Well, isn’t it serendipitous? No sooner do a couple of data cables in the Baltic Sea get snipped like a loose thread on a cheap suit than a defense manufacturer emerges from the shadows to tell us exactly how much it’ll cost to keep it from happening again. It’s the circle of life, really—if the life in question involves taxpayer-funded hardware and the existential dread of losing your high-speed connection to cloud-based spreadsheets.

ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, a company whose primary concern is usually making things that blow up or prevent things from blowing up, has pivoted to the ‘we’re just here to help’ phase of the crisis. Their groundbreaking revelation? We can’t see what’s happening at the bottom of the ocean. Riveting stuff. I’m sure the naval intelligence community is currently slapping their foreheads in collective disbelief that they hadn't noticed the sea is, in fact, quite deep and very opaque.

The proposed solution, of course, is a fleet of underwater drones. Because in 2024, the answer to every geopolitical anxiety is a self-propelled robot with a camera. The pitch is simple: we can’t stop the sabotage right now, but if you buy enough of our sleek, expensive submersibles, we can at least provide you with a high-definition recording of the next catastrophe. It’s the digital age equivalent of a security guard who only shows up to film the robbery on his iPhone.

Let’s look at the logistics, shall we? The Baltic Sea is a cluttered, shallow mess of shipping lanes, old mines, and brackish water. Suggesting we can monitor every inch of sensitive infrastructure with a handful of drones is like trying to guard the Black Forest with a single pair of binoculars and a flashlight. It’s not a security strategy; it’s a sales deck. But it plays well in the parliaments of Tallinn and Berlin because it allows politicians to point at a blinking light on a monitor and tell the public they’re ‘doing something.’

In the end, the cables will still be vulnerable, the sea will still be dark, and the only thing truly protected will be the manufacturer's profit margin. But hey, at least when the internet goes down next time, we’ll have some very expensive underwater b-roll to watch while we wait for the repair ships. Progress is a beautiful thing, isn't it?