Spirit of the market: Will another attack like Nord Stream 2 happen in the rest of 2023, or on smaller internet cables.
There is a lot of undersea infrastructure that is very vulnerable to attack, not well patrolled and easy to target. Largely not under attack because everyone is at peace with each other.
Will resolve yes if undersea cables or pipelines are, beyond reasonable doubt, the target of attacks. Could be internet cables, power cables or gas pipelines. Has to be outside of the Ukraine/Russia conflict.
As this is somewhat subjective I will not bet in this market.
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Noting that just because I haven't resolved the market yes yet doesn't mean I won't based on the current evidence. I'm planning to look at the evidence in more depth soon after the close date.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-retrieves-anchor-seabed-near-broken-gas-pipeline-2023-10-24/
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Looks like an anchor dragged along. Unclear whether intentional or not at this time.
Send like it would have to be intentional to be an attack.
@EvanDaniel It's going to be really hard to assign blame. China can say "oops, our crew made a mistake/the anchor winch was broken and we had to drag anchor until we got to port" and how do you say that's not the case?
@ChristopherMelton I am not expecting attribution 'Who did it', though they do say they're not making any ruling on 'it was intentional' vs 'it was an accident'. Though it seems pretty likely to be intentional.
https://twitter.com/ForsvarsdepSv/status/1716467642180022573?s=20
leading to
https://government.se/articles/2023/10/damaged-telecommunications-cable-between-sweden-and-estonia/
Swedish government stating officially that the undersea cable was damaged intentionally. So will resolve yes unless someone has a good argument against it.
@Fedor It sure seems like it happened, but I'm surprised this is enough to reach the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard. I'd expect at least a little public evidence of what happened and why they think it isn't damage from an anchor or something. Or corroborating statements from uninvolved countries (like the US) or an official NATO statement.
@EvanDaniel Don't want to surprise anyone. Swedish government putting out an official statement is very weighty, though they are involved and not wholly independent. They are a trustworthy government.
Furthermore, it seems unlikely a-priori that the cable was damaged entirely by accident, so if they investigated it and say 'yes this is some external force or tampering' that makes it very likely it was.
What's the resolution if an investigation goes "we think so but we cannot determine who is responsible"?
if undersea cables or pipelines are, beyond reasonable doubt, the target of attacks
Presumably if there is reasonable doubt, we keep waiting. I'd assume this means we're looking for things like unequivocal statements from multiple governments and/or media outlets.
@ChristopherMelton They don't have to do attribution, meaning they don't need to determine who is responsible, just point out it was an attack. An unnatural explosion in this case. (Which I think is looking likely but I haven't looked into it)
The reason I've not bid much higher is that the phrase 'beyond reasonable doubt' concerns me
@JoshuaWilkes That would definitely count. If suddenly both cables that connect Taiwan to their islands closer to China get disconnected, that definitely sounds like sabotage.
It's to distinguish between the natural base rate of 'cables just break'.
This market will be for the rest of 2023, so new events after market creation.
@FedorBeets got you. Now trying to guess the likelihood of it happening again
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