Tag Archives: underwater drones

The Act of Successful Sabotage: cables and pipelines

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On October 12, 2022 Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, gave an ominous warning. Energy infrastructure around the world was now “at risk”, he said. Mr Putin’s warning came a month after explosions tore through Nord Stream 1 and 2, a pair of gas pipelines running from Russia to Europe under the Baltic Sea. The pipes were not in use at the time. But the ruptures left plumes of methane bubbling to the surface for days…

Subsea pipelines and cables have proliferated since the first one was laid, in 1850…There are more than 530 active or planned submarine telecoms cables around the world. Spanning over 1.3m kilometers they carry 95% of the world’s internet traffic. In November 2021, cables serving underwater acoustic sensors off the coast of northern Norway—an area frequented by Russian submarines—were cut.

Western officials say that a particular source of concern is Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, known by its Russian acronym GUGI. It has a variety of spy ships and specialist submarines—most notably the Belgorod, the world’s biggest submarine, commissioned in July 2022—which can work in unusually deep water. They can deploy divers, mini-submarines or underwater drones, which could be used to cut cables. 

Cable chicanery, though, is not a Russian invention. One of Britain’s first acts during the first world war was to tear up German telecoms cables laid across the Atlantic. Germany responded with attacks on Allied cables in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

More recently, espionage has been the order of the day..I.n 2013 Edward Snowden, a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s signals intelligence agency, revealed an Anglo-American project had tapped at least 200 fiber-optic cables around the world. Yet the seabed is not amenable to control. A paper published in 2021 noted that Estonia and other Baltic states had only a limited grasp of what was going on under the Baltic because of quirks of hydrology, scarce surveillance platforms and limited information-sharing between countries. It concluded, perhaps presciently: “It would be difficult to prevent Russian [drones] deployed in international waters from damaging critical undersea infrastructure.”…

The first step in a sabotage mission is finding the target. With big, heavy pipelines, which are typically made from concrete-lined metal sections, that is relatively easy. Older communication cables, being smaller and lighter, can shift with the currents. Newer ones are often buried, It is also increasingly possible for operators to detect tampering, through  “distributed fiber-optic sensing”, which can detect vibrations in the cable or changes in its temperature. But that will not reveal whether the problem is a geological event or an inquisitive drone—or which country might have sent it. Underwater attribution is slow and difficult.

Determined attackers, in other words, are likely to get through. The effects of a successful attack will differ. Pipelines and subsea electricity cables are few in number. If one is blown up, gas, oil or electricity cannot easily be rerouted through another. Communication cables are different. The internet was designed to allow data to flow through alternative paths if one is blocked. And at least when it comes to connections between big countries, plenty of alternatives exist. At least 18 communication cables link America and Europe…There is significant redundancy on these routes. But  “There’s no collective institution that records all the incidents that are going on, and what is behind them—we don’t have any statistics behind it.” according to  Elisabeth Braw of the American Enterprise Institute.

Excerpts from Sabotage at Sea: Underwater Infrastructure, Economist, Oct. 22, 2022

Who Owns the Real Information System

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In January 2022, the head of the UK’s armed forces has warned that Russia submarine activity is threatening underwater cables that are crucial to communication systems around the world. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said undersea cables that transmit internet data are ‘the world’s real information system,’ and added that any attempt to damage then could be considered an act of war.

The internet seems like a post- physical environment where things like viral posts, virtual goods and metaverse concerts just sort of happen. But creating that illusion requires a truly gargantuan—and quickly-growing—web of physical connections. Fiber-optic cable, which carries 95% of the world’s international internet traffic, links up pretty much all of the world’s data centers…

Where those fiber-optic connections link up countries across the oceans, they consist almost entirely of cables running underwater—some 1.3 million kilometers (or more than 800,000 miles) of bundled glass threads that make up the actual, physical international internet. And until recently, the overwhelming majority of the undersea fiber-optic cable being installed was controlled and used by telecommunications companies and governments. Today, that’s no longer the case.

