CHOKEPOINTS: Even cyberspace has maritime chokepoints.

Everyone using a computer knows internet data can be disrupted. The cyberspace “domain” has features analogous to geographic features. The 21st-century’s best-known cyber superhighway is the internet.

However, the internet has maritime chokepoints. In 2010, Jeremy Blackham and Gwyn Prins wrote that over 90 percent of global email traffic was “conveyed via undersea fiber-optic cables. These cables bunch in several critical sea areas (off New York … the English Channel, the South China Sea … and off the west coast of Japan).”

Maps from 2018 record more undersea cables, but their routes differ little from 2010. One trade organization estimated they handle over 95 percent of all intercontinental data.

From my latest Creators Syndicate column.

VERY RELATED: The column quotes a report by the Director of National Intelligence that says U.S. “adversaries pose challenges within traditional, non-traditional, hybrid, and asymmetric military, economic, and political spheres.” Cocktails from Hell explains what the DNI means — without the jargon.