All of the infrastructure has to be way more easily accessible on the ground anyways

Not really. When in Russia some government bureaucrats begen to explore idea of total control of cross-border links, it was quickly discovered, that nobody knows where huge part of that links is.

F.e., in 90s, when interent had huge grow in Russia, imagine that some company who declared a need of single cable to Finland from SaintPeterburg got an approval. You might think, that it will lay single cable to the bottom of Baltic sea and it will be in papers. But that's not how things really happen. That company rent a cable laying ship. And it does not matter, how many cables you really lay from it - one or four. And of course there was a lot of shenanigans with number of fibers in one cable, when it was 32 fibers on paper with 64 in reality. So, that ended in one official cross-border cable and three unofficial, not even talking about fibers amount. Unofficial cables often was connected to country backbone in unexpected places and today nobody knows where that cables physically are and how they are physically connected. To find it out government need enormous amount of stuff, money and time, with potentialy huge problems with connectivity, that could lead to social unrest (you know that zoomers who can't go for a minute without internet connection) so, they abandoned that idea.

Interesting, that Finland side in that example do exactly same thing - they declared one cable in documents and got three unofficially. People that worked for telecom at that time was not very obedient to governments and believed in all that free information and network anarchy stuff. Good people.

So, no, it is not as simple as it sounds to take control over ground network. Of course, may be some countries had strict laws and very obedient IT specialists that give up every single fiber to state agencies and their employers, like in North Korea or China (not shure about China, really), but it is just few countries, not the whole world they want to control.

All of the infrastructure has to be way more easily accessible on the ground anyways

Not really. When in Russia some government bureaucrats begen to explore idea of total control of cross-border links, it was quickly discovered, that nobody knows where huge part of that links is.

F.e., in 90s, when interent had huge grow in Russia, imagine that some company who declared a need of single cable to Finland from SaintPeterburg got an approval. You might think, that it will lay single cable to the bottom of Baltic sea and it will be in papers. But that's not how things really happen. That company rent a cable laying ship. And it does not matter, how many cables you really lay from it - one or four. And of course there was a lot of shenanigans with number of fibers in one cable, when it was 32 fibers on paper with 64 in reality. So, that ended in one official cross-border cable and three unofficial, not even talking about fibers amount. Unofficial cables often was connected to country backbone in unexpected places and today nobody knows where that cables physically are and how they are physically connected. To find it out government need enormous amount of stuff, money and time, with potentialy huge problems with connectivity, that could lead to social unrest (you know that zoomers who can't go for a minute without internet connection) so, they abandoned that idea.

Interesting, that Finland side in that example do exactly same thing - they declared one cable in documents and get three unofficially. People that worked for telecom at that time was not very obedient to governments and believed in all that free information and network anarchy stuff.

So, no, it is not as simple as it sounds to take control over ground network. Of course, may be some countries had strict laws and very obedient IT specialists that give up every single fiber to state agencies and their employers, like in North Korea or China (not shure about China, really), but it is just few countries, not the whole world they want to control.

All of the infrastructure has to be way more easily accessible on the ground anyways

Not really. When in Russia some government bureaucrats begen to explore idea of total control of cross-border links, it was quickly discovered, that nobody knows where huge part of that links is.

F.e., in 90s, when interent had huge grow in Russia, imagine that some company who declared a need of single cable to Finland from SaintPeterburg got an approval. You might think, that it will lay single cable to the bottom of Baltic sea and it will be in papers. But that's not how things really happen. That company rent a cable laying ship. And it does not matter, how many cables you really lay from it - one or four. So, that ended in one official cross-border cable and three unofficial. Unofficial cables often was connected to country backbone in unexpected places and today nobody knows where that cables are. To find it out government need enormous amount of stuff, money and time, with potentialy huge problems with connectivity, that could lead to social unrest (you know that zoomers who can't go for a minute without internet connection) so, they abandoned that idea.

Interesting, that Finland side in that example do exactly same thing - they declared one cable in documents and get three unofficially. People that worked for telecom at that time was not very obedient to governments and believed in all that free information and network anarchy stuff.

So, no, it is not as simple as it sounds to take control over network. Of course, may be some countries had strict laws and very obedient IT specialists that give up every single fiber to state agencies and their employers, like in North Korea or China (not shure about China, really), but it is just few countries, not the whole world they want to control.