In less than a decade, four tech giants— Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Meta (formerly Facebook ) and Amazon —have become by far the dominant users of undersea-cable capacity. Before 2012, the share of the world’s undersea fiber-optic capacity being used by those companies was less than 10%. Today, that figure is about 66%.  In the next three years, they are on track to become primary financiers and owners of the web of undersea internet cables connecting the richest and most bandwidth-hungry countries on the shores of both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

By 2024, the four are projected to collectively have an ownership stake in more than 30 long-distance undersea cables, each up to thousands of miles long, connecting every continent on the globe save Antarctica. In 2010, these companies had an ownership stake in only one such cable—the Unity cable partly owned by Google, connecting Japan and the U.S. Traditional telecom companies have responded with suspicion and even hostility to tech companies’ increasingly rapacious demand for the world’s bandwidth. Industry analysts have raised concerns about whether we want the world’s most powerful providers of internet services and marketplaces to also own the infrastructure on which they are all delivered. This concern is understandable. Imagine if Amazon owned the roads on which it delivers packages.

But the involvement of these companies in the cable-laying industry also has driven down the cost of transmitting data across oceans for everyone, even their competitors….Undersea cables can cost hundreds of millions of dollars each. Installing and maintaining them requires a small fleet of ships, from surveying vessels to specialized cable-laying ships that deploy all manner of rugged undersea technology to bury cables beneath the seabed. At times they must lay the relatively fragile cable—at some points as thin as a garden hose—at depths of up to 4 miles.

All of this must be done while maintaining the right amount of tension in the cables, and avoiding hazards as varied as undersea mountains, oil-and-gas pipelines, high-voltage transmission lines for offshore wind farms, and even shipwrecks and unexploded bombs…In the past, trans-oceanic cable-laying often required the resources of governments and their national telecom companies. That’s all but pocket change to today’s tech titans. Combined, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon poured more than $90 billion into capital expenditures in 2020 alone…

Most of these Big Tech-funded cables are collaborations among rivals. The Marea cable, for example, which stretches approximately 4,100 miles between Virginia Beach in the U.S. and Bilbao, Spain, was completed in 2017 and is partly owned by Microsoft, Meta and Telxius, a subsidiary of Telefónica, the Spanish telecom.  Sharing bandwidth among competitors helps ensure that each company has capacity on more cables, redundancy that is essential for keeping the world’s internet humming when a cable is severed or damaged. That happens around 200 times a year, according to the International Cable Protection Committee, a nonprofit group. 

There is an exception to big tech companies collaborating with rivals on the underwater infrastructure of the internet. Google, alone among big tech companies, is already the sole owner of three different undersea cables…

Excerpts from Christopher Mims, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft Weave a Fiber-Optic Web of Power, WSJ, Jan. 15, 2022

Under-Water Data Centers: Reliable, Cool and Cheap

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Earlier this year a ship hauled a large, barnacle-covered cylinder sporting a Microsoft logo from the seas off the Orkney islands. Inside were a dozen server racks, of the sort found in data-centres around the world. Sunk in 2018, and connected to the shore by cable, the computers had spent the past couple of years humming away, part of an experiment into the feasibility of building data-centres underwater.

On September 14th, 2020 Microsoft revealed some results. The aquatic data-centre suffered equipment failures at just one-eighth the rate of those built on land. Being inaccessible to humans, the firm could fill it with nitrogen instead of air, cutting down corrosion. The lack of human visitors also meant none of the bumping and jostling that can cause faults on land.

Microsoft hopes some of the lessons can be applied to existing, land-based data-centers. In the longer term, though, it notes that building underwater offers advantages beyond just reliability. Immersion in seawater helps with cooling, a big expense on land. Data-centres work best when placed close to customers. Land in New York or London is expensive, but nearby sea-floor is cheap. More than half the world’s population lives within 120 miles (192km) of the sea. Ben Cutler, the engineer in charge of the project, says submarine data-centres could be co-located with offshore wind farms as “anchor” customers. The cylinder fits in a standard shipping container, so could be deployed to remote places like islands, or even disaster areas to support relief efforts.

