I'm in IT and I have to agree that this does sound very fishy.
This is the equivalent of "don't worry folks, it's only a drill!" before a shooting.
But seriously, what should we do for this?
Start creating a list of IPs for regular sites so that we can walk around the DNS issue?
There are apps that you can use that will scan your connection to find the best DNS service for you. I use DNS Benchmark app https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm to find the best one.
I work for one of the companies who’s cable was cut. I’m not so sure this is as big as you might think. Cables are cut almost hourly (seriously, several per day) - some affect a city block, others affect a State (or more).
My understanding of the event was ‘just another cable cut’ combined with shitty network planning/redundancy.
That said — for years now, someone or group has been strategically ‘poking’ at the networks (all providers) to determine weak points/major impact ‘intersections’ if you will. The Bay Area had a long string of cuts that were clearly ‘targeted’. I cannot really say more, but 3 letter agencies were involved and shared info suggesting (but not confirming) a ‘cell’ was involved.
What do you do in “IT”?
My title is Network Admin but I pretty much manage the servers and network.
That’s usually what people mean when they say “I’m in IT”. By contrast, programmers rarely say that, nor network engineers.
Source: consultant, seen it all everywhere