This article is also available in French.

Today, for a change from cyber (although we will be talking about AI, data and bias), I suggest you grab a bag of popcorn and settle in comfortably. We are going to talk about a film. More precisely, about two scenarios. Tempted? Off we go.

Two scenarios for a good film, then, with espionage and high-seas operations in the background but, in the end, a single story (and it ends well).

First scenario. A Russian ship, managed by a company under US sanctions, moving slowly in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, about 1,600 kilometres (860 NM) east of Barbados, and staying there for 41 days. No port call, apparently no other ship encountered, its AIS transponder on the whole time, and, according to some submarine cable maps, a piece of “critical” underwater infrastructure nearby. Calling it a spy ship is only one step further, a step easily taken if you do not stand back.

Second scenario. The same ship, on the same dates and in the same position, running a prospecting campaign across a metallic sulphide deposit, with the fairly irregular kinematics typical of that kind of operation, inside mining blocks allocated to Russia by the International Seabed Authority, 305 kilometres (165 NM) from the nearest cable.