Subsea cables in Hormuz are being weaponized against the global economy

The war with Iran has exposed an uncomfortable truth about the global economy: It still runs through a handful of narrow waterways, and the digital layer that sits beneath them is dangerously fragile. Submarine communications cables carry about 99 percent of intercontinental data and an estimated $10 trillion in financial transactions each day, and a meaningful share of that traffic passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Long understood as an energy chokepoint, the strait is now being reframed also as a digital one.