Leone in the 1970s and 1980s. Governments that once appeared to operate for the benefit of all the
nation's citizens are perceived to have become partisan. As these two paths converge, the state provides fewer and fewer services.
Overall, ordinary citizens become poorer as their rulers become visibly wealthier. People feel preyed upon by the regime and its
agentsoften underpaid civil servants, police officers, and soldiers fending for themselves. Security, the most important political
good, vanishes. Citizens, especially those who have known more prosperous and democratic times, increasingly feel that they exist
solely to satisfy the power lust and financial greed of those in power. Meanwhile, corrupt despots drive grandly down city
boulevards in motorcades, commandeer commercial aircraft for foreign excursions, and put their faces prominently on the local
currency and on oversize photographs in public places. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, for example, purchased 19
expensively armored limousines for his own motorcade before his reelection earlier this year. In the last phase of failure, the
state's legitimacy crumbles. Lacking meaningful or realistic democratic means of redress, protesters take to the streets or mobilize
along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines. Because small arms and even more formidable weapons are cheap and easy to find,
because historical grievances are readily remembered or manufactured, and because the spoils of separation, autonomy, or a total
takeover are attractive, the

potential for violent conflict grows exponentially as the state's power

and legitimacy recede. If preventive diplomacy, conflict resolution, or external intervention cannot arrest this process of
disaffection and mutual antagonism, the state at risk can collapse completely (Somalia), break down and be sundered (Angola, the
DRC, and Sudan), or plunge into civil war (Afghanistan and Liberia). The state may also lapse and then be restored to various degrees
of health by the UN (Bosnia and Cambodia), a regional or subregional organization (Sierra Leone and Liberia), or a well-intentioned
or hegemonic outside power (Syria in Lebanon, Russia in Tajikistan). A former colonial territory such as East Timor can be brought
back to life by the efforts and cash infusions of a UN-run transitional administration. State

failure threatens global

stability because national governments have become the primary building blocks of order.
International security relies on states to protect against chaos at home and limit the cancerous spread of
anarchy beyond their borders and throughout the world. States exist to deliver political (i.e., public) goods to their inhabitants.
When they function as they ideally should, they mediate between the constraints and challenges of the international arena and the
dynamic forces of their own internal economic, political, and social realities. The new concern over state failure notwithstanding,
strong, effective states are more numerous now than before 1914. This shift occurred after the collapse of the Ottoman and AustroHungarian empires, continued with the demise of colonialism in Africa and Asia, and concluded with the implosion of the Soviet
Union. In 1914, 55 polities could be considered members of the global system; in 1960, there were 90 such states. After the Cold
War, that number climbed to 192. But given the explosion in the number of states -- so many of which are small, resource-deprived,
geographically disadvantaged, and poor -- it is no wonder that numerous states are at risk of failure. States are not created equal.
Their sizes and shapes, their human endowments, their capacity for delivering services, and their leadership capabilities vary
enormously. More is required of the modern state, too, than ever before. Each is expected to provide good governance; to make its
people secure, prosperous, healthy, and literate; and to instill a sense of national pride. States also exist to deliver political goods -i.e., services and benefits that the private sector is usually less able to provide. Foremost is the provision of national and individual
security and public order. That promise includes security of property and inviolable contracts (both of which are grounded in an
enforceable code of laws), an independent judiciary, and other methods of accountability. A second but vital political good is the

provision, organization, and regulation of logistical and communications infrastructures. A nation without well-maintained arteries
of commerce and information serves its citizens poorly. Finally, a state helps provide basic medical care and education, social
services, a social safety net, regulation and supply of water and energy, and environmental protection. When governments refuse to
or cannot provide such services to all of their citizens, failure looms. But not all of the states that fit this general profile fail. Some
rush to the brink of failure, totter at the abyss, remain fragile, but survive. Weakness is endemic in many developing nations -- the
halfway house between strength and failure. Some weak states, such as Chad and Kyrgyzstan (and even once-mighty Russia), exhibit
several of the defining characteristics of failed states and yet do not fail. Others, such as Zimbabwe, may slide rapidly from
comparative strength to the very edge of failure. A few, such as Sri Lanka and Colombia, may suffer from vicious, enduring civil wars
without ever failing, while remaining weak and susceptible to failure. Some, such as Tajikistan, have retrieved themselves from
possible collapse (sometimes with outside help) and remain shaky and vulnerable, but they no longer can be termed "failed." Thus it
is important to ask what separates strong from weak states, and weak states from failed states. What defines the phenomenon of
failure? Strong states control their territories and deliver a high order of political goods to their citizens. They perform well
according to standard indicators such as per capita GDP, the UN's Human Development Index, Transparency International's
Corruption Perception Index, and Freedom House's Freedom in the World report. Strong states offer high levels of security from
political and criminal violence, ensure political freedom and civil liberties, and create environments conducive to the growth of
economic opportunity. They are places of peace and order. In contrast, failed

states are tense, conflicted, and

dangerous. They generally share the following characteristics: a rise in criminal and political violence; a loss
of control over their borders; rising ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural hostilities; civil war; the use of
terror against their own citizens; weak institutions; a deteriorated or insufficient infrastructure; an inability to
collect taxes without undue coercion; high levels of corruption; a collapsed health system; rising levels of infant
mortality and declining life expectancy; the end of regular schooling opportunities; declining levels of GDP per capita; escalating

inflation; a widespread preference for non-national currencies; and basic food shortages, leading to starvation. Failed
states also face rising attacks on their fundamental legitimacy. As a state's capacity weakens and its rulers work exclusively for
themselves, key interest groups show less and less loyalty to the state. The people's sense of political community vanishes and
citizens feel disenfranchised and marginalized. The social contract that binds citizens and central structures is forfeit. Perhaps
already divided by sectional differences and animosity, citizens transfer their allegiances to communal warlords. Domestic

anarchy sets in. The rise of terrorist groups becomes more likely. Seven failed states exist today:
Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, the DRC, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sudan. They each exhibit most, if not all, of the traits listed above.
Internal hot wars are also a leading indicator of failure, but failure usually precedes the outbreak of war. Hence, the
extent of internecine antagonisms and how they are handled are important predictors of failure. Likewise, the nature of the rulers'
approach toward minorities, working classes, and other weak or marginalized peoples is indicative.

More Add-Ons
Internet key to civilizationplanes, stocks, and the electronic sector
McDonald 13(Glenn McDonald, Internet Crash: 6 Unthinkable Scenarios, News Discovery,
http://news.discovery.com/tech/internet-crash-6-unthinkable-outcomes-1307291.htm, 8/29/14, AMJ)
A huge Internet

blackout would bring almost every electronic activity to a grinding halt," Haag said.
"No planes flying in the air, no stock market, no electronic payments. Just think of every system that
relies on the Internet. The average American relies on the successful operation of over 250 computers per day. And most of those
are connected to the Internet and need Internet-based communications to work correctly. "It wouldn't be on the level of
biological warfare, where people are getting sick and dying immediately," Levison said. "But if we weren't prepared, I

don't

think it's an exaggeration to say that it would damage civilization as we know it.

