Eric Schmidt, Ex-Google CEO, Predicts Internet Bifurcation with China | Hacker News Reader

Eric Schmidt, Ex-Google CEO, Predicts Internet Bifurcation with China

cnbc.com

80 pointsjedwhite36 comments

It won't just be China.

The Internet was, initially, a terra incognita for governments. (Which is ironic given its origins.) At first any wilderness is home only to pioneers, explorers, and other kinds of people who love the freedom that a frontier (Wild West) region gives.

But inevitably (as is the way of humans) more humans appear, business pops up, government follows, laws are made, property is titled, walls go up, and freedom goes down. All valuable wilderness inevitably becomes civilized.

Eventually governments will simply cut the cables (so to speak) to make the digital borders match the geographical borders, only allowing international traffic via heavily supervised data-ports for registered and licensed data-traders. The Big Companies will love and encourage this, as it means even less possible competition for them. A cyber-war might speed up things as well, but it seems inevitable anyway. (GDPR has already added a new row of bricks for the wall, with some sites just refusing to serve my EU-based browser at all.)

This echoes speeches given even by the likes of John Perry Barlow. The internet is a frontier slowly being tamed.

Ok then, where's the next frontier? I can't see myself happy while continuing to work in an increasingly oligopolized, regulated industry. I'm young enough that I can switch to another career if it's worth the personal satisfaction and some monetary reward.

I'm not sure the proper term but maybe crypto currency/dapps/blockchain. A feature there is it's decentralized and anonymous nature.

Those operate over the internet. If nations start yo control the flow of data in and out of their borders they'll just block any crypto/anonymous network.

The answer is probably mesh nets... I think these would be harder to control, esp if a company with good intentions controlled the backbones that it connected to.

The problem is the physical connectivity across borders and oceans. Undersea cables are expensive, ground cables not so much but still vulnerable to border patrols, and wireless broadcasts can be picked up by anyone with the right sized antenna - the only realistic possibility I think would be point to point microwave/laser for backbone stuff, and I'm not sure how cheap that could be made or if crossing the Pacific/Atlantic is feasible.

Another possibility I think might be an implementation of the Iridium satellite system but on an open, consumer/hobbyist level (CubeSats maybe?) where anyone with the spec and access to common parts can build a satellite receiver/transmitter - but then how do we get them into space without a gov/corp noticing?

A truly independent, physical network is critical but I can't see how to practically implement it in the areas where it would be most needed...except on a local level. Which, to be fair, may be all that's needed for that area. I doubt revolutionaries/activists are too concerned about accessing American cat videos, but communication to outside supporters would be important I would think.

Most of the crypto enthusiasts I've met seem to forget how expensive the international infrastructure is and how easy it is for a central org to break it completely if they really want.

Space?

I wonder if this means they will seriously look into something like the hoaxy[?] IPv9[1] from way back when, which according to some was to remove reliance on "western" technology, but others made different claims to its purpose.

[1]https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg30679....

I don't think the concept of what a bifurcated/multiple internets is has really been clarified.

China's internet is the most split, but it is still technically connected and operates on a blacklist system.

I think what we're really seeing is a reenvisioning of where an internet services is considered to be operating, and governments are saying that, even if your servers are in the US, you may be considered to be operating in the EU, which is new, but also doesn't imply that we're going to cut the cables, because governments are usually ok with post-hoc enforcement efforts, rather than preventative measure. This could change if people try to undermine the laws.

As with many things on the world stage, the results will depend on how powerful each negotiating entity is. Russia has it's own search engine and could probably just turn off Google, etc. Turkey not so much; they don't need to roll over and take what Google provides, but they could find themselves aligning with Chinese or Russian service providers if Google refuses to do what they want. So I think this sort of power blocks model is more likely than a national borders model in any case.

This depresses me greatly. Is this inevitable?

At this point it feels like a race between getting a global government vs. splitting up the Internet. Sadly, the latter is much more likely.

I guess it depends how far in the future we're looking.

Seems like, long term, the formation of a global government is inevitable if we take in consideration global resource management, climate change and environmental degradation.

If you look at what is going on in the EU and the Euro problems it seems people don't have much of an appetite for it. Even the US struggles with reconciling the different requirements of local and federal government.

Unless we have WW3 and somebody wins.

Today is one thing, but in 2050, 2080, things could be vastly different.

It's inevitable because of the evil people who promote it. A little more cynicism and skepticism about politicians' motives is in order, I think.

It would take a major world event, in the scale of an alien invasion, to get a world government.