Excerpts from Cloud computing: Davy Jones’s data-center, Economist, Sept. 19, 2020

A Perpetual State of Competition: US-China-Russia

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The US Secretary of Defense stated in September 2020 that America’s air, space and cyber warriors “will be at the forefront of tomorrow’s high-end fight.” That means confronting near-peer competitors China and Russia. That means shifting the focus from defeating violent extremist groups to deterring great power competitors. It means fighting a high-intensity battle that combines all domains of warfare. “In this era of great power competition, we cannot take for granted the United States’ long-held advantages,” Esper said. 

The last time an enemy force dropped a bomb on American troops was in the Korean War. “China and Russia, seek to erode our longstanding dominance in air power through long-range fires, anti-access/area-denial systems and other asymmetric capabilities designed to counter our strengths,” he said. “Meanwhile, in space, Moscow and Beijing have turned a once peaceful arena into a warfighting domain.” China and Russia have placed weapons on satellites and are developing directed energy weapons to exploit U.S. systems “and chip away at our military advantage,” he said.

Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and some violent extremist groups also look to exploit cyberspace to undermine U.S. security without confronting American conventional overmatch. “They do this all in an increasingly ‘gray zone’ of engagement that keeps us in a perpetual state of competition,’ the secretary said…The fiscal 2020 Defense Department research and development budget is the largest in history, he said, and it concentrates on critical technologies such as hypersonic weapons, directed energy and autonomous systems. 

“In the Air Force, specifically, we are modernizing our force for the 21st century with aircraft such as the B-21, the X-37 and the Next Generation Air Dominance platform,” Esper said. “Equally important, we are transforming the way we fight through the implementation of novel concepts such as Dynamic Force Employment, which provides scalable options to employ the joint force while preserving our capabilities for major combat.”

To realize the full potential of new concepts the department must be able to exchange and synchronize information across systems, services and platforms, seamlessly across all domains, he said. “The Department of the Air Force is leading on this front with the advancement of Joint All-Domain Command and Control,” Esper said.  This concept is part of the development of a Joint Warfighting concept that will drive transition to all-domain operations, he said. “

For these breakthroughs to succeed in any future conflict … we must maintain superiority in the ultimate high ground — space,” Esper said…In collaboration with academia and industry, the Air Force’s AI Accelerator program is able to rapidly prototype cutting-edge innovation,” Esper said. One example of this was the AI technology used to speed-up the development of  F-15EX.


F-15EX

Excerpts from Esper: Air Force, Space Force Leading Charge to New Technologies, DOD News, Sept. 16, 2020

Black Operations are Getting Blacker: US Military

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Heterogeneous Collaborative Unmanned Systems (HCUS), as these drones will be known, would be dropped off by either a manned submarine or one of the navy’s big new Orca robot submersibles.

Logo for Orca Submarine by Lockheed Martin

They could be delivered individually, but will more often be part of a collective system called an encapsulated payload. Such a system will then release small underwater vehicles able to identify ships and submarines by their acoustic signatures, and also aerial drones similar to the BlackWing reconnaissance drones already flown from certain naval vessels.

BlackWing

Once the initial intelligence these drones collect has been analysed, a payload’s operators will be in a position to relay further orders. They could, for example, send aerial drones ashore to drop off solar-powered ground sensors at specified points. These sensors, typically disguised as rocks, will send back the data they collect via drones of the sort that dropped them off. Some will have cameras or microphones, others seismometers which detect the vibrations of ground vehicles, while others still intercept radio traffic or Wi-Fi.

Lockheed Martin Ground Sensor Disguised as Rock

HCUS will also be capable of what are described as “limited offensive effects”. Small drones like BlackWing can be fitted with warheads powerful enough to destroy an SUV or a pickup truck. Such drones are already used to assassinate the leaders of enemy forces. They might be deployed against fuel and ammunition stores, too.

Unmanned systems such as HCUS thus promise greatly to expand the scope of submarine-based spying and special operations. Drones are cheap, expendable and can be deployed with no risk of loss of personnel. They are also “deniable”. Even when a spy drone is captured it is hard to prove where it came from. Teams of robot spies and saboteurs launched from submarines, both manned and unmanned, could thus become an important feature of the black-ops of 21st-century warfare.