Internet key to societyfunds, food, oil, and transportation

Willis 13 Bachelor of Electronic Media from the University of Tennessee (Amanda Willis, What Would We Do If the Internet
Crashed? Marshable, http://mashable.com/2013/03/18/internet-crash-danny-hillis/, 5/18/13, AMJ)

We depend on the Internet for nearly everything, and we cannot imagine what would happen if
it just quit working. But with the influx of what Hillis describes as "bad and foolish people" who connect to the web, a
massive breakdown may be in our future. Hillis tells stories of gaping security holes that have already led to
incidents of our exposed vulnerability because we are using the Internet in services for which it wasn't originally
built. It now supports the basic infrastructure of our society: funds transfers, shipping of food
and oil, transportation and even the telephone system.

Internet key to value of lifemajority agree

Bziker 13 A World Without the Internet: What would it be like? How would your life be different? http://www.collectiveevolution.com/2014/04/07/a-world-without-the-internet-what-could-it-be-like-would-you-be-able-to-survive/ Zakaria Bziker is a
student at Ibn-Tofail University (Kenitra, Morocco), currently pursuing a masters degree in Education. He obtained his bachelors
degree in General Linguistics.

The Internet has proved to be efficient in processing and storing human knowledge, yet it
hasnt proved to be stable, permanent, or sustainable. The only reasonable way to store human knowledge is
to diversify the means of storage, which is not something being seriously taken into consideration. Gathering and centralizing human
knowledge into the-binary-system medium isnt a cleaver idea. With all due respect to Claude Shannon, a backup storage with a
medium of a different nature should be going in parallel; books for example. Why are we in a state of heedlessness about the
probability that the Internet may not be around in the future? Is it because we never contemplate the idea of a world without

What is life to you without internet?

Life then would be without colors, very slow, tasteless, lifeless, or
I would feel locked up in a cell. According to these sorts of reactions, which may be the case for
the majority, life seems nihilistic without Internet. Is it possible that the Internet has given
new meaning to life? Probably, because it seems as if the Internet has shifted from being a
means to being an end in itself, and the slogan nowadays has become, I am on-line
therefore I am. It seems we are putting our entire human worth and essence into a lifeless machine. Freezing all that is vital
Internet although it always used to be the case? When asked the question:
some people responded:

in us into 01001010110

Internet collapse leads to global crisispanic over food, collapse of social

institutions, lack of response
Wollman 10 World Without a Web: What will happen if the Internet dies? http://blog.laptopmag.com/world-without-aweb-what-will-happen-if-the-internet-dies Dana Wollman is a tech writer for Laptop Magazine and the AP. Internally quotes Watts
Wacker, lecturer, best-selling author, political commentator and social critic. He has been called "One of 21 socially important
people we selected to make a prediction for the 21st century by The Science Channel and was Time Magazines 2006 Person of the
Year.

what started as local panic will spread to international relations.

there are fringe
groups waiting to pounce on weaknesses in the federal administration. Take, for instance, the
Michigan-based radical Christian group busted back in March on charges of conspiring to kill
police officers and then attack a funeral so that they could kill more law enforcement officials when they eventually showed up
(all this in the name of fighting the antichrist). This fringe of society has been preparing for this from the
get-go, Wacker said. People would die. While local businesses take the reigns from multinational corporations,
the local food movement takes off, predicts Buckell. After all, the Internet helped coordinate food delivering
logistics over long distances. Farmers markets get swamped with people, and whatever
international food Wal-Mart and other grocery stores have will soon fly off the shelves.
People can survive on stocked food for a couple weeks before true desperation shows itself,
and before geographic relocation to various food sources becomes a more pressing option.
Long Term With all hope of repair to the Internet gone, people turn on each other. At least, so
predicts Wacker. A social scientist by training, he says that the five tenets of civilizationa belief system, faith
system, lifestyle, modes of communication, and how we treat one anotherwould collapse
under the stress of having to revert to an era that too many digital natives never knew. Wacker
suspects the U.S. doesnt have the tools to respond to a crisis, sans Internet. The result: panic.
How we treat other members of our species would go to hell in a heartbeat, he said.
Wacker argues that within weeks,

Thank God we have a nice relationship with Canada, he said. Even on a domestic scale, he warned

T Interps
Undersea cables are the most important part of development
UNEP and WCMC 2011(International Cable Protection Committee, Submarine Cables and the Oceans: Connecting
the World, http://www.iscpc.org/publications/ICPC-UNEP_Report.pdf, AMJ)
The first submarine cable a copper-based telegraph cable was laid across the Channel between the United Kingdom and France
in 1850. Today, more

than a million kilometers of state-of-the-art submarine fiber-optic cables span the

oceans, connecting continents, islands and countries around the world. Arguably, the international submarine
cable network provides one of the most important infrastructural foundations for the development of whole
societies and nations within a truly global economy.

Submarine cables are ocean developmentcontextual evidence

Xuxia 14 (Be Alert for Irrational Growth of Submarine Cable Market http://www.600869.com/en/ArticleShow.asp?ID=2239
Wang Xuxia is an editor for News Centre.com)
In recent years, with the

increasing efforts imposed on the national ocean development , the

submarine cable market is gradually expanding. The submarine cables have become the new growth point of
cable companies. China

still holds a relatively small submarine cable market portion. Despite the

reinforced government ocean development , for Zhong Tian in a current state of Siege, our counterparts intend
to move in when we are seeking to move out. said Xue JianLing, general manager of Zhong Tian technology submarine cable limited
corporation.

Submarine cables considered part of ocean development

TelkomKenya 11 (France Telecome-Orange signs agreement for new submarine cable in the Indian Ocean
http://www.telkom.co.ke/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=136:..)
Telkom Kenya was established as a telecommunications operator under the Companies Act in April 1999. They provide integrated
communications solutions in Kenya with the widest range of voice and data services as well as network facilities for residential and

France Telecom-Orange and the other members of the LION2 consortium signed an agreement
today in Mayotte to build a new submarine cable in the Indian Ocean. The agreement comes less than a year after
business customers.

the inauguration of the LION submarine cable (Lower Indian Ocean Network) linking Madagascar to the rest of the world via Runion
Island and Mauritius.

With this latest agreement, France Telecom-Orange enters the second phase
of its Indian Ocean development plan, pursuing its strategy for the regional expansion of broadband internet.

