*Every once in a while, a new technology emerges that breaks the existing equilibrium. Machine guns collapsed the logic of massed infantry. U-boats shattered the assumption that surface fleets controlled the seas. Autonomous underwater vehicles belong in that category.
Our entire globalized trading system rests on a basic assumption that goods can move freely across the worldβs oceans. For decades, U.S. naval dominance secured the shipping lanes on which increasingly stretched supply chains depend. We offshored critical parts of our industrial base and spread key inputs across the globe, assuming they would always remain accessible.
UUVs threaten to shatter that assumption. They are cheap, nearly impossible to detect, and a handful of them can shut down entire shipping lanes. They can sever undersea cables, isolating countries both digitally and physically. And there is almost nothing we can currently do to neutralize the threat at scale.*
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