Excerpts from Submarine-launched drone platoons will soon be emerging from the sea: Clandestine Warfare, Economist, June 22, 2019

Undersea Drones: Military

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Currently, manipulation operations on the seabed are conducted by Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) tethered to a manned surface platform and tele-operated by a human pilot. Exclusive use of ROVs, tethered to manned ships and their operators, severely limits the potential utility of robots in the marine domain, due to the limitations of ROV tether length and the impracticality of wireless communications at the bandwidths necessary to tele-operate an underwater vehicle at such distances and depths. To address these limitations, the Angler program will develop and demonstrate an underwater robotic system capable of physically manipulating objects on the sea floor for long-duration missions in restricted environments, while deprived of both GPS and human intervention…

The Angler program seeks to migrate advancements from terrestrial and space-based robotics, terrestrial autonomous manipulation, and underwater sensing technologies into the realm of undersea manipulation, with specific focus on long-distance, seabed-based missions. Specifically, the program aims to discover innovative autonomous robotic solutions capable of navigating unstructured ocean depths, surveying expansive underwater regions, and physically manipulating manmade objects of interest.

Excerpts DARPA Angle Program Nov. 2018

Stopping the Unstoppable: undersea nuclear torpedoes

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On July 20th 1960, a missile popped out of an apparently empty Atlantic ocean. Its solid-fuel rocket fired just as it cleared the surface and it tore off into the sky. Hours later, a second missile followed. An officer on the ballistic-missile submarine USS George Washington sent a message to President Dwight Eisenhower: “POLARIS—FROM OUT OF THE DEEP TO TARGET. PERFECT.” America had just completed its first successful missile launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from beneath the ocean. Less than two months later, Russia conducted a similar test in the White Sea, north of Archangel.

Those tests began a new phase in the cold war. Having ICBMs on effectively invisible launchers meant that neither side could destroy the other’s nuclear arsenal in a single attack. So by keeping safe the capacity for retaliatory second strikes, the introduction of ballistic-missile submarines helped develop the concept of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD), thereby deterring any form of nuclear first strike. America, Britain, China, France and Russia all have nuclear-powered submarines on permanent or near permanent patrol, capable of launching nuclear missiles; India has one such submarine, too, and Israel is believed to have nuclear missiles on conventionally powered submarines.

As well as menacing the world at large, submarines pose a much more specific threat to other countries’ navies; most military subs are attack boats rather than missile platforms. This makes anti-submarine warfare (ASW) a high priority for anyone who wants to keep their surface ships on the surface. Because such warfare depends on interpreting lots of data from different sources—sonar arrays on ships, sonar buoys dropped from aircraft, passive listening systems on the sea-floor—technology which allows new types of sensor and new ways of communicating could greatly increase its possibilities. “There’s an unmanned-systems explosion,” says Jim Galambos of DARPA, the Pentagon’s future-technology arm. Up until now, he says, submariners could be fairly sure of their hiding place, operating “alone and unafraid”. That is changing.

Aircraft play a big role in today’s ASW, flying from ships or shore to drop “sonobuoys” in patterns calculated to have the best chance of spotting something. This is expensive. An aeroplane with 8-10 people in it throws buoys out and waits around to listen to them and process their data on board. “In future you can envision a pair of AUVs [autonomous underwater vehicles], one deploying and one loitering and listening,” says Fred Cotaras of Ultra Electronics, a sonobuoy maker. Cheaper deployment means more buoys.

But more data is not that helpful if you do not have ways of moving it around, or of knowing where exactly it comes from. That is why DARPA is working on a Positioning System for Deep Ocean Navigation (POSYDON) which aims to provide “omnipresent, robust positioning across ocean basins” just as GPS satellites do above water, says Lisa Zurk, who heads up the programme. The system will use a natural feature of the ocean known as the “deep sound channel”. The speed of sound in water depends on temperature, pressure and, to some extent, salinity. The deep sound channel is found at the depth where these factors provide the lowest speed of sound. Below it, higher pressure makes the sound faster; above it, warmer water has the same effect…

Even in heavily surveilled seas, spotting submarines will remain tricky. They are already quiet, and getting quieter; new “air-independent propulsion” systems mean that conventionally powered submarines can now turn off their diesel engines and run as quietly as nuclear ones, perhaps even more so, for extended periods of time. Greater autonomy, and thus fewer humans—or none at all—could make submarines quieter still.