Offcase Answers

AT: China Counterplan

United States Key china cant solve for security U.S. uniquely positioned in
terms of location and technology to provide secure access to almost every cable
U.S has unprecedented ability to amass large amounts of secure information
quickly and effectively that cant be replicated
Thats Burghardt
Cables located within the U.S dramatically safer international cables cant be
secured to the same level
Matis and Krotow 12 (Commander Michael Matis, Captain Stephen Krotow Project Adviser, Strategy Research Project,
The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) is the premier repository for research and engineering information for the United
States Department of Defense. The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat United States Navy 07 March
2012)<http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf>~BCai
In summary, this paper

assumes protection plans for the security of undersea cables are an ongoing national as well as a global interest. Submarine cables that originate in the U.S. are
much safer than their destination end, which in turn, can inadvertently disrupt our economic
well being if they are cut outside of our jurisdiction . The issue is that in a globalized
environment, the U.S. cannot act alone because we cannot protect all the undersea cables.
Current U.S. strategy to ensure cable connectivity outside of our territorial waters allows the
cable industry to coordinate information sharing with foreign cable industry entities around
the globe. This cable strategy is complex, cumbersome, and confusing because there is no
organization in the U.S. tasked to coordinate information among the various entities that
encompass global undersea cable security. This paper details potential threats to vitally important undersea cables
and identifies several strategic approaches to mitigating those vulnerabilities

Permutation Do both
That solves best International coordination system
Matis 12 (The Protection of Undersea Cables: A Global Security Threat Commander Michael Matis, United States Navy,
Master of Strategic Studies degree thesis at the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, PA
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561426.pdf)
This paper examined undersea cables and their impact on U.S National security, as well as the global community. Insights into
vulnerable areas that are in need of protection were identified. The absence

of an international organization
tasked with providing global oversight for undersea cable protection and security was noted.
Since an overarching organization tasked to coordinate information amongst the various
governmental, civilian and commercial cable entities do not exist, one may assume there is an
increased possibility that the ramifications of any future cable attack would be highly
undetectable, disruptive and possibly catastrophic to the current and future network. The lack
of any agreed-upon international, tiered-protection scheme for global undersea cable routes
or a global grid restoration plan represents critical global infrastructure vulnerability. An
option to pursue is a new undersea cable construction regulatory regime potentially modeled
after the Maritime Safety & Security Information System MSSIS. The author was exposed to the MSSIS
program while mobilized to active duty to support the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) fusion cell for United States Fleet Forces
Command (USFFC), Norfolk, VA. MSSIS was conceived by the Commander of U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet and the U.S. Department of

Transportations Volpe Center as an unclassified, multinational, freely shared, automatic identification system (AIS) network that
tracks the location of merchant ships.69 MSSIS provides clients with real-time AIS data derived from shore side, waterborne, and
airborne platforms.

By sharing data on vessel locations near undersea cable locations, MSSIS

participant countries can view a picture of the maritime domain that far exceeds the data they
can gather alone. Currently, there are 69 countries around the globe sharing AIS data via
MSSIS. If these countries are able to share and monitor data of cable locations, they have the
capacity to prevent or mitigate a cable break by sending a warning message to the vessel from
the regional operating center that monitors these particular cables. Utilizing a program similar
to MSSIS, countries would be able to provide a baseline to share data freely on undersea cable
locations through a common, open exchange that promotes international trust, and improves
cable security and access to global cable information. The MSSIS model can be the trigger for
undersea cable mitigation and response coordination amongst cable repair ships, industry and
government entities responsible for cable network management.

International fiat bad

International CPs bad our interp is they get US based agent counterplans
which solves their offense. Reject the team
1 Not an opportunity cost, no one can decide between the US and China.
Tanks decision making skills.
2 Not reciprocal, we only get the USFG
3. Ground artificially inflates negative ground magnifies the research burden
to huge levels
Voter for fairness and education
Only Affirmative can solve within U.S. waters
Beckman 10 (Robert, Director of the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore, written for the 7th
International Conference on Legal Regimes of Sea, Air, Space and Antarctica held by the Indian Society of International Law,
Submarine Cables A Critically Important but Neglected Area of the Law of the Sea, http://cil.nus.edu.sg/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2010/01/Beckman-PDF-ISIL-Submarine-Cables-rev-8-Jan-10.pdf)
Under UNCLOS, coastal States have sovereignty in the 12 nautical mile belt of sea adjacent to their coast known as
the territorial

sea3. Their sovereignty extends to the seabed and subsoil below the territorial sea as well as to

the air space above it4. Therefore, as a matter of principle, coastal States have the right to regulate all activities in

their territorial sea, and their laws and regulations apply to activities in their territorial sea. The sovereignty of a coastal State in
its territorial sea is not unlimited. Article 2(3) of UNCLOS provides that the sovereignty of a coastal State over its territorial sea is
exercised subject to UNCLOS and other rules of international law. The main limitations on the sovereignty of the coastal State in the
territorial sea relate to the passage of ships. Ships of all States have the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea5. In
addition, if part of the territorial sea consists of a strait used for international navigation, ships of all States have the right of transit
passage through such straits6. Foreign ships have the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea, but such passage must be
continuous and expeditious7, and ships exercising innocent passage must not engage in any activity not having a direct bearing on
passage. If a ship engages in the laying, maintenance or repair of submarine cables in the territorial sea, it

would not be exercising the right of innocent passage. Therefore, a coastal State has the right to regulate
the laying, maintenance and repair of submarine cables within its territorial sea . Coastal States also
have the right to place restrictions on the right of innocent passage of ships in order to protect submarine
cables. Article 21(1)(c) expressly provides that coastal States have the right to adopt laws and regulations restricting the right of
innocent passage by ships in order to protect submarine cables. Article 49 of UNCLOS provides that the sovereignty of an
archipelagic State extends to the waters enclosed by its archipelagic baselines, which are referred to as its archipelagic waters.
However, such sovereignty is exercised subject to Part IV of UNCLOS. Part IV provides that foreign ships have the right of innocent

passage through the archipelagic waters of the archipelagic States8, as well as the right of archipelagic sea lanes passage through
designated sea lanes or routes normally used for international navigation9. The rules on innocent passage through archipelagic
waters are the same as those on innocent passage through the territorial sea. Therefore, as a general principle, archipelagic States
have the right to regulate the laying, maintenance and repair of submarine cables within their archipelagic waters as well as within
their territorial sea. In addition, archipelagic States have the right to regulate ships exercising innocent passage through their
archipelagic waters in order to protect submarine cables as provided for in Article 21(1)(c) of UNCLOS. Article 51 establishes a
restriction of the sovereignty of archipelagic States over submarine cables in their archipelagic waters. It provides that an

archipelagic State shall respect existing submarine cables laid by other States and passing through its
waters without making a landfall. It also provides that an archipelagic State shall permit the maintenance and replacement
of such cables upon receiving due notice of their location and the intention to repair or replace them.

