They definitely could, but not necessarily selectively; though they have had plenty of time to reconnoiter the cables’ exact locations. Would they, though? And what would …

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We assume nuclear deterrence is an absolute shield, that 'Mutual Assured Destruction' keeps the UK safe from Russian nuclear attack. Britain doesn't have enough operational warheads to wipe Russia off the map, though; and NATO's Article 5 doesn't mandate a nuclear response if London or Faslane takes a nuke. When you factor in counterforce targeting and missile defence shields like the 'Golden Dome' (or SDI in the old days), deterrence isn't an absolute shield. It's a fragile calculus, and it’s actively breaking down.

Thousands of bots and Vatniks!

As subscribers to this podcast understand, the content goes out in various forms after a short delay. (I’m happy to revisit this at an appropriate point in future.) I put a clip from my Hybrid Warfare pod earlier in the week onto Instagram, the bit about the top end of the Russian escalation ladder, and I was really astonished at the response. Views are approaching 20,000 (I’m more used to a couple of thousand), and the hundreds of comments included a lot of Russian bots, and the sort of tankies and Vatniks I don’t usually deal with. I had a certain amount of that from my recent post on Russian / Iranian threat to undersea cables, but views on those maxed out at under 2,000 so the Kremlin representation was comparatively small.

So when I made today’s video I was responding to what I perceive as genuine response from humans: surely the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent would deter a Russian nuclear attack against the UK or UK forces deployed, and surely NATO’s collective defence would deter a Russian nuclear attack against a NATO member.

Also a strong narrative in the responses: the idea that because I was identifying and analysing a threat I was causing needless fear and alarm (‘scaremongering’). Likewise the narrative that because I was analysing Russian threat against states supporting Ukraine, I was doing Russia’s bidding. For me, coming from a national security background where one prefers not to be ignorant of threat, this was fascinating.

Show Notes (Generated by Gemini)

• The Deterrence Delusion: Why possessing a nuclear deterrent does not guarantee immunity from an adversary’s nuclear strike.

• UK Trident Realities: The mathematical truth about Britain’s warhead count and why the UK cannot “wipe Russia off the map.”

• The Article 5 Loophole: Why NATO’s collective defence clause does not automatically guarantee a US or French nuclear counter-strike if London is hit.

• Counterforce vs Countervalue: Why targeting an enemy’s nuclear storage and deployment facilities is far more valuable than striking population centres.

• The Missile Defence Paradox: How Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) concepts and Trump’s “Golden Dome” destabilise MAD by encouraging first-strike incentives.

• Hybrid Escalation in Europe: Putting recent Russian drone attacks against Ukrainian assets in Germany into the wider strategic picture.

• The “Nuke-on-Nuke” Dilemma: Why non-nuclear ballistic missile strikes (like the Oreshnik in Ukraine) double as nuclear warnings to Western powers.

• Critical National Infrastructure at Risk: The reality of pre-positioned munitions on ocean floor internet cables and energy interconnectors.

• The Triangular Alliance in Action: How Russia, Iran, and China coordinate parallel kinetic, economic, and cyber tactics across global theaters.

• Historical Parallels (WW2 vs. Today): Why WWII was just as “hybrid” as modern war, from covert assassinations to full-spectrum information shaping.

• The Buzzword Trap: How labeling full-spectrum war as “hybrid” gives Western leaders an excuse to limit strategic commitment.

Maybe it’s because it’s politically convenient for everybody to pretend that this is going to cut the northern West Bank off from the southern West bank and make a future Palestinian state impossible. Maybe it’s because it’s going to play merry Hell with the lives of the Palestinian villagers and Bedouin who are living there now. Maybe it’s because the road is going to involve carriageways separated by security control.

Maybe it’s just because ‘Forget it, Jake, it’s the Middle East’*.

*You’ve seen Chinatown, right?

I’ve been assessing for a few months that Itamar Ben-Gvir is seeking to increase violence by Israelis who live in the West Bank against Palestinians who live in the West Bank, and to ensure that the Israelis enjoy an aura of impunity for these actions. I think he’s doing so in order to provoke a Palestinian uprising along the lines of the (original) Intifadah between now and the Israeli elections. I judge that he’s doing so in order to enable him to put the IDF in the position of having to use force to put down the uprising, to destroy the Palestinian Authority as a government-in-waiting, and to enable an annexation of the West Bank. This past week IDF sources have briefed to Israeli Channel 12 that this is what is happening and that it’s working.

