The Far North Fiber project seeks to offer a safer route by bypassing critical chokepoints like the Red Sea. The 14,500-kilometer cable will directly link Europe to Japan via the Northwest Passage in the Arctic, with landing sites in Japan, the United States (Alaska), Canada, Norway, Finland, and Ireland.
It would have been unthinkable until just a few years ago, when a thick, multiyear layer of ice made navigation impossible. But the Arctic is warming up at a worrying pace with climate change, nearly four times faster than the rest of the world. Sea ice is shrinking by almost 13 percent every decade.
Via Politico