Currently oceans account for 99% of the future ecological space of our planet. In this case, the extraction of minerals from the ocean floor is a primary line of development for China and also for its major companies. Polymetallic sulphides, cobalt-rich ferromagnetic crusts and the rare earths of the ocean floor connect to the ferromagnetic winds of the Indian Ocean and the underwater hills of the Pacific Ocean. A mass of materials which are of fundamental importance for the development of future electronics.
With specific reference to the related business of deep sea and ocean fishing areas, it is a matter of creating environmental protection areas, together with areas for deep sea fishing related to advanced technologies forth e e-control of marine environment, which is both strategically useful and essential to maintain and support China’s sea hegemony.
Hence what shall be done with telecommunication technologies? Certainly the submarine cable lines, but above all a wired network, with the technologies used for the cyber protection of commercial ships at sea.
A network of the Internet of Things (IoT) for ships at sea and for commercial activities, such as fishing or the development of the activities of hospitality and support to the coastal population from the sea.
Construction of AI systems that – from a land or small cabotage base -allow to control the navigation of the connected vessels, thus protecting them in real time and, indeed, also in advance, from maritime disasters or man-made hazards, including terrorism.
The development of digital technologies capable of helping, innovating and enabling the construction of any type of ships and the very fast updating of the demands for materials and manpower, just in time, with a radical reduction of costs.
We could also imagine a remote control and guide for commercial vessels, with immediate updates on political and maritime conditions.
Obviously these operations would be based on the Blue economy of coastal energy and on a substantial energy autonomy for the management stations of the above mentioned networks.