99% of people would tremble just from hearing Global Government

Satellite delivered internet gives you the internet of the country where the ground station lives. There are some companies trying to push a global coverage satellite internet vision, I don't find the current push very promising, but it's possible.

China, Russia, or the US probably have the clout to demand a global service not operate above it, but Turkey, Libya, Egypt probably can't.

Big biz generally want a global marketplace given winner take all dynamics of digital companies.

Still, hopefully countries will learn the same lesson as they tend to begrudgingly do: free markets mean prosperity.

Also hope that we don't give foreign aid to countries with a censored internet. Probably a good (though diminishing as China buys good will... Until they realize the terms of the bargains they've struck aren't so great long term)

Then, I hope there will always be deep and dark webs where someone will sell some freedom instead of dope.

Some interesting comments on this (from fb) from Grahame Lynch who produces CommsDay:

'''

I am inclined to agree with this. Looking at various tendencies in internet governance and national security legislation around the world right now there is more pulling the internet apart than pushing it together. This has been fairly likely ever since the world split 90-50 on how to/whether to regulate the net at a global level via the UN/ITU at WCIT a few years ago. In a sense, the Chinese internet already is its own thing, given how "separated" it is from the rest of the world by firewalls, deliberately constrained bandwidth connections and so on.

You will also see the same trend in telecom supply chains. There will be one for America, Australia, India, Taiwan, Korea and other nations in their sphere of influence which will resist China-sourced kit and one dominated by China for the rest of the world. The moves against Huawei in various countries is the forerunner of what is an articulated but little publicised US-drive to favour non-Chinese actors in the network technology supply chain. Samsung will be a big winner from this (as will Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco).

https://www.cnbc.com/…/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-…...

I've reported on this for a quarter of a century and, to be frank, I am surprised that the net and global supply chains have remained as open as they have for all this time. The next few years are going to be very interesting - or disturbing, depending on your POV.

'''

EDIT to reflect CommsDay which I think is the correct short title for Communications Day newsletter.

I read this in another article and thought Schmidt's prediction sounded very plausible. It parallels the ebb and flow of trade between large economies, which has shifted considerably over the last few centuries. In retrospect it seems somewhat naive to think that this would not apply to information.

After living in Beijing for 5 weeks earlier this year, I can say, not only the internet, just all of China. It's very tough to run a business in China as an outsider. Eventually, the government will sponsor a domestic company to replace your business and push you out with regulation and licensure.

This is a double-edged sword for Chinese companies. They are assured a domestic monopoly, and given the population of China, that's a very big one. However, when said companies try to compete in a global marketplace, they struggle without their government-sponsored monopoly.

He's already off by an order of magnitude.

Great article here from Foreign Affairs on the same topic

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-08-13/whe...

how about 3 internets:

* censored * "uncensored" but monitored by the DC-alphabet soup & Co * the dark web

I posted a suggestion a few days ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18022586 ) that cloudflare start to do this in order to protect itself and it's users.

With so many censoring rules popping up in different countries, a centralized service could easily be forced to eliminate tons of information.

right to be forgotten, not just from host country, but whole planet. GDPR. dmca, things that are fobidden in Asia, things that are to be blocked in and around Indonesia and such.

When a small group of trolls uses other people's policies to harass and deplatform women because they have issues with cleavage ( https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/14/paypal-ban-asmr-sound-ar... ) - it should be obvious that more and more of these kinds of censor those you don't like by using the policies of others is only going to grow.

Especially as more and more places are developing more censoring policies, and people are sharing methods for removing / de-platforming.

(they came for Alex Jones, and we kept using paypal, then they came for girls not dressed in Burkas and most still used payal, then they came for..)

The big internet companies are being used against the smaller groups of people all over the world.

Cloudflare ordered to give customer location data recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039208

Google and others have been forced to do the same, and even though some big G and Fbook occasionally try to deny some of the data sharing, they did not stop SESTA, instead looking to use these things as excuses / pass the blame.

What was the case where Msoft had to drop the appeals about sharing data from computers in other countries with the US?, as a new law was made, cloud-sharing or something like that?

Big G working on tracking and auto censoring for China and other places. Facebook, Instagram having to rush censoring in areas around the world.

Canada and the US have some of these things in the bargaining for the NAFTA re-agreement I think as well.

This is all happening much faster then most people realize I think, the ramifications have yet to understood.

Bifurcation, or divarication - it's getting split up much more than just in two.

Sadly the giants like Google and Cloudflare are being used as the largest hammers, or may be biggest saws to cut up and split up the worlds knowledge.

These are interesting times indeed.

and now articles are being published in the UK asking govs to use cloudflare, google and others to stop the transmission of information in just this way -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107919

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