US defeats Russia in a battle to control the future of the global internet

cnn.com

4 points·boltzmann-brain··2 comments

> On Thursday, members of the International Telecommunication Union voted to appoint Doreen Bogdan-Martin, the US-backed candidate, as the group’s secretary general.

> Bogdan-Martin, a nearly 30-year veteran of the ITU born in New Jersey, beat out her chief rival Rashid Ismailov by winning 139 votes out of 172. Ismailov won just 25 votes.

List of most important standards by ITU:

https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/studygroups/com16/ehscg/Documen...

Full list of standards by ITU (click on the alphabet letters):

https://www.itu.int/en/publications/ITU-T/Pages/default.aspx

Bogdan-Martin's Announcement:

https://twitter.com/ITUBDTDirector/status/157539988875760435...

I'm open to better titles, but given how important the ITU is for the telecommunications industry (see massive lists of standards above) the original headline is less clickbaity than one might at first think; meanwhile, a lot of users might not immediately know the significance of the ITU, so something like "US candidate wins control of ITU" might not reveal the impact. For this reason I just left the title as-is.

(BTW, also curious if anyone can point out any really interesting standards to look at from the standards list above. It's massive)

I interacted with ITU technocrats at one time. It is an expression of old Europe money and telecom, in a format that is similar to a USA corporation but more of a "castle" feeling to it. They literally employ armies, but in a white collar way. Probably some engineering talent, but really, they are about exerting power over networks, not the invention and execution you see in the USA / Silicon Valley. Do I want to add "Catholic" here? no but it is not far-fetched.

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