The US Council on Foreign Relations announced the end of the era of the global Internet. Overview of the report
The utopian idea of an open, reliable and secure global network has not come to fruition and, this is unlikely to happen ever. Today, the internet is less free, more fragmented and less secure. This conclusion is contained in the report of the American Council on Foreign Relations "Confrontation of reality in cyberspace. Foreign Policy of the Fragmented Internet, "published in July 2022. Pavel Poteev, an expert at the Center for Training Leaders and Teams of Digital Transformation of the Higher School of Economics, RANEPA, prepared a review of the report at the request of TAdviser.
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About 15 years ago, I got acquainted with a forecast that I did not understand and did not take seriously then: it was about the collapse of the Internet as a worldwide network with free passage of information to national segments or blocks of countries.
The reasons for the misunderstanding are understandable: at that time the first global platforms, e-commerce communication, and service provision were being built and gaining power. Information from around the world became available "in one click," Chinese firewall but seemed like a funny deviation from the big trend. The source and author of the forecast over the years, unfortunately, has been forgotten.
And this is unlike today, when I read a report by the American Council on Foreign Relations entitled "Confrontating Reality in Cyberspace. Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet». A quote from there is made at the beginning of this text, the report itself is in the public domain.
The material was prepared by an organization that does not classify itself as one of the political parties. Essentially a heavy think tank; publishes its own magazine; and the report in question is already the 80th in a row.
As involved in the creation of several analytical documents, I understand what work and authority are behind this in the system of public administration.
It cannot be said that the landscape of the initially open Internet changed overnight: the requirements of a number of states to protect personal data and restrictions on their cross-border transmission did not appear yesterday. These were the first calls of fragmentation and boundaries. But this is how big trends work: they develop slowly, at first imperceptibly, faced with oppositely directed trends. But they develop steadily up to a complete change in the initial situation.
Key findings of the report
1. The global Internet era is over. The authors emphasize that the first 30 years of its development have passed, in many ways, according to the vision states and the private sector, USA as well as technologies developed in the United States. However, the reality of today has completely changed.
2. US policies promoting the open and global internet have failed, and Washington will not be able to stop or reverse the fragmentation trend.
Given that technologies and solutions for building an Internet infrastructure have been the subject of trade wars for decades (as an example: Cisco vs Huawei), we can say that many key players have had a hand in fragmentation.
3. Data is a source of geopolitical power and competitiveness and underpins economic and national security.
4. The United States has taken itself off the e-commerce field - and constant failures to implement privacy and data protection rules in the home market are blocking Washington's potential for international leadership.
This is followed by a list of recommendations, the first of which is to form digital alliances with friendly states and blocs. In other words, if fragmentation cannot be defeated, it must be led.
The report deserves to be read in its entirety. It makes sense to know and consider the views, positions, ways of thinking competitors around the globe.
Thoughts After Reading
1. The boundaries in the digital space in terms of importance and attention to them have become approximately equal to the state. States learn to build strategies or respond to changes in the landscape.
The Chinese firewall mentioned above was one of the first steps in a much longer-term game. The next step was to develop a national ecosystem of platforms into which hundreds of areas of activity are moving: trade, services, finance, development, logistics, communication, content consumption, training, social activities.
There is an awareness of how great the role of the "figure" is in the formation of public opinion and values, this is due to the control and guiding role of the Communist Party. China
And that's not the end of the game. For several years now, consumers and manufacturers in different countries have been interacting on Chinese platforms. Today's agenda includes connecting entire national industries (for example, African agricultural producers) to platforms, as well as exporting Chinese digital solutions for public administration.
2. Fragmentation and disintegration of the Internet into blocks is not a tendency, but a fait accompli. Throughout the report, confirmations are scattered - these are security problems, and restrictions for recently global foreign digital platforms (antimonopoly authorities of different countries regularly issue fines to American digital companies), and the transfer of sabotage and hostilities to the global network.
There are many hundreds of examples of information theft and malicious actions against commercial and government agencies. Critical industries for the safety and life of citizens, including energy and nuclear, are affected.
Not all cases become known to the general public, especially when it comes to ransom and damage suffered by organizations.
The report mentions "a group of citizens calling themselves the IT Army of Ukraine." You can read about the ways of organization, the scale and methods of work of this organization here.
What recommendations can be given?
At the level of an individual
Many IT professionals felt the departure of certain companies and entire software and hardware ecosystems within which they worked.
For a number of global manufacturers, I use the term "ecosystem" because in my work such companies are far from limited to the development and sale of licenses: around them there are processes of training, development of methodologies, career development in different roles, certification, knowledge accumulation, conferences, forums, industry awards. We have to grow a number of such ecosystems in our segment at a new level.
Many specialists, experts, managers have to choose between following the ecosystem, moving to a purely local market or retraining. Perhaps a new segment with completely different software and hardware players is already gaining contours.
At the company level
It is no longer up to forecasts. Recent months have shown that the availability of platforms, services, technology components from other segments of the Internet has become a risk factor. Digital borders are built, barriers are randomly raised and lowered in search of a new state.
Quick and forced replacements are on the agenda. There will be organizations for which this will be an opportunity to get rid of outdated systems and a transition to more modern and flexible architectures.
It is difficult to give recommendations that are universal for everyone: each company that uses IT has its own situation, its own risks and capabilities.
Maybe now is a good time to start "disassembling" outdated monolithic systems and replace them with a more flexible service architecture, break many years of vendor lock-ins, move development inside and, finally, become, as many intend, "to some extent IT company too."
One thing is for sure: the gusty winds of today can greatly affect the IT strategies of both real sector companies and players in the digital ecosystem.
At the state level
The formation of new segments is happening right before our eyes. It is shortsighted to make forecasts, but I doubt that our segment will be limited to conditional Russia, North Korea and Belarus. The world is great, it is changing and many states are only looking for new forms of digital alliances and interests. As stated in the report in relation to the United States.
In the beginning, I remembered the forecasters from the early 2000s for a reason. If there are techniques that allow you to see long-term trends at the intersection of technology and social processes, then they can enable a more timely response, or even play ahead. And our state think tank, capable of building forecasts and high-quality recommendations regarding digital trends, would definitely not hurt us.
"Zyfra" everywhere, there will be more of it and, as the authors of the report noted, it will remain a factor in global competitiveness and security.
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