AI infrastructure is not just data centres and chips: the subsea cables carrying more than 99% of international data are part of the supply chain too. A Fortune commentary argues that underinvestment in those connections could leave expensive AI systems vulnerable to disruption, congestion and higher costs.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The commentary points to cable damage in 2024 that disrupted internet access across parts of Africa, and cuts in the Red Sea in 2025 that affected access across Asia and the Middle East. It says rerouting traffic onto longer paths increased latency for cloud services and costs for businesses relying on real-time operations.
It also notes that AI workloads and hyperscale data centres are pushing network demand higher: 400 gigabits per second is described as the current baseline, with 800 gigabits already emerging. The piece highlights Singapore and India as important data-transit hubs for the region, and says the Enhanced ASEAN Guidelines for Strengthening Resilience and Repair of Submarine Cables recommend capping repair processing times at 10 days.
Why it matters
A data centre can have plenty of computing power and still be hamstrung if the networks connecting it to data and customers are congested or disrupted. The commentary’s practical point is that cable routes, landing stations, terrestrial fibre, protection and repair readiness belong in the same infrastructure conversation as compute capacity.
That is an argument about investment priorities, not evidence that a particular AI service has failed because of a cable outage. But it makes a useful blind spot visible: the most strategically important infrastructure is not always the easiest to see on a spending chart.
Our read
The cloud has an ocean floor, and it would be rather helpful if infrastructure planning remembered that. Compute gets the grand announcements; resilient connectivity gets to make everything else work. Businesses and policymakers should judge AI infrastructure plans by whether the routes connecting systems are diverse, maintainable and ready to recover, not only by how much compute is installed.
What to watch
- Whether network providers and governments invest in diverse cable routes and the links between subsea and terrestrial networks.
- Whether the ASEAN repair-time recommendation is adopted in practice.
- Whether AI infrastructure plans treat connectivity as a strategic asset, rather than an invisible line in the IT budget.
Discussion spark: Should governments and businesses give resilient network connections the same strategic priority as AI data centres, even when the returns are less visible?
Sources and evidence
- Source update (5 November 2026, 22:00 UTC)
Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.