Samanth Subramanian
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian
@samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
820 followers 250 following 1.4K posts
Words in the Guardian, the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and others. Books on fish, Sri Lanka, and JBS Haldane. Newsletter: http://samanth.substack.com
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columbiagr.bsky.social
Columbia Global Reports @columbiagr.bsky.social · 1d
Just how delicate is the Internet?

After the AWS outage, @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social joins @lizzieohreally.bsky.social on the What Next: TBD podcast to explain how fragile the Internet's infrastructure really is, and how much that should worry us. 🎧
slate.com/podcasts/wha...
The AWS Outage is Only the Beginning
How the AWS outage kept both engineers and people with very expensive mattresses up at night.
slate.com
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Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
philippeauclair.bsky.social
Philippe Auclair @philippeauclair.bsky.social · 11d
What happens when a whole country finds itself internet-less? Superb long-read by @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social, who visited Tonga after a volcanic eruption cut the cable that linked the archipelago to the rest of the world.
www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...
Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian
A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life
www.theguardian.com
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Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
catharsistheater.bsky.social
Catharsis Theater: Relief for the Human Heart @catharsistheater.bsky.social · 21d
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🌋 In 2022, a volcanic eruption tore apart Tonga’s only internet cables. Overnight, a nation was plunged into silence.
What happens when the fragile threads that bind us snap?
🔗 www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...

@samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
@theguardian.com
Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian
A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life
www.theguardian.com
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Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
longreads.com
Longreads @longreads.com · 22d
3. "Extremely Offline: What Happened When a Pacific Island Was Cut Off From The Internet" @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social

"What a remarkable engineering feat. How unsettling that this is what holds us together."

www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...
Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian
A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life
www.theguardian.com
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Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
davidedgarwolf.bsky.social
davidedgarwolf.bsky.social @davidedgarwolf.bsky.social · 25d
From his excellent new book on undersea cables globalreports.columbia.edu/books/the-we...
The Web Beneath the Waves | Columbia Global Reports
Samanth Subramanian charts the geopolitical tensions, corporate power grabs, environmental risks, and quiet heroics involved in maintaining the Internet.
globalreports.columbia.edu
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Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
davidedgarwolf.bsky.social
davidedgarwolf.bsky.social @davidedgarwolf.bsky.social · 25d
“With the fracture of a single cable, Tonga was plunged into the kind of isolation it hadn’t seen in more than a century.”

Today‘s long read by @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...
Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian
A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life
www.theguardian.com
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Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
equatormag.bsky.social
Equator @equatormag.bsky.social · Sep 22
The end of the West is not the end of the world.

EQUATOR: a new magazine of politics, culture, art.

** If you haven't signed up to our mailing list, do so at equator.org **
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Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
trillingual.bsky.social
Daniel Trilling @trillingual.bsky.social · Sep 15
Had a few conversations recently that make me think, for the first time in ages, there are some exciting things happening in media. This is one of the highlights: Equator, a new magazine set up by Nesrine Malik, Pankaj Mishra, Jonathan Shainin and others. Sign up for info here: www.equator.org
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shainin.bsky.social
Jonathan Shainin @shainin.bsky.social · Sep 15
Our new magazine, Equator, is officially out in the world — and here @equatormag.bsky.social
Sign up for preview emails, donate, and get tickets to our launch event in London: equator.org
A group of high-profile writers is launching a new magazine called Equator “to challenge the reigning assumption that global events should be narrated by and for the West,” according to a description shared with Semafor. Its founding team includes Pankaj Mishra, Mohsin Hamid, Nesrine Malik, Samanth Subramanian, and Suzy Hansen, with editing by Guardian long reads creator Jonathan Shainin. “In a post-American era, the task of a new magazine is to engage the rich variety of this historical moment on its own terms, without compulsively asking ‘What does it mean for the US?’” the nonprofit outlet, which is primarily based in London, will ask.
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Sep 15
Our new magazine @equatormag.bsky.social is officially out in the world.

Sign up for preview emails, donate, and get tickets to our launch event: www.equator.org.
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · May 20
@alexis32.bsky.social Hi Alexis -- I'm a journalist based in London, looking to write to you about your YouTube channel. Would you be able to email me (samanth [at] gmail) or DM me here with your email ID? I'd love to explain more in full over email.

Thank you so much!
Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Apr 29
Out in the US and UK in less than six months! Pre-order here, pretty please — it makes a world of a difference to sales. And please RT / spread the word!

www.amazon.co.uk/Web-Beneath-...
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Apr 29
Out in the US and UK in less than six months! Pre-order here, pretty please — it makes a world of a difference to sales. And please RT / spread the word!

www.amazon.co.uk/Web-Beneath-...
10 6
samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Mar 27
Tricksters duping tricksters. Cons within cons. A gonzo documentary filmmaker runs into an unknowable subject in my piece, reported from Denmark, in
@theguardian.com today:

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
The real Scandi noir: how a filmmaker and a crooked lawyer shattered Denmark’s self-image
The Black Swan follows a repentant master criminal as she sets up corrupt clients in front of hidden cameras. But is she really reformed – and is the director up to his own tricks?
www.theguardian.com
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Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
davidedgarwolf.bsky.social
davidedgarwolf.bsky.social @davidedgarwolf.bsky.social · Mar 27
A jaw-dropping story of corruption, duplicity and murky journalistic ethics. Today's Guardian long read by @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
The real Scandi noir: how a filmmaker and a crooked lawyer shattered Denmark’s self-image
The Black Swan follows a repentant master criminal as she sets up corrupt clients in front of hidden cameras. But is she really reformed – and is the director up to his own tricks?
www.theguardian.com
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Mar 14
@danielapinheiro.bsky.social Hi Daniela! I'm a journalist in London, and hoping to reach out to you about a project. Is there a convenient email to reach you? I am at samanth [at] gmail [dot] com.
Reposted by Samanth Subramanian
samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Feb 27
Always a blessed relief to hold the manuscript of a NEW BOOK in your hand. This one, on the fragile undersea cables that carry our data, took 2 years of research…
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Feb 27
…and Copenhagen, where I met Ture, who started in the cable business in the 1960s and is still on ships scouting ways to land cables in Greenland. (The older man is on the right, to be clear.)
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Feb 27
…and Kuala Lumpur, where friendly cable executives showed me their landing stations and fed me chicken and rice by the Straits of Malacca’s shipping lanes…
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Feb 27
…and Southampton, to examine a core of soil drilled out of the Pacific seabed…
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Feb 27
…and various landing stations, their refrigerated rooms full of servers and batteries…
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Feb 27
…and Taiwan’s outlying Matsu island, which suffered an outage of a cable deliberately sabotaged by a Chinese ship (or so the government thinks)…
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Feb 27
…and Cornwall, at the beach where the world’s first subsea telegraphic cable landed in the mid 1800s…
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Feb 27
…and Côte d’Ivoire to watch a ship land a branch of the world’s longest subsea cable...
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samanthsubramanian.bsky.social
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · Feb 27
…from places like Vava’u in Tonga (I know — the hardship) where an underwater volcano severed its only cable for close to 1.5 years…
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