Internet Technology keeps outdoing itself. Getting bigger, broader, faster, more accessible. We blogged last week about Elon Musk and SpaceX making advancements in satellite Internet.

Most businesses today have some or all of their data floating in the cloud. Many of them use cloud-based applications as well. It’s all relatively secure and convenient. It’s a big business run by the biggest players like Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.

What’s amazing to us is that just about anyone trying to access their data in the cloud has to start at the bottom of the ocean. “Go on,” you say. The fact is there are about 380 fiber optic cables covering 750,000 miles of ocean floor that connect most of the world to the world wide web. 

Most of these cables are owned by the same players dominating the clouds.

There are about 91 such cables coming in and out of the United States. Some countries have one cable supplying all of their Internet service. Scary.

In the Republic of Georgia, located on the Europe-Asia border, a 75-year-old woman, digging for copper with a sharp-edged shovel, cut through one of these fiber optic cables.

The entire country of Armenia, as well as parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan were cut off from the world wide web. This occurred in 2011. It seems with all the advancements in technology in the 21st century, this scenario would be impossible.

The authorities in Georgia must have immediately assumed sabotage. They quickly tracked down the elderly culprit – whom the media dubbed the “spade-hacker” – and considered charging her with a crime. Cooler heads prevailed, but the government still considered her a person of interest.

If a 75-year-old woman can hack through a cable with a spade and bring down the Internet in three countries, it seems there has to be a more secure way of doing things. But apparently not.  There have been reported cases of fishermen catching their lines on these cables and even sharks, attracted by the buzz of data running through fiber, eating through them.

Brings visions of the 1978 classic Jaws 2. Imagine that movie 30 years later. Chief Brody, luring the massive shark towards a fiber optic cable instead of an electrical cable off the shore of the small Atlantic Coast town of Amity. Banging on the cable with an oar to attract its attention, the shark bites down and sparks fly. The shark is dead and half the eastern seaboard loses their Internet connection.

Seems like science fiction. Something that could only happen in the movies. A fantasy contrived by imaginative writers.

You do have to wonder, though. What if the world’s terrorists turned their attention away from airplanes and bombs and started looking to fishing boats and sharp metal spades?