Private equity is moving into the infrastructure beneath your internet—and the real prize may be control over who gets data first.

Frank Downs and Dr. Dustin Brewer examine the undersea cables carrying the world’s communications and why financial firms increasingly see them as valuable digital real estate.

These cables connect countries, financial markets, cloud services, governments, and billions of people. But when a small number of powerful organizations own the infrastructure, they may gain enormous leverage over speed, access, competition, maintenance, and the flow of information itself.

In this episode:

– How undersea internet cables actually work

– Why private equity considers them attractive infrastructure

– The “internet toll booth” business model

– Why milliseconds matter in financial markets

– Whether corporate ownership could create a privatized Great Firewall

– Net neutrality, monopoly power, and national security

– The uncomfortable question of who should own essential communications infrastructure

We also get distracted by GeoCities, Second Life, Roku, Starbucks cup sizes, Zuckerberg attempting to appear human, and the Amish community that may have saved Wall Street from itself.

The key warning: controlling content is powerful. Controlling the pipes beneath that content may be even more powerful.

Media/interview: [email protected]

Audio: https://legitimatecybersecurity.podbean.com/

Hosted by Frank Downs and Dr. Dustin Brewer.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Private equity’s next target

00:44 The rise of digital real estate

02:14 How the internet crosses an ocean

03:39 What happens when one cable fails

05:06 Why Wall Street wants the seafloor

06:44 The internet toll-booth model

10:02 Controlling who gets data first

12:26 A corporate Great Firewall?

14:11 Why monopolies keep surviving

16:56 The slow death of net neutrality

21:38 The national-security problem

23:30 Who should own the internet?

26:38 What can anyone actually do?

If you want dangerous technology explained through what it actually does to your life, subscribe.

Keep on cybering.

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