Gangtok, April 3 -- Think about the last time your internet slowed down. Frustrating, right? Now imagine that slowdown lasting not for a few minutes, but for weeks - and the cause wasn't your router or your ISP. The cause was a war being fought thousands of kilometres away, beneath the waters of the Persian Gulf.

That's not a scene from a thriller novel. That's the very real risk India is sitting with right now.

Most people assume the internet travels through satellites. It doesn't - not primarily, anyway. The truth is that somewhere around 95 percent of the world's international data traffic moves through a vast web of fibre-optic cables laid across the ocean floor. These submarine cables are the silent, invisible arteries of the globa...