Inside America's Only Internet Sea Cable Maker

Ninety-nine percent of international internet traffic flows through cables stretched across the ocean floor. Demand for these cables is at an all-time high as the world becomes more dependent on cloud computing and AI. But there's only one company in America that's capable of both making and laying them. We visited its 73-year-old factory and boarded a multimillion-dollar cable-laying ship to see how the company keeps up and why our data still needs to travel thousands of feet under the sea. Editor's note: At 1:28, we incorrectly say a fiber could transmit hundreds of terabytes of information every second. The correct figure is that a pair of fibers can transmit more than 2 terabytes of information every second. Watch our complete collection of Big Business videos: https://bit.ly/47ODoei 00:00 - Intro 01:08 - How Subsea Cables Work 02:02 - How Cables Are Made 04:59 - The History of Subsea Cables 07:00 - Big Tech Takeover 08:22 - Onboard the Cable Ship 10:14 - How Cable Is Laid 10:52 - Geopolitical Tensions 12:40 - Cable Breaks 14:26 - Cable Sabotage 14:09 - Satellites 14:43 - Credits ------------------------------------------------------ #internetcable #cablelaying #subseaengineering #cables #bigbusiness WATCH MORE FROM BIG BUSINESS: The Smuggled Resource Funding Sudan's Civil War https://youtu.be/Aaj6INQWA_8 Inside Turkey's $2 Billion Marble And Stone Industry https://youtu.be/KIBJAEZMxwo How Miners Risk Their Lives For Himalayan Pink Salt https://youtu.be/HjSQ10zDB0k Why Mining In Greenland Is So Hard https://youtu.be/xUzIqdEPC-k Mining 60,000 Metric Tons Of Salt In A Dangerous Pink Lake That's Saltier Than The Dead Sea https://youtu.be/Yc827HubVjY Business Insider is a global newsroom covering business, technology, innovation, and the economy. Visit our homepage for the top stories of the day: https://www.businessinsider.com/?utm_source=youtube Sign up for our newsletters: https://www.businessinsider.com/subscription/newsletter?utm_source=youtube Find Business Insider on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/businessinsider ... on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/businessinsider ... on X: https://x.com/BusinessInsider ... on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@businessinsider The Secret Factory Behind The World's Internet | Big Business