It would have been catastrophic, she continues, not only for Hong Kong but for the rest of the world. Hong Kong, like Singapore, is a financial hub whose effective disappearance would cause worldwide economic havoc. "We just don"t have redundancy," says Mani of the cables: if something goes wrong, there aren"t spares to pick up the slack. "And our satellites, in their current state, can only handle about 3% of global communication."