Red Sea Shock: The Day the "Invisible Artery" Connecting Asia and the Middle East Got Clogged

Simultaneous disruptions occurred in the Red Sea submarine cables, leading to widespread communication slowdowns from Asia to the Middle East. NetBlocks reported "degraded connectivity in multiple countries," and regional operators like UAE's e&/du also confirmed the impact. Microsoft officially announced "increased latency for traffic via the Middle East starting from September 6 at 05:45 (UTC)," stating that availability was maintained through rerouting, though delays might persist. The disruptions were concentrated on major lines like SMW4 and IMEWE in the Red Sea, with the cause yet to be identified. Repairs are generally expected to take several weeks. On social media, users shared their experiences of "not stopping but being slow," highlighting the "realities of redundancy" in cloud and SaaS services. As a medium- to long-term solution, it is necessary to "distribute the bottleneck" by reducing dependency on the Red Sea, strengthening physical protection and monitoring, and accelerating the installation of new cables.