AT: Environment DA

Non-UQ
Non-Uq- Whales prove and their science is flawed
Howard 7/10 (2014. Brian Clark- co-author of six books, including Geothermal HVAC, Green Lighting, Build Your
Own Small Wind Power System, and Rock Your Ugly Christmas Sweater. Author for the National Geographic. More
Big Whales in Ocean Could Mean More Fish, Scientists Find.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140710-whales-ecosystem-engineers-fishconservationscience/?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_r1p_us_se_w//GH)

An increase in the number of large whaleslike blue, sperm, right, and grayaround the world could
lead to a healthier ocean and more fish, a team of scientists report in a review study published this month in the journal
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The underestimation occurred because "when oceanographic
studies were started, large whales were largely absent from the ecosystembecause we had
killed most of them," says the study's lead author, Joe Roman, a biologist at the University of Vermont in Burlington.
Large whales were heavily hunted until the 1970s. At that point an estimated 66 to 90 percent
of the animals had been removed from ocean waters. But since then, great whales have been
slowly recovering. There are now more than a million sperm whales, and tens of thousands of
gray whales. The scientists report that when whales feed, often at great depths, and then return to the surface to
breathe, they mix up the water column. That spreads nutrients and microorganisms through
different marine zones, which can lead to feeding bonanzas for other creatures. And the materials in whale
urine and excrement, especially iron and nitrogen, serve as effective fertilizers for plankton.
Many great whales migrate long distances to mate, during which time they bring those
nutrients with them. When they breed in far latitudes, they make important nutrient
contributions to waters that are often poor in resources. Even their placentas can be rich
sources of feedstocks for other organisms, says Roman, who calls whale migration a "conveyor belt" of nutrients
around the ocean. Whale deaths can be helpful too. When one of the massive mammals dies, its
body sinks to the sea bottom, where it nourishes unique ecosystems of scavengers, from hagfishes to
crabs to worms. Dozens of those scavenger species are found nowhere else, says Roman. "It's far more complicated than that," he
says, referring to the whale pump and the conveyor belt. "Our

new review points to several studies that show

you have more fish in an ecosystem by having these large predators there."

No Link
No link- Cable laying has low impact and is easily minimalized
Lonsway et al. 2010 ( Kurt- engineer currently serving as the Manager for Environment and Climate Change
within the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change for the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Summary of the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment. Dec. 2010.
http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Environmental-and-SocialAssessments/1503_SEAS%20Esia%20ex%20sum%20-%20ENGLISH_EN.pdf//GH)

Onshore activities (BMH construction, cable installation, operation & maintenance) are anticipated to have
minimal and temporal impact on the terrestrial environment (beach). The soil and some vegetation (trees) may be
disturbed during excavation and construction of the trench and BMH. Water quality may also be affected through discharges (oil,
paint) from machinery and other equipment. There is also potential for dust generation, which will be limited to construction areas
and nearby surroundings; additionally emissions from mobile machinery is also anticipated.

Potential impacts have

been minimised through selection of the best route. The general approach adopted includes:
use of existing onshore facilities where possible; avoidance of environmental sensitivities
(protected areas, sensitive species); installation of pre-fabricated facilities where exiting
facilities are unavailable; use of existing corridors (and existing exclusion areas).The impact
assessment has demonstrated that the impacts likely to be generated in the cable laying
operation: in deep offshore waters, will be minimal ; onshore, will include noise and dust with potential
effects on run-off; and that installation in shallow waters, has the most potential to result in the most significant impacts (habitat
disturbance).

No link- cables have small impact on environment due to brevity of placement

Carter et al. 2009 (Lionel- Victoria University. Douglas Burnett, Stephen Drew,Graham Marle, Lonnie
Hagadorn, Deborah Bartlett-McNeil, Nigel Irvine- authors for The United Nations Environment
Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre- scientific research center dedicated to offering smart
policy options with regard to the environment. December 2009. http://www.iscpc.org/publications/ICPCUNEP_Report.pdf//GH)

Overall, those studies demonstrate that cables have no or minimal impact on the resident
biota . On the basis of 42 hours of video footage, the comprehensive study of Kogan et al.
(2003, 2006) showed no statistical difference in the abundance and distribution of 17 animal
groups living on the seabed within 1 m and 100 m of a surface-laid coaxial scientific cable.
Likewise, 138 sediment cores with an infauna of mainly polychaete worms, nematodes and
amphipods showed that the infauna was statistically indistinguishable whether near or distant
from the cable. The main difference associated with the cable was that it provided a hard
substrate for the attachment of anemones (Actiniaria). These organisms were abundant
where the cable traversed soft sediment that normally would be unsuitable for such animals
(Figure 5.3). Fishes, especially flat fishes, were more common close to the cable at two
observational sites where small patches of shell-rich sediment had formed, probably in
response to localized turbulence produced by current flow over the cable. Fish, including sharks,
have a long history of biting cables as identified from teeth embedded in cable sheathings
(Figures 5.4 and 5.5). Barracuda, shallow- and deep-water sharks and others have been
identified as causes of cable failure (ICPC, 1988; Marra, 1989). Bites tend to penetrate the cable
insulation, allowing the power conductor to ground with seawater. Attacks on telegraph cables
took place mainly on the continental shelf and continued into the coaxial era until c.1964.
Thereafter, attacks occurred at greater depths, presumably in response to the burial of coaxial

and fibreoptic cables on the shelf and slope. Coaxial and fibre-optic cables have attracted the
attention of sharks and other fish. The best-documented case comes from the Canary Islands
(Marra, 1989), where the first deep-ocean fibre-optic cable failed on four occasions as a result of
shark attacks in water depths of 1,0601,900 m (Figure 5.5). Reasons for the attacks are
uncertain, but sharks may be encouraged by electro magnetic fields from a suspended cable
strumming in currents. However, when tested at sea and in the laboratory, no clear link
between attacks, elec tro magnetic fields and strumming could be established. This lack of
correlation may reflect differences between the behaviour of the deep-water sharks
responsible for the bites and that of the shallow-water species used in the experiments.
Whatever the cause, cables have been redesigned to improve their protection against fish
biting. With respect to other cable components, data on their behaviour in seawater are sparse,
with the exception of a study under way at Southampton University, UK (Collins, 2007). Various
types of fibre-optic cable were immersed in containers with 5 litres of seawater, which was
tested for copper, iron and zinc potential leachates from the conductors and galvanized steel
armour. Of these ele ments only zinc passed into the seawater, yielding concentrations of less
than 6 parts per million (ppm) for intact cables and less than 11 ppm for cut cables with
exposed wire armour ends. The amount of leaching declined after c.10 days. Bearing in mind
that tests were carried out in a small, finite volume of seawater, zinc leachate in the natural
environ - ment would be less due to dilution by large volumes of moving seawater.
Furthermore, zinc is a naturally occurring element in the ocean, with concentrations in fish and
shell - fish ranging from 3 to 900 ppm (Lenntech, 2007). Disturbances and impacts caused by
cable laying and repairs must be viewed in the context of the frequency and extent of these
activities. Clearance of debris from a path proposed for cable burial is usually followed within
days to weeks by actual burial. Unless a cable fault develops, the seabed may not be disturbed
again within the systems design life. Furthermore, the one-off disturbance asso ciated with
cable placement is restricted mainly to a strip of seabed less than 58 m wide. For
comparison, bottom trawl and dredge fishing operations are repetitive and more extensive
(e.g. National Research Council, 2002; UNEP, 2006). A single bottom trawl can be tens of
metres wide, sweep substantial areas of seabed in a single operation and is likely to be
repeated over a year at the same site. As noted by NOAA (2005), a single impact, such as a
cable burial , is preferred to continuous, multiple or recurring impacts.