Some internet traffic goes overland and by space, but chunky fiber-optic cables on the sea floor carry the vast majority of it. In some places the cables are miles apart, but in places the cables lie hugger-mugger in narrow straits; many of them the same straits that the Royal Navy controlled with fleets and forts in years gone by.

There’s a lot of redundancy built into the way the Internet works, and cutting a bunch of cables wouldn’t cut anywhere — Britain, the UAE, Qatar — off entirely. It would, however, reduce transmission capacity so significantly and strain repair capability so severely, that the Internet would cease to function as expected.

Resilience of the cables is important, as is rapid repair of accidental breaks. A nightmare scenario, though, is deliberate simultaneous destruction of cables. Where could that simultaneity be easily achieved? In the strait gates of the world.

Subscriber Alexandra asked me to discuss this, and as with so many other issues I think I’ve made a good deep scratch in the surface, but more discussion will be needed.

Listeners might choose to watch this one on the Substack app or on a browser: there’s some mapping to look at. Unlike previous geostrategic map episodes, this one has suffered from an attack of production values, and I use tools more … electronic … than a pencil and Strathmore Bristol 400 paper.

Iran’s threats to attack American targets in Europe could be made good. This would not be difficult for the Iranians, as long as they were not seeking to achieve significant destruction: a loud bang on a runway at Lakenheath or Ramstein would have to suffice. The US, which is mostly ignoring the targeting intelligence that has enabled Iranian munitions to hit American bases in the Middle East with precision, might have to notice the Russian source; and might be tempted to switch off comparable American intelligence provided to Ukraine.

Russian threats to attack the UK are already happening at low intensity: cyber attacks on supply chain and infrastructure targets have had some success. More of the same, including information warfare against Britain’s social cohesion, could exact a price from the UK for providing money, munitions and training to Ukraine. More desperate attacks against UK energy and internet infrastructure could sting more, without a dangerous move like shooting down an RAF aircraft or killing British soldiers across Russia’s borders.

Then there’s the change in US doctrine to shift the defence of South Korea from massive conventional force commitment to tactical nuclear battle. This week President Trump is making cosy noises to Kim Jong-Un while talking about cutting back on US-South Korean joint exercises, against the background of two nuclear powers going toe-to-toe upwind of Japan and uncomfortably close to northern China. This is necessary because the missiles that the US Army would have fired into North Korean depth, and the air defence missiles that would have shot down incoming North Korean munitions, have been used up in the Persian Gulf. It’s not that the US wants to use nuclear weapons to fight a tactical battle against North Korea, it’s that they’ve used up the other stuff.

Neither Russia nor Iran appears to be on the brink of collapse, however much damage has been done them. Putin appears to be ready to push on to Kyiv no matter how many North Koreans have to die in the process. (This is reminiscent of Iran sending Lebanese Hizballah fighters to die defending the Assad regime in Syria.)

The Iran theatre can end if the US steps back and gives the Iranians their win, swallows the Hormuz tolls, and gives Iran enough money to pretend to comply with restrictions on their nuclear programme. The Ukraine theatre can end if Russia steps back and accepts a cease-fire and negotiates itself out of Ukrainian territory. Both those solutions require Big Men to accept a measure of humiliation.

The US could treat the three adversaries as part of one conflict, but that would require the US to be a bit less friendly to Russia and North Korea. The alternative is to wait for the Big Men to retire, and just keep up the killing in the mean time.

*Buckshee from the Hindi बख्शी, bakhshi, the Indian Army term for the pay officer. It generally refers to something extra or unearned, and it’s related to the Turkish word بخشیش, bakhsheesh, a gratuity.

Norwegians were having talks with Hamas in 2021, and I gather I’m supposed to view that as a bad thing. An American private citizen, accompanied by a Brit and a Bulgarian, had talks with Hamas just now, and I think that’s meant to be a fine thing.

