## The Physical Internet

The "Cloud" is not in the sky. The internet is physical, and 99% of global data travels through garden-hose-sized glass cables resting on the bottom of the ocean. When you load a website in London from a server in New York, light literally flashes through 3,000 miles of glass under the Atlantic.

### FAQ

**Q: What happens when an anchor drags across an underwater fiber optic cable?**
A: The $100,000-a-day monopoly. When a cable is severed, the consortium that owns it (Google, Meta, or Tier-1 ISPs) starts bleeding millions of dollars a day in Service Level Agreement (SLA) penalties because internet traffic is heavily choked. There are only about 60 highly specialized Cable Repair Ships on earth capable of deploying deep-sea ROVs to grab the broken ends of the cable, bring them up to the ship, and physically weld the glass back together. Because there are so few ships, and the downtime is so expensive, these ships can charge $120,000 to $150,000 per *day* on emergency charter just to travel to the site, allowing the ship operators to extract massively lucrative margins during a crisis.