Russia and the Push for State-Controlled Internet
Russia recently announced an initiative to bring the root of the Internet’s infrastructure under the control of state-controlled bureaucracies. Russia’s push is not just on a domestic front, but is part of a larger movement to give national governments worldwide control of the Internet for their specific country. A major component of control on the “root” level comes in the form of domain name assignments. Currently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) oversees domain name assignments worldwide. ICANN is a California based non-profit working in conjunction with the U.S State Department, which many nations believe gives the U.S and unfair power advantage in controlling the Internet. Due to ICANN’s major role in the global Internet structure, experts do not believe Russia’s proposal will work on a global scale. However, their push for state-controlled Internet infrastructure is likely to succeed nationally. Russia is currently in the process of transferring their domestic system of domain-name assignment, the Coordination Center, to a state agency.
Russia’s goals and the larger question of national Internet control raise the question: how will this affect the structure of the Internet? As we learned in Chapter 13, the Internet is characterized by a bow-tie structure with one large strongly connected component (SCC), “In” nodes that can reach the giant SCC (but not be reached from it), and “Out” nodes that can be reached from the giant SCC (but cannot reach it). The implications of state-controlled Internet, especially with large authoritarian countries like Russia and China, is smaller fragmented sections of the Internet that are dominated by these individual nations. In the context of the bow-tie structure, the large SCC could potentially be fragmented into smaller components; each censored and dominated by specific nations and each containing their own sets of “In” and “Out” nodes. This type of fragmentation is certainly difficult. By the definition of a strongly connected component, every node in the SCC has a path to every other node in the component. Detaching a piece of this component is, therefore, no easy task, but in states like Russia that can blacklist websites without a court order (and for virtually any reason, including political ones), it is certainly possible.
These implications have led many experts to oppose a state-controlled Internet structure. Artem Kozlyuk, a Russian information activist, argues we need a complete decentralization of the Internet. Doing so would enhance the freedom of information flow globally, while a fragmented World Wide Web would do the opposite. In a global context, where there are well over 4 billion people without Internet access, this should be the priority. After all, expanding global access to the Internet has so many valuable implications for underdeveloped parts of the world, including medical applications and promoting political equality. Since Russia’s movement is likely motivated by political underpinnings and censorship, decentralization route makes the most sense for the international community.