The internet is being taken over by the military: what are we going to do about it?
This is not intended to be one of those alarmist articles about cyberwar: I just thought I’d share some thoughts about what history can teach us. The internet is being turned into a battleground where more and more countries are displaying their power. The bully in the White House has announced a new national cyber defense strategy to facilitate the use of government weapons in response to possible attacks, while the United Kingdom is preparing cyber attacks that could plunge Moscow into darkness in response to the Kremlin’s recent provocations; all evidence that we are entering an arms race to produce powerful weapons to use the internet for anything from misinformation to attacks on critical infrastructures.
Recently, César Muñoz, from FayerWayer, reminded me of the prologue I wrote in April 2013 for the Spanish edition of “Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet”, which presciently sums up where we are:
“Cyberspace, has been militarized in every sense. Out in the real world, the equivalent of what is happening on the internet would be martial law. The internet and the free exchange of information could be enabling a historical period that would represent the greatest and most vibrant progress at all levels, but instead they are paving the way for the darkest, autocratic and totalitarian epoch we have seen. The internet, whether we believe it or not, is becoming the enemy, greasing the slippery slope humanity is at hurtling down at full speed, the greatest and most effective facilitator of totalitarianism.”
The internet and technology are increasingly being used by tyrants to control people, to single out dissidents, those who think differently or who want a different system of government. Offensive strategies pose clear and evident risks, strongly reminiscent of the Cold War, possibly the greatest waste of resources in the history of mankind, with countries investing in greater destructive potential, capable of wiping out life on the planet several times over, simply in search of an impossible balance. It was only through international treaties, by establishing responsibilities and