A case in point is a Russian weapon called Status-6, also known as Kanyon, about which Vladimir Putin boasted in a speech on March 1st, 2018. America’s recent nuclear-posture review describes it as “a new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo”. A Russian state television broadcast in 2015 appeared to show it as a long, thin AUV that can be launched from a modified submarine and travel thousands of kilometres to explode off the shore of a major city with a great deal more energy than the largest warheads on ICBMs, thus generating a radioactive tsunami. Such a system might be seen as preserving a second-strike capability even if the target had a missile-defence system capable of shooting ICBMs out of the sky…

One part of the ocean that has become particularly interesting in this regard is the Arctic. Tracking submarines under or near ice is difficult, because ice constantly shifts, crackles and groans loudly enough to mask the subtle sounds of a submarine. With ever less ice in the Arctic this is becoming less of a problem, meaning America should be better able to track Russian submarines through its Assured Arctic Awareness programme…

Greater numbers of better sensors, better networked, will not soon make submarines useless; but even without breakthroughs, they could erode the strategic norm that has guided nuclear thinking for over half a century—that of an unstoppable second strike.

Excerpts from Mutually assured detection, Economist, Mar. 10, 2018

The Sea Hunter Drone

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The Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) is developing an unmanned vessel optimized to robustly track quiet diesel electric submarines. … capable of missions spanning thousands of kilometers of range and months of endurance under a sparse remote supervisory control model. This includes…autonomous interactions with an intelligent adversary.
Excerpts from Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ASW Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV))

 

Underwater Robots against Pollution

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Subcultron is a swarm of at least 120 self-directing, underwater robots being developed by scientists in six countries to monitor Venice’s polluted waterways and transmit environmental data to government officials.The robots, shaped like fish, mussels, and lily pads to mimic the species’ hydrodynamics, carry sensors to monitor water conditions like temperature and chemical composition…The swarm communicates via the Internet-capable lily pads…
The robots use lithium ion batteries and solar cells for power. (Yes, enough sunlight gets through.)Some of the robots carry cameras. Others have electrodes that allow them to “see” by measuring objects crossing the electric fields they generate.Using wireless signals, human monitors can take over from the swarm’s AI software if something goes wrong. The European Commission has granted the project €4 million ($4.4 million).
Thomas Schmickl, the inventor, …..plans to build robot swarms that can monitor the oceans or even faraway moons that have water.

Excerpts from Innovation Subcultron, Bloomberg Business Week, Jan. 28, 2016

Under-sea GPS: DARPA POSYDON

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The objective of the POSYDON program is to develop an undersea system that provides omnipresent, robust positioning. DARPA envisions that the POSYDON program will distribute a small number of acoustic sources, analogous to GPS satellites, around an ocean basin.  By measuring the absolute range to multiple source signals, an undersea platform can obtain continuous, accurate positioning without surfacing for a GPS fix.

DARPA program  April 14, 2015

 

Artificial Reefs

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Reefs improvised from junk often do not work well. Corals struggle to colonise some metals, and cars and domestic appliances mostly disintegrate in less than a decade. Some organisms do not take to paints, enamels, plastics or rubber. Precious little sea life has attached itself to the 2m or so tyres sunk in the early 1970s to create a reef off Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Tyres occasionally break free, smash into coral on natural reefs and wash ashore.

Yet building artificial reefs that are attractive to marine life can pay dividends. Some of the reefs built in Japanese waters support a biomass of fish that is 20 times greater than similarly sized natural reefs, says Shinya Otake, a marine biologist at Fukui Prefectural University. He expects further gains from a decision by the Japanese government to build new reefs in deep water where they will be bathed in nutrients carried in plankton-rich seawater welling up from below.

The potential bounty was confirmed in a recent study by Occidental College in Los Angeles. Over five to 15 years researchers surveyed marine life in the vicinity of 16 oil and gas rigs off the Californian coast. These were compared with seven natural rocky reefs. The researchers found that the weight of fish supported by each square metre of sea floor was 27 times higher for the rigs. Although much of this increase comes from the rigs providing fish with the equivalent of skyscraper-style living, it suggests that leaving some rigs in place when production ceases might benefit the environment.