Link Non-UQ
Non-UQ- thousands of miles of cables exist in the SQUO
Goldman 2012 (David- author for CNN business center and tech editor. A giant undersea cable
makes the internet a split second faster. 3/30/2012.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/30/technology/internet-cable///GH)
It sounds crazy, but Earth's

continents are physically linked to one another through a vast network

of subsea, fiber-optic cables that circumnavigate the globe. Cords no thicker than your home's
broadband connection stretch along the bottom of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans;
through the Suez canal; across the Mediterranean Sea and around the coasts of Africa and
South America. Indian telecom giant Tata, one of the world's largest subsea cable providers,
manages 130,500 miles of fiber sitting at the bottom of the ocean floor. That's enough to
circle the planet five times.

It takes a ship six weeks just to load the cable for a cross-ocean voyage.

Link Turn
Turn- Comparatively increasing undersea cables decreases environmental
impacts
Ericsson 2010 (Ericsson- a company dedicated to keeping minimal environmental impact while maintaining
forward innovation in technology. Small Footprint With Submarine Cables. 1/29/2010.
http://www.ericsson.com/news/100129_submarine_cables_244218602_c//GH)

Sending data via submarine cables has a minimal impact on the environment and they are a
key component in realizing our vision of 50 billion connections. Craig Donovan, a researcher at the EMF
Safety and Sustainability division of Ericsson Research, has recently completed a thesis on the environmental impact of submarine
fiber-optic communication cables. The

study reveals that they leave only a minor carbon footprint in

relation to the data capacity of a modern system. Donovan says that submarine cables are the
backbone of transcontinental communication. Using fewer resources to install per unit length than an
underground terrestrial cable, the cables transmit data in a highly efficient manner and have a
relatively small environmental impact per unit of data sent. In his thesis Donovan demonstrates that the
use of submarine cables, which carry over 97 percent of our transcontinental data and voice communications, will be a key
component in hitting Ericssons target of 50 billion connections. "Without

them, communication on the scale we

have today would not be possible and the target could not be realized," he says. He points out
that comparing the amount of data sent during a telepresence meeting between Stockholm
and New York to the air travel required for a face-to-face meeting results in a difference of
almost 2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person for a two-day meeting. That is the equivalent of driving the
average passenger car almost 12,000 km. Donovan says that the emissions released could be further reduced by using more efficient
ships, cleaner fuels and electricity from renewable sources. He also suggests that increasing

data traffic by boosting

the capacity of the submarine cable would reduce the impact per data unit. "The data capacity
of modern submarine cable systems can be increased by upgrading only the terminal
equipment while the existing cable can remain in use," he says. This means more data and less
environmental impact per gigabit. "Greater capacity will therefore help us reach our 50 billion
connections target and allow it to be done in a more environmentally responsible manner."

Retired submarine cables create artificial reefs, which are key to upholding
biodiversity
Figley 2005 (Bill- head fisheries biologist on the Marine Fisheries Council of New Jersey. ARTIFICIAL REEF
MANAGEMENT PLAN FOR NEW JERSEY December 2005. http://www.nj.gov/dep/fgw/pdf/2005/reefplan05.pdf//GH)
Steimle and Zetlin (2000) listed the following biological habitat or fishery issues that can be addressed by reef habitat conservation,
expansion or manipulation: (1)

artificial reefs can mediate the loss of structured habitat; (2) increase
bio-diversity by making sand environment more complex; (3) provide refuge from excessive or
damaging fishing by precluding the use of nets and dredges in an area; (4) expand limiting
habitat for reef-dependent and reef-associated species; (5) nearshore reefs maintain access
for land-based fisheries; (6) improvement in water quality due to
nutrient/bacteria/phytoplankton removal by filter-feeding reef species; (7) mitigation for
unavoidable habitat loss; and (8) opportunities for scientific research. Artificial reefs provide
hard-substrate habitat that supports a diverse marine life community composed of reefassociated and reef-dependent species (Figure 1). Reef habitats have certain physical
characteristics that influence the species diversity and abundance of marine life inhabiting
them . In contrast to the soft or unconsolidated sediments typical of the sea floor off New Jersey, reef habitats have solid, stable

substrates, higher relief or profile, greater surface area per unit of sea floor footprint and numerous crevices and caverns. In simple
terms, reef

habitats are more diverse and complex than the sandy or muddy sea floor (Figure 2).
Undersea telecommunications cables are very heavy-gauge (2-3 inches in diameter and weighing up to 6 pounds
per linear foot) cables that consist of a central communications wire surrounded by heavy-gauge
steel wire sheathing. After laying on the ocean floor for 50 to 100 years, the steel sheathings
show little sign of wear. Since cables stretched across the ocean bottom pose a hazard to commercial trawl nets and
dredges, obsolete cables must be removed. When redeployed on reefs in 100-foot diameter
piles 3 to 10 feet in profile, the interstices created by the overlapping weave of cable provide
an intricate fish habitat.

DEP has learned through extensive experience with materials of opportunity that the preferred

direction for the future will be to fabricate reef units from concrete or steel. Lightweight materials, such as plastic or fiberglass, are
unacceptable as major components of reef structures and therefore, will not be used to build designed reef structures. Imperfect
concrete castings include large-diameter pipe, junction boxes and other hollow concrete structures that are unsaleable, due to
cracks or chips.

Since they closely resemble designed reef structures, they can be considered as
such. Advantages of prefabricated units include the ability to control the design and size to maximize their effectiveness as
habitats and to avoid the potential problems associated with materials of opportunity. The only drawback is the great
expense of manufacturing and transporting such units; thus, the level of funding available to DEP will
determine the level of production.