There’s a world in which an American private citizen negotiating with a US-designated foreign terrorist organisation might risk a brush with the Law. In this case, Jared Kushner appears to be unconcerned. Arranging an agreement whereby Hamas, a terrorist organisation, achieves an incremental goal by getting the Israel Defence Forces out of Gaza probably isn’t ‘material support’ in the meaning of 18 US Code Chapter 113B. Sometimes people bring up the Logan Act, which forbids American private citizens from negotiating on behalf of the United States; but nobody’s ever been convicted of violating the Logan Act so Kushner won’t be losing any sleep over that.

The UK was abominated until recently for not treating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards as terrorist in UK law, while at about the same time the US Director of National Intelligence was keeping up back-channel contact with them. It’s not that having back-channel contact with people you’re fighting is wicked. During the Second World War, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler knew how to get hold of the British government to ask for penicillin. The reason it’s worth mentioning is that a reason to differentiate between terrorists and non-terrorists is to tell us with whom we should and shouldn’t sit down for a dicker.

Most significant, though: when he was finished his session with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, Mr Kushner got on a plane to Jerusalem to talk with the Israeli government about exchanging Israeli withdrawal for Hamas disarmament. That is exactly the sort of shuttle diplomacy the US might have considered before agreeing with Hamas an Israeli withdrawal without consulting the Israelis.

The PLO/Fatah/Palestinian Authority renounced terrorism, and now they’re nominally in control of parts of the West Bank, but largely marginalised. I don’t think they’re getting any high-level delegations jetting to Ramallah to update the ancient Abu Mazen on the progress of making Gaza an independent country. It’s fairly clear that the intention of creating the ‘technocratic’ government of Gaza is to extend its writ to the West Bank as soon as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas retires from active politics. Hamas have been practising terrorism fairly consistently since 1989, and they’ve got a high-level delegation checking in with them to ensure they’re happy with America pushing Israel back out of Gaza. How’s that as a rationale for practising terrorism?

That article I referred to:

Neumann, Peter R. “Negotiating with Terrorists.” Foreign Affairs 86, no. 1 (2007): 128–38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20032216.

Technical note: this was recorded in 2K, 60 FPS on a 4K camera, with sound manually synchronised and then saved as 720p 30 FPS before uploading.

Why would Iran only control the Strait of Hormuz when they can also Control access to the Suez Canal?

This paper on Houthi logistics is particularly interesting, especially because of the way it uses night-time light emissions as an indicator of activity: https://www.xcept-research.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/2026-02-02_XCEPT-research-report-Smugglers-to-Supply-Chains-how-Yemens-Houthi-movement-became-a-global-threat.pdf

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Also, didn't the Secretary of War leakproof the Pentagon by driving the professional journalists out? How could people still be briefing Reuters on background?

For a Roadmap, this document is awfully uncertain how the parties are going to get from here to there in two weeks.

This Road Map references Phase 2, which reminds us that this entire effort is devoted to implementing Phase 1 of the Gaza Peace Plan. The US announced in January 2026 that Phase 2 was beginning.

‘6. Gaza shall be governed according to the principle of One Authority, One Law, One Weapon.’ the Roadmap also creates a new government that has nothing to do with the Palestinian Authority. Perhaps it will replace the Palestinian Authority altogether. There is definitely more than one weapon.

The Board of Peace will appoint the International Verification Committee. The International Verification Committee will have an enhanced monitoring mechanism which will observe any violations by either party. This is intriguing.

The International Stabilisation Force will interpose itself between the IDF and Hamas. They will also train the new Palestinian police force, and they will be represented on the International Verification Committee.

I've said in this video that the eventual implementation is meant to take a year from now (14 days’ detailed planning followed by 350 days’ implementation). That timetable isn't in the Road Map.

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You don’t have permission to talk about wars as quagmires until you’ve read Daniel Ellsberg’s essay, The Quagmire Myth and the Stalemate Machine. Ellsberg debunks Arthur Schlesinger’s idea that Vietnam was a sort of slippery slope that was going to swallow America up no matter what (and therefore the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses were blameless).

https://archive.org/details/TheQuagmireMythAndTheStalemateMachine/

Why am I often holding a few red and blue Bicycle cards when I’m talking to camera? Good question.

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