the digital sanctions against Russia have the potential to create a internet ‘balkanizzato ‘, what MIT engineers call: splinter net. A situation that according to experts could also have long-term consequences.
Sations to Russia could lead to a “Splinternet”
Several tech giants have accepted the sanctions imposed on Russia, showing that they do not want to work with Moscow after the Ukrainian invasion. Come on hardware manufacturers to those who produce software and provide services, Russia has lost many parts of the digital world it knew until a few weeks ago. And it looks like it can finish the national cloud space in less than two months.
However, the MIT Technology Review has assessed that the impact of the sanctions could affect the entire internet. Massachusetts engineers write: “Russia has declared Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) an extremist organization and is withdrawing from international bodies such as the Council of Europe and has been suspended from European Broadcasting Union. If moves of this level were to replicate with i Internet governance bodies, the effect would be seismic“.
According to MIT, the “fears of one could materialize splinter net (or Balkanized Internet), where instead of a single global internet like the one we have today, there are several national or regional networks that do not talk to each other and that perhaps use technologies that are not compatible with each other “.
This could lead to the end of the “World Wide Web” which unites the whole world into one network. “China e Iran they still use the same internet technologies as the US and Europe, even if they only have access to some of its services. If these nations had to create governance bodies and rival networks, only mutual agreements in all the major nations of the world could rebuild ”a common internet.
The vision seems quite drastic: China above all has a thriving digital market and sells a lot of hardware in Europe and America. A good percentage of those who read this article are doing it with devices made or assembled in China. But the MIT speech, which until a few weeks ago would have seemed incredible, today seems above all worrying.