Singaporeans struggling to send memes to their pals in Paris might have Yemen’s Houthi rebels to blame. The militant group that’s been attacking cargo ships in international waters off the coast of Yemen is now being accused of disrupting global internet traffic.

Four underwater internet cables in the Red Sea were cut recently, Hong Kong telecoms company HGC Global Communications said yesterday.

• Just as with shipping, the Red Sea is a major passageway for the internet, with more than 15 undersea cables connecting Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
• The cuts worsened internet connection in India, Pakistan, and East Africa, internet network analyst Doug Madory told WSJ. Though internet providers have rerouted traffic, repairs won’t begin until at least next month, and HGC said about a quarter of online data that passes through the the affected area.

While the Houthis have denied involvement and experts say a ship might’ve caused the damage, Yemen’s government-in-exile warned last month that the insurgents could target the cables. No matter the cause, the incident is a reminder that the Red Sea is what Wired once called “arguably, the internet’s most vulnerable place on Earth.”

Internet chokepoint

A few cables may sound minor, but despite the hype around Starlink’s satellite-enabled internet, physical subsea wires still make the online world go round, as they’re the cheapest and fastest way to send data.

• Over 99% of internet traffic between continents is transmitted via hundreds of undersea cables, according to CNET.
• Tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have been building new ones, which can cost up to $350 million a pop, per the NYT.

The Red Sea is a big part of that: It sits at the nexus of a global sea-floor cable network, with its shallow waters serving as a conduit for about 17% of global internet traffic, per Data Center Dynamics.

Looking ahead…the cable cuts cast a shadow over the six additional sub-Red Sea cables that internet infrastructure expert Tim Stronge told the Associated Press are currently being built to expand the network.—SK

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SCOTUS rules states can’t kick Trump off primary ballots. The US Supreme Court overturned a Colorado court’s decision that former President Donald Trump was ineligible for the state’s presidential primary, ruling that individual states don’t have the power to keep candidates off the ballot under a constitutional clause barring insurrectionists from holding office. The ruling effectively shuts down efforts to keep Trump off several state ballots just as we head into Super Tuesday today, with 16 states holding their primary votes. Trump is expected to dominate the Republican contest.

JetBlue and Spirit call off $3.8 billion merger. In a victory for the Biden administration’s aggressive antitrust enforcement, and possibly for travelers between Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale, the airlines terminated their agreement to merge yesterday, weeks after a federal judge found the deal anti-competitive and blocked it. The companies said that even if they could win an appeal of the decision, they didn’t see a path to getting regulatory approval in time to close the deal. JetBlue will pay Spirit $69 million for bowing out of the merger. The news sent JetBlue’s stock up and Spirit’s down.

Ex-Twitter execs sue Elon Musk for severance. Four former Twitter executives who were fired when Musk took over slapped him and the company that’s now called X with a lawsuit, claiming they’re owed more than $128 million in severance. The group includes former CEO Parag Agrawal as well as the company’s former CFO, chief legal officer, and general counsel. Their suit claims Musk won’t pay them as revenge for his being forced to buy the company after he tried to back out of it, and that in order to avoid paying up, “he simply fired them without reason, then made up fake cause.”

In a time when antitrust regulators go after Big Tech companies as regularly as Love is Blind cast members break up, Apple is the one tech mammoth that’s largely escaped penalty. Regulators are making up for it now.

Yesterday, the European Commission hit Apple with a €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) fine after concluding that the company used its dominance to restrict music streaming competition.

European regulators determined that for a decade, Apple prevented music streaming services (read: Spotify) from telling iPhone users that they could get cheaper subscriptions outside of Apple’s App Store, which resulted in users paying higher prices. The fine is the third-largest penalty ever levied by the EC against a company.

Apple got spicy in response. It called out Spotify—whose 2019 complaint against Apple prompted the investigation that led to the penalty—as “the primary advocate for this decision—and its biggest beneficiary,” claiming that the Sweden-based company is the one with a monopoly in the music streaming market. Apple plans to appeal the fine.

Zoom out: On Thursday, the EU’s Digital Markets Act, a law aimed at ensuring that smaller companies can compete with tech giants like Apple, Meta, Google, and Microsoft, goes into full effect. Meanwhile, in the US, the DOJ is soon expected to file a sweeping lawsuit accusing Apple of trying to suppress competition.—CC

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Best Buy and Macy’s are the latest major retail chains to announce that they will try to boost in-person business in the post-pandemic online shopping era by livestreaming Subway Surfers in every aisle opening smaller, streamlined locations.

Here are the plans:

• On top of the 24 big stores Best Buy shuttered last year, the electronics chain said it will close 10 to 15 more large locations over the next fiscal year and open a number of small stores in places where it has no prior physical presence.
• Amid declining sales at department stores, Macy’s announced it will close 150 locations and, by the end of 2025, open 30 smaller ones, which will measure 30,000 to 50,000 square feet (20% of a mall Macy’s).

Other stores going ant mode include…Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Target, Kohl’s, Whole Foods, and even the originator of getting lost indoors: Ikea. They’re betting that smaller locations with slimmer inventories and (theoretically) easier order pickups/returns will satisfy the contemporary shopper’s desire for Amazon Prime-level efficiency. Best Buy and others are also expanding small stores into rural and suburban areas that wealthy families moved to during the pandemic, according to the Washington Post.

Zoom out: Last year, new leases on 25,000+ square-foot spaces hit their lowest share of all retail space since CoStar Group started tracking in 2006.—ML

Stat: It’s not just you—coming into the office really is more of a pain than it used to be. That’s because lots of people now live twice as far from work as they did before hunkering down for the pandemic and getting used to folding laundry during camera-off Zooms. The average distance between people’s homes and their workplaces was 27 miles in 2023, up from 10 miles in 2019, the New York Times reported based on a forthcoming study by Stanford economists using data from payroll provider Gusto. In 2019, only 0.8% of people lived more than 50 miles from where they worked, but now that’s jumped to 5.5%. The shift has happened mostly among white-collar workers making more than $100,000 who are able to throw up a WFH Slack message, the study found.

Quote: “It’s only too poetic I found my career being fulfilled in the City of Brotherly Love. I knew that relationship all too well.”

Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, better known to some corners of the internet as Taylor Swift’s boyfriend’s brother, announced his retirement. The seven-time Pro Bowler spent 13 years in the NFL, all with the Philadelphia Eagles. Over the years, Kelce became as central to Philadelphia as the Liberty Bell, helping the Eagles win their first and only Super Bowl in 2018 while becoming a fan-favorite player. It seems almost certain that Kelce will be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and many expect the Eagles to retire his No. 62 jersey. We hope that in retirement, he’ll keep cheering on his brother out the window of a luxury suite.

Read: Plastic recycling is a scam. (Heated)