Regulations Solve:
No environmental impact of sea cables and regulations solve
Mudric 2010 (Miso- Faculty at University of Zagreb School of Law. Rights of States Regarding Underwater
Cables and Pipelines. 2010.
http://www.academia.edu/328436/Rights_of_States_Regarding_Underwater_Cables_and_Pipelines//GH)
The article explores the rights and duties of States regarding the laying and operation of the underwater/submarine cables and
pipelines. The

legal framework of submarine cables and pipelines is more developed in

international law, although a need for similar regulation for land based cables and pipelines is recognised by the international
community. As the territorial sea of each Coastal State falls under the full States jurisdiction, the submarine cables and pipelines in
that zone are governed by the same legal regime applicable for land cables and pipelines. In other maritime zones,

the rules of
the Law of the Sea Convention regulate the rights of laying and operation of submarine cables
and pipelines, and the rights of States to oppose such undertakings. The Energy Charter Treaty
defines the nature and principles of the energy materials trade and transit. These two
Treaties, in conjunction with national legislation, are sufficient for the successful regulation
and operation of cross-border land and submarine cables and pipelines. Usually, participating
States and companies sign special international treaties and agreements, defining contractual
terms, conditions and the applicable law. Whereas submarine cables pose no serious threat to
the environment

(although a number of environmental impacts can be observed), it is generally accepted that the

submarine pipelines raise more potential dangers for the marine environment. Therefore, every submarine pipeline project

should encompass a serious study on the environmental impact, potential hazards, and
liability regulations. A good example of such an undertaking can be observed regarding the previously mentioned Nord
Stream project, where a comprehensive Environmental Management Program was prepared in order
to tackle these issues. A wide range of regional and international documents requirements needed to be
satisfied in order to obtain the so-called full-scale Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The
documents in question included the: Espoo Convention, 1992 Baltic Sea Convention, EIA Directive, EC Habitats and EC Birds
Directives, ELD Directive, Aarhus Convention, Convention on the Biological Diversity, Bonn Convention/ASCOBANS, 1996 London
Protocol to the 1972 London Convention, 1972 World Heritage Convention, 1958 Geneva Conventions, UNCLOS and the Energy
Charter Treaty. In addition to this, a

broad range of national legislation needed to be adhered to. This,

amongst various provisions, included the following norms: sea-bed mining legislation, water
legislation, building legislation, regional planning legislation, emission control legislation,
natural conservation legislation, and energy legislation.

New MPA and government policies solve coral reefs

Eilperin 6/17(2014. Juliet- Since April of 2004 she has covered the environment for the national desk, reporting
on science, policy and politics in areas including climate change, oceans, and air quality. Obama proposes vast
expansion of Pacific Ocean sanctuaries for marine life. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-willpropose-vast-expansion-of-pacific-ocean-marine-sanctuary/2014/06/16/f8689972-f0c6-11e3-bf76447a5df6411f_story.html//GH)
President Obama

announced Tuesday his intent to make a broad swath of the central Pacific
Ocean off-limits to fishing, energy exploration and other activities. The proposal, slated to go into
effect later this year after a comment period, could create the worlds largest marine sanctuary and double
the area of ocean globally that is fully protected. Im going to use my authority to protect
some of our nations most precious marine landscapes,

Obama said in a video to participants at a State

Department conference, adding that while the ocean is being degraded, We cannot afford to let that happen. Thats why the

United States is leading the fight to protect our oceans. The announcement first reported earlier
Tuesday by The Washington Post is part of a broader push on maritime issues by an administration

that has generally favored other environmental priorities. The oceans effort, led by Secretary of State John F.
Kerry and White House counselor John D. Podesta, is likely to spark a new political battle with Republicans over the scope of
Obamas executive powers. The

president will also direct federal agencies to develop a comprehensive

program aimed at combating seafood fraud and the global black-market fish trade. In
addition, the administration finalized a rule last week allowing the public to nominate new
marine sanctuaries off U.S. coasts and in the Great Lakes. Under the proposal, according to
two independent analyses, the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument would be
expanded from almost 87,000 square miles to nearly 782,000 square miles all of it adjacent
to seven islands and atolls controlled by the United States. The designation would include
waters up to 200 nautical miles offshore from the territories. Its the closest thing Ive seen
to the pristine ocean, said Enric Sala, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence who has researched the areas reefs
and atolls since 2005. We believe in almost all instances you can still have marine conservation and
marine protection, and still allow for sustainable recreational fishing activities to take place,
Leonard said, adding theres almost no sportfishing activity in the area because its a heck of a trek out there. Our concern is
obviously with the precedent this might set. For

the past 51 / 2 years, the administration has focused on

the nuts and bolts of marine issues, aiming to end overfishing in federally managed fisheries
and establishing a new planning process for maritime activities. This weeks State Department
ocean summit launches what officials there call a broader global campaign to address the
problems of overfishing, pollution and ocean acidification. When the president is besieged by
the problems as this administration has faced, its tough to keep your focus on ocean policy,
said former defense secretary Leon E. Panetta, who co-founded the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative nearly a decade ago while in
Congress. Thats the problem you just cant afford to put oceans on the back burner. No

other country governs

more of the sea than the United States, which controls more than 13 percent of the ocean
area overseen by nations. And only China consumes more seafood each year. The potential expansion area
would quintuple the number of underwater mountains under protection. It would also end
tuna fishing and provide shelter for nearly two dozen species of marine mammals, five types
of threatened sea turtles, and a variety of sharks and other predatory fish species . Other
countries are moving ahead with their own marine reserves.

The British government is considering

creating a sanctuary around the Pitcairn Islands an area in the Pacific inhabited by descendants of the mutineers from the HMS
Bounty and their Tahitian companions according to people briefed on the decision. Anote Tong, president of the small Pacific
island nation of Kiribati, announced Monday that he will close an area roughly the size of California to commercial fishing by the end
of this year. Its our contribution to humanity, Tong said in an interview. Pew Charitable Trusts Executive Vice
President Joshua S. Reichert said Obama should also consider expanding the borders of the monuments Bush created in the
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and the Marianas Trench. He said the

1906 Antiquities Act, which allows such

designations, is one of the great equalizers in the ongoing struggle to preserve some of the
best examples of Americas natural heritage. Without it, many of these places would long ago have succumbed to
the pickax, the chain saw and the dredge, leaving us all poorer as a result. Ben Halpern, an environmental science professor at the
University of California at Santa Barbara and the lead scientist for the Ocean Health Index, said maritime issues rank low on
politicians priority lists because people are disconnected from the sea. Every

single person on the planet benefits

from the health of the ocean, but most of them dont realize it, he said. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administrations chief, Kathryn Sullivan, said her agency has focused on increasing the ability of coastal communities to
cope with climate change and on monitoring how the marine ecosystem is being transformed. Data

are critical to all of

it, she said. Monica Medina, NOAAs principal deputy undersecretary for oceans and
atmosphere in Obamas first term, said that the United States has found new avenues to
exert its influence and lead change in ocean policy globally, including cracking down on illegal fishing by
pressing for stricter ship verification through the International Maritime Organization.

