Ibero-America in the global network of submarine cables. Continental connectivity and geopolitical dependence

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of Ibero-America in the global submarine cable network and its growing relevance as it becomes an arena for geopolitical competition between the United States and China for control of new information technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence, and the infrastructure that enables it. The design of cable networks helps to define the geography of the areas of influence in which the deglobalization process that the US government is trying to promote as a strategy of resistance to the rise of China and as a means to prolong its international hegemony for the next decades can potentially take place.