As many of you may have seen in recent news, the Red Sea subsea cable disruptions (starting Sept 6, 2025) have caused massive blackouts across the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia, affecting up to 70% of Europe-Asia traffic. Government sites, media outlets, and essential services in regions like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, and Sudan are largely unreachable, with high latency (200-500ms) or complete downtime due to cuts in systems like SMW4, IMEWE, and PEACE. This has real-world impacts: hindered disaster relief info, financial transactions, and public communications during a crisis.
What’s fascinating? The Internet Computer (ICP) network remained completely unaffected. From monitoring logs, ICP subnets and node machines in these regions (e.g., Vilnius, Zurich) continued operating smoothly—no disruptions, low latency where reachable. This showcases ICP’s decentralized strength: while Web2 infra buckled, ICP’s global distribution tech kept it unstoppable. It’s a powerful press angle—ICP as the “unbreakable backbone” for the internet.
This got me thinking: Could ICP expand to mirror critical sites as a failsafe for such events? Imagine gov portals, news media (e.g., Al Jazeera, Times of Israel), or UN relief resources hosted on-chain—always accessible, even in total blackouts. With the UNDP-DFINITY partnership (launched July 2024 for financial inclusion via blockchain), there’s a natural tie-in to humanitarian use cases. ICP could position itself as a global resilience tool, boosting adoption through real-impact stories and media coverage.
What do you think? Is this a viable usecase? How could we implement mirroring without centralization risks? Lcould lead to big news for ICP!
Cheers,
Dex