AT: Coral Reef Scenario

Warming an alt cause to coral reef death
Weise 2007 (Elizabeth- author for USA today- covers tech, biotech, agriculture and now food safety and
breaking news. An epidemiologist. Scientists: Global Warming could kill coral reefs by 2050 12/13/2007.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2007-12-13-coral-reefs_N.htm//GH)

Rising carbon emissions might kill off the ocean's coral reefs by 2050, scientists warn in today's edition of
the journal Science. The review article, co-authored by 17 marine scientists in seven countries,
including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is the most comprehensive review
so far of the catastrophic threat global warming poses to coral, and by extension many ocean species.
Burning coal, oil and gas adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the same gas used to give soft drinks fizz.
Just as carbon dioxide is absorbed into the drink, ocean water absorbs it from the air. When the carbon
dioxide enters the ocean, it makes the water more acidic. That interferes with the ability of
coral to calcify their skeletons: They can no longer grow and they begin to die. But global
warming is seriously threatening that crucial component of the ocean biodiversity, the marine
scientists said. "We have created conditions on Earth unlike anything most species alive today
have experienced in their evolutionary history. Corals are feeling the effects of our actions and
it is now or never if we want to safeguard these marine creatures and the livelihoods that
depend on them," said Bob Steneck of the University of Maine and co-author of the paper. However, there's no
question the oceans are becoming more acid. Unlike climate sensitivity "where you don't
know exactly how much the atmosphere will warm for each doubling of carbon dioxide,"
ocean chemistry is straightforward, he says. "There's no uncertainly how much the pH is going to
drop given a certain amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Langdon says. "Everyone would
agree within 1% what the pH is going to be." When it comes to ocean acidification, "it's crystal
clear that it's caused by humans burning fossil fuels." Coral reefs are already under stress due
to increasing numbers of "bleaching events." When ocean temperatures rise for weeks or
more, coral, which are actually tiny marine animals, expel the algae that live within them.
These symbiotic algae provide the coral with a major source of food. If water temperatures
drop the coral can recover, but are weakened. Too many bleaching events can kill them.

AT: Thermal Pollution Scenario

5 alt causes that make thermal pollution inevitable
CEF N.D. (Conserve Energy Future- foundation dedicated to conserving energy supplies in a world
where they are quickly becoming scarce. What is Thermal Pollution? N.D. http://www.conserve-energyfuture.com/causes-and-effects-of-thermal-pollution.php//GH)
Causes of Thermal Pollution 1. Water as Cooling Agent in Power, Manufacturing and Industrial plants:

Production and

Manufacturing plants are biggest source of thermal pollution . These plants draw water from
nearby source to keep machines cool and then release back to the source with higher
temperature. When heated water returns to the river or ocean, the water temperature rises sharply. When oxygen levels are
altered in the water, this can also degrade the quality and longevity of life in wildlife that lives underwater. This process can also
wipe away streamside vegetation, which constantly depends on constant levels of oxygen and temperature. By altering these
natural environments, industries are essentially helping decrease the quality of life for these marines based life forms and can
ultimately destroy habitats if they are not controlled and careful about their practices. 2. Soil Erosion:

Soil erosion is

another major factor that causes thermal pollution . Consistent soil erosion causes water
bodies to rise, making them more exposed to sunlight. The high temperature could prove fatal for aquatic
biomes as it may give rise to anaerobic conditions. 3. Deforestation: Trees and plants prevent sunlight from falling
directly on lakes, ponds or rivers. When deforestation takes place, these water bodies are
directly exposed to sunlight, thus absorbing more heat and raising its temperature. Deforestation
is also a main cause of the higher concentrations of greenhouse gases i.e. global warming in the atmosphere. 4. Runoff from Paved
Surfaces: Urban

runoff discharged to surface waters from paved surfaces like roads and parking
lots can make water warmer. During summer seasons, the pavement gets quite hot, which
creates warm runoff that gets into the sewer systems and water bodies. 5. Natural Causes: Natural
causes like volcanoes and geothermal activity under the oceans and seas can trigger warm
lava to raise the temperature of water bodies. Lightening can also introduce massive amount
of heat into the oceans. This means that the overall temperature of the water source will rise, having significant impacts on
the environment.

AT: US-Brazil DA

Uniqueness --- NSA Spies New Cable

NSA Spying is inevitable --- Means Impact will be inevitably triggered
Maloof 2-25-14 (F. Michael Maloof, staff writer for WND and G2Bulletin, is a former senior security policy analyst in the
office of the secretary of defense. World Net Daily, Independent news website with an emphasis on aggressive investigative
reporting. Founded by Joseph and Elizabeth Farah. FATAL FLAW IN PLAN TO EVADE NSA: Spy agency already has capability to
secretly tap undersea fiber-optic data Published: 02/25/2014 at 4:09 PM) <http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/fatal-flaw-in-europebrazil-plan-to-evade-nsa/#jQoHEf110dGQmG3q.99>~BCai
WASHINGTON Brazil,

Europe plan undersea cable to skirt U.S. spying, trumpeted one of the
worlds top headlines yesterday, but it turns out the strategy to thwart possible U.S.
surveillance may be an exercise in futility.

Brazil and the European Union announced their agreement to install a

fiber optic cable under the Atlantic Ocean from one continent to the other to prevent U.S. surveillance of Internet traffic between
them after revelations the U.S. National Security Agency spied on their communications. But

the $185 million cable

project will not necessarily keep spying eyes and ears from the data transmitted across it,
since the NSA already can spy, if it chooses, on undersea fiber optics. While the National Security Agency
is better known in recent months for acquiring information from mobile phones given its vast global network of microwave listening
stations and satellites, it

also has the technical ability to tap into the proposed fiber-optic submarine
cable and without the intrusion being detected. We have to respect privacy, human rights and the
sovereignty of nations, said Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, noting that Brazil and the EU are concerned about the neutrality
of the Internet. We dont want business to be spied upon. The Internet is one of the best things man has ever invented. So we
agreed for the need to guarantee the neutrality of the network, a democratic area where we can protect freedom of expression.
Rousseff was particularly outraged upon learning the NSA had been spying on her communications and was gaining access to all
Internet communications, including texting on phones. A similar reaction followed revelation that the NSA had been scooping up all
data of Internet activities from Europeans, including listening in on the personal mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The EU threatened to suspend agreements with the U.S. on data transfers unless there were guarantees on the protection of data
from EU citizens. While President Obama eventually ordered a ban on spying on leaders of close allies, the trust was broken. As a
result, Brazil and the EU decided to undertake this joint venture between Brazils Telebras and Spains IslaLink Submarine Cables to
lay the communications link. And

while it will draw Brazil closer to the EU in terms of trade, it will

definitely not be immune from being tapped. Fiber-optic technology allows thousands of
phone calls, faxes, emails and encrypted data to be translated into beams of light and send
through a single strand of glass as thin as a human hair. Undersea cables contain eight such
strands, or fibers. To gain access to the data, NSA needs to gain access to those light beams,
which becomes challenging in an ocean environment. But NSA actually developed this
capability in the 1990s when a specially outfitted submarine the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter
successfully sliced into a fiber-optic cable unnoticed. The Carter is a modified Seawolf-class
submarine built by General Dynamic Electric Boat in Connecticut. At the Navys request, GE added an
extension to the hull that provided another 100 feet to its 350-foot length. Sources say the modification cost almost $2 billion. The
hull extension, say sources, was a floodable chamber to allow divers and machines to remove
objects from the seafloor or carry monitoring devices to be attached to the undersea cables,
to be removed later for analysis. It was this type of submarine undersea tapping that former
NSA employee Ronald Pelton, in the 1980s, talked about with the then-Soviet Union. He
revealed Operation Ivy Bells, an NSA and Navy program to surreptitiously wiretap undersea
cables to monitor Soviet military communications and track Soviet submarines. Pelton later was
caught, tried and convicted of espionage. At age 73, he remains in federal prison. Disclosure of NSA eavesdropping on
microwave communications, sources say, could force the agency to go back to tapping into
fiber-optic cables. There would be serious legal issues, since a significant portion of any
undersea communications could involve U.S. citizens. And NSA wouldnt be getting only
metadata, which agency officials swear is all they obtain, although informed sources have told
WND that the NSA can access the actual phone conversations based on that metadata. In
undersea cable tapping, the NSA would get access to all of the communications and could

secretly siphon off data without detection. The undersea fiber-optic cable is sheathed in a
thick steel hulk and buried in a trench. Beyond a thousand feet, however, the cable usually is
left uncovered on the ocean floor.

Link --- Cable Will Finish

No Link --- Rousseff wont back off and cable is impossible to finish
Estes 13 (Adam Clark Estes, Writer for Gizmodo, Gizmodo is a design and technology blog. It is part of the Gawker Media
network run by Nick Denton and runs on the Kinja platform Brazil's Wild Plan to Purge America From Its Internet Profile 9/17/13
12:04pm)<http://gizmodo.com/how-brazil-wants-to-purge-america-from-its-internet-aft-1333914046>

Brazil is not very happy about all these NSA revelations. As home to Latin America's biggest
economy, the country understandably hates the idea that the United States is listening to its
phone calls and reading its emails. In fact, Brazil hates it so much that it wants to disconnect
itself from the U.S. internet altogether. This will not a simple task, but there is a real plan in
place. And to be frank, it's a pretty aggressive move in the direction of the government taking control of how the internet works.
President Dilma Rousseff seems bullish about it, though, and has ordered several specific
and potentially impossiblemeasures to break away from the U.S. internet: Force Internet
companies like Google and Facebook to build servers inside Brazil's borders so that they
would be subject to Brazilian privacy laws. Build more internet exchange points in order to
route Brazilian traffic around potential spyware. Launch a state-run email service through the
postal service to act as an alternative to Gmail, Yahoo Mail and others. Laying a new
underwater cable to Europe so that Brazil can connect with those countries directly Rousseff has
also demanded a detailed report of the extent of American intelligence gathering in Brazil. While the move to create an
independent internet seems extreme, the idea of pushing U.S. authorities for more
transparency is at the very least understandable. In July The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald reported that Brazil
is second only to the United States when it comes to the amount of communications subject
to NSA surveillance. We don't know specific numbers, but we do know that U.S. spies are watching Brazil, an
ally, as closely if not more closely than countries like China and Iran. Why? Well, as former director of
both the CIA and NSA, General Michael Hayden, explained to The New Yorker recently, "That's where the transatlantic
cables come ashore." It's true. If you look at a map of the undersea cables, you can clearly see
how Brazil is one of the most important telecommunications hubs in the world. This fact also
further complicates Brazil's plan to disconnect itself from the U.S. internet, a move that
lawmakers aren't even sure is possible. Difficult as it may be, Rousseff isn't backing away from her
plan to make Brazil's internet more independent. She's expected to speak about it more later this month when
she address the United Nations General Assembly. Meanwhile, critics warn that Brazil's government
intervening in the basic operations of the internet will set a dangerous precedent. It might not
even help keep spies away. As one cybersecurity expert told the Associated Press, "It's sort of like a Soviet socialism of
computing." And we all know how that's been working out for Russia.

Impact --- US-Brazil Relations

Relations are traditionally cooperative and are empirically resilient
Meyer 3-27-14 (Peter J. Meyer, Analyst in Latin American Affairs, Congressional Research Service, Prepared for
CongressBrazil: Political and Economic Situation and U.S. Relations March 27,
2014)<http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33456.pdf>~BCai

The United States and Brazil have traditionally enjoyed cooperative relations . The Obama
Administrations National Security Strategy recognizes Brazil as an emerging center of
influence and asserts that the U.S. government welcomes Brazils leadershi p to pursue
progress on bilateral, hemispheric, and global issues.50 To this end, the countries have at least
20 active bilateral dialogues , which serve as vehicles for policy coordination on issues of
mutual concern.51 State Department officials maintain that the United States and Brazil are natural partners with shared
values and increasingly converging goals.52 Through the Obama Administrations 100,000 Strong in the Americas initiative and
Brazils Science without Borders program, for example, both countries are

seeking to create new academic and

research partnerships and increase educational exchanges among U.S. and Brazilian students.
Nevertheless, bilateral ties have been strained from time to time as the countries occasionally divergent
national interests and independent foreign policies have led to disagreements. Several long-running disputes relate
to trade, where Brazil has pushed the United States to reduce protections for U.S. agriculture
and the United States has pushed Brazil to reduce protections for Brazilian industry (see
Commercial Relations). Other disagreements have arisen as Brazil has taken on a larger role in international affairs. In 2010
and 2011, for example, Brazil used its temporary seat on the U.N. Security Council to advocate
engagement with internationally isolated regimes like Iran, Libya, and Syria. While the United States
and Brazil generally agreed on desired outcomes in these countries, Brazils long-standing commitment to the
peaceful resolution of conflicts and its aversion to the use of military force (or economic sanctions,
which it views as a prelude to the use of force) led it to approach the issues much differently than the
United States.