Subsea cables and swarms of AI chatbots

2026-02-08 - 02:18

Our immediate priority is to prevent the emergence of new social and economic divides in the Intelligent Age. Although the Internet is often depicted as existing in the “cloud”, it heavily depends on subsea cables. Subsea fibre-optic cables function as the high-capacity, low-latency backbone that supports AI by enabling large-scale data transfer among global data centres. They facilitate the training of extensive AI models and connect dispersed cloud infrastructure. They transfer large datasets needed for AI model training and inference across continents. AI inferencing is the “doing phase” in which a trained machine learning model applies its learned knowledge to new, unseen data to make predictions, classifications, or decisions, turning its training into practical outcomes. These cables connect globally distributed data centres, allowing tech behemoths to manage AI workloads and localised services. One ghost in the AI machine is Snowflake. Snowflake offers data warehousing and analytics. It enables users to store, process, and analyse large datasets across major cloud providers. Snowflake serves as a data warehouse, data lake, and data engineering and data science engine for secure data sharing. It supports “Time Travel” for data recovery, zero-copy cloning, and breaking down data silos. Google’s Equiano subsea fibre optic cable is designed to enhance internet connectivity between Europe and Africa. It utilises advanced space-division multiplexing (SDM) with 12 fibre pairs, providing 144 Tbit/s capacity. This cable is named after Olaudah Equiano. Olaudah Equiano was born in an Igbo village in Essaka, Benin, around 1745. At the age of eleven, slavers snatched him. He was taken on board a slave ship and transported with 244 other enslaved Africans to Barbados. He was later sold to the Colony of Virginia. There, he was bought by Michael Pascal, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Pascal took Equiano to England and had him serve as a valet during the Seven Years’ War with France (1756–1763). Equiano provides witness accounts of the Siege of Louisbourg (1758) and the Capture of Belle Île (1761). In London, Equiano would meet Quobna Ottobah Cugoano. Cugoano was born in 1757 into a Fante family. At the age of 13, Cugoano was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and transported aboard a slave ship to Grenada. He was later purchased in 1772 by Alexander Campbell, a Scottish plantation owner. Late in 1772, Campbell took Cugoano to England with him. It is believed that encouragement for him to seek freedom may have originated from the pivotal case, “Somerset Vs. Stewart”, involving James Somerset, who had escaped from enslavement, which in June 1772 challenged the legal basis of slavery in England and Wales. After Lord Mansfield ruled in the Somerset Case that enslavers could not forcibly remove enslaved people from England, many believed, mistakenly but hopefully, that touching English soil guaranteed liberty. In London, Cugoano learned to read and write and embedded himself among a group of Black Activists who supported Britain and George III during the American Revolutionary War. He published pamphlets and challenged the illegal seizure of free Black people in England. In one case, Harry Damaine had been recaptured in London by a Jamaican planter. He was dragged onboard a slave ship bound for the West Indies. Supported by the abolitionist lawyer Granville Sharp, Cugoano secured Demaine’s release. The saltwater routes of the slave trade that Quobna Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano travelled would later mirror the paths taken by telegraphic and fibre-optic cables. The first transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully laid in 1866. The fundamental idea of laying cables across the ocean floor in a similar way continues today, connecting continents along established maritime routes. Modern undersea internet cables connecting Africa often follow the same infrastructural paths and landing points as the historic trans-Atlantic slave trade routes. The routes of early 19th-century telegraph cables, which frequently served as the foundation for contemporary fibre-optic routes, were laid to connect the British Empire and facilitate colonial administration and trade. These early networks utilised existing port infrastructure and maritime routes established centuries earlier for shipping, including the transatlantic slave trade. Just as with historical trade, laying cables requires landing points in major population and economic centres. Coastal geography and existing port cities with established infrastructure remain the most practical and cost-effective places for modern internet cables to make landfall. In the Intelligent Age, access to the internet is a fundamental human right. Yet, closing the Digital Divide remains a challenge. It will not be long before swarms of AI chatbots invade social media platforms via subsea fibre-optic cables, shepherding narratives to shape us. This threat is heightened by persistent vulnerabilities from past plantation histories and the paucity of present AI architectures. Swarms will infiltrate and install collections of personas. They will exploit our vulnerabilities in ways not unlike those experienced during saltwater slavery. Dr Fazal Ali completed his Master’s in Philosophy at the University of the West Indies. He was a Commonwealth Scholar who attended the University of Cambridge, Hughes Hall, the provost of the University of Trinidad and Tobago, and the acting president and chairman of the Teaching Service Commission. He is presently a consultant with the IDB. He can be reached at fazalalitsc@gmail.com