Making reefs with hollow concrete modules has been especially successful. Called reef balls, these structures are pierced with holes and range in height up to 2.5 metres. The design is promoted by the Reef Ball Foundation, a non-profit organisation based in Athens, Georgia. Reef balls can be positioned to make the most of photosynthesis and for plankton to drift slowly across their curved inner surface. This improves the nourishment of plants and creatures setting up home within. A hole in the top reduces the chance of them being moved about by storm currents.

Concrete used to make a reef ball is mixed with microsilica, a silicon-dioxide powder, to strengthen the material and lower its acidity level to be more organism-friendly. The balls are cast from fibreglass moulds, which are typically sprayed with a sugary solution before the concrete is poured. This creates tiny hollows which provide a foothold for larval corals. Over 500,000 reef balls have been placed in the waters of more than 60 countries, and each one should last for some 500 years, says the foundation.

The value of artificial reefs has been boosted by the spread of GPS devices and sophisticated sonars on boats. This allows fishermen to locate the subsea structures precisely. It is necessary to be directly above the reef to reel in more fish, says David Walter of Walter Marine, an Alabama company that used to sink vehicles for fishermen but now places pyramid-shaped, hurricane-resistant steel, concrete and limestone structures to create artificial reefs. These constructions can cost nearly $2,000, but many fishermen consider them to be a good investment, especially to catch red snapper.

Using underwater drones for long-term studies of reefs and their associated marine life is also helping improve designs. Sensors can be installed on reefs to monitor boat traffic and activities such as fishing and scuba diving.

Perhaps the most innovative way to build a reef involves anchoring a frame made with steel reinforcing bars to the sea floor and zapping it continuously it with electricity. This causes minerals dissolved in seawater to crystallise on the metal, thickening the structure by several centimetres a year. Biorock, as the resulting material has been trademarked, becomes stronger than concrete but costs less to make. More than 400 “electrified” reefs, many the size of a small garage, have been built this way. Three-quarters of them are in the ocean around Indonesia.

Excerpts, Artificial reefs: Watery dwellings, Economist, Dec.6, 2014,  Technology Quarterly,  at 4

SeaWeb Live: drones, mules & gliders

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UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles]  will probably play a bigger role as roving wireless nodes that increase the reach of underwater networks. The latest “glider” UUVs consume very little battery power…. Already, gliders serving as “mules” are descending to sensors in deep water where they acoustically collect information. They then ascend to the surface and send the data via radio, says David Kelly, chief executive of Bluefin Robotics, which provides UUVs to half a dozen navies.

The US Navy has ordered several gliders to form underwater mobile networks. With no engine noise, a stealthy “swarm” of gliders could monitor submarines and ships entering a strait, for example, surfacing to transmit their findings. Floating gateway nodes, dropped from the air, allow messages to be sent to submerged devices via low-frequency acoustic signals. This scheme, known as Deep Siren and developed by Raytheon, an American defence contractor, has been tested by the British and American navies.

“Underwater networking will put an end to the ‘data starvation’ experienced by submarines”.  The combination of acoustic signalling and UUVs, which can deliver data physically, will put an end to the “data starvation” experienced by submarines, as America’s submarine command described it in a report last year. Often incommunicado, subs have been condemned to “lone wolf” roles, says Xavier Itard, head of submarine products at DCNS, a French shipbuilder. His firm is developing a funnel-shaped torpedo-tube opening that would make it easier for a UUV to dock with a submarine. Being able to send messages quickly via acoustic networks would enable submarines to take on more tactical roles—inserting special forces when needed to a nearby battlefield, say, or supporting ground operations by launching cruise missiles from the depths.

The Soviet-built ELF radio system remains a “backbone” of Russia’s submarine communications, according to a Norwegian expert. But in a clear vote of confidence in newer technologies, America shut down its own system in 2004. Thanks to steady progress in undersea networks, what was once a technological marvel was, a US Navy statement explained, “no longer necessary”. Whether via sound waves, laser pulses, optical fibres or undersea drones, there are now better ways to deliver data underwater.

Excerpt , Underwater networking: Captain Nemo goes online, Economist Technology Quarterly, Mar. 9, 2013, at 7