Just after dinnertime on December 26, 2006, the seabed off the southern tip of Taiwan suddenly lurched. Eight minutes later, it lurched again. The region had been struck by two major earthquakes that could be felt as far away as Hong Kong. Over the next few hours, coastal Taiwan was so heavily damaged that one of the reactors at the nearby Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant was forced into an emergency shutdown. The event left two people dead and 45 injured. Thankfully, the emergency response was quick. Power was restored within hours, and, by the next day, the cleanup had commenced. What many international commenters failed to realize at the time was that the damage on land was only half the story.
Deep beneath the Luzon Strait, the body of water connecting Taiwan to the northernmost island of the Philippines, a handful of fiber optic submarine cables were severed by the quakes. Within hours of the first tremors, cable operators reported that six of the seven cable systems in that corridor were failing. From the shoreline, nothing looked different. But online, the “cloud” suddenly buckled. International communication and digital activity on Taiwan and its neighboring nations was interrupted. Customers could not withdraw money from banks, traders could not fill orders, airlines could not check in customers.
