The global internet—a vast matrix of telecommunications, fiber optics, and satellite networks—is in large part a creation of the United States. Moreover, U.S. strategic, economic, political, and foreign policy interests were served by the global, open internet. The United States now confronts a starkly different reality. The utopian vision of an open, reliable, and secure global network has not been achieved and is unlikely ever to be realized. Today, the internet is less free, more fragmented, and less secure.
Countries around the world now exert a greater degree of control over the internet, localizing data, blocking and moderating content, and launching political influence campaigns. Nation-states conduct massive cyber campaigns, and the number of disruptive attacks is growing.
Malicious actors have exploited social media platforms, spread disinformation and misinformation, incited disparate forms of political participation that can sway elections, engendered fierce violence, and promoted toxic forms of civic division.
The report is a really frank and stark look at the situation. It identifies quite correctly that there is a greater fragmentation of the Internet (they may be referring more to separated networks) but the same is true of social networks moving to a more decentralised nature. And yes the Internet is now an advantage as well as disadvantage for any country, not just the USA, and not just from a security point of view, but also economic, privacy, stability, etc perspectives.
The Internet of Things (IoT), along with IP6 addressing, and other factors will make it vastly more complex and amplify further the issues already being experienced.
We can expect that any responsible country will be taking the recommendations to heart, and these will also require countries that normally sit on the fence, to be forced to side with one of the country groupings that emerge. It is unlikely that a country will be able to belong to two or more of these types of groups, and existing alone will leave that country exposed and alone…
#technology #Internet #Security #Cyberspace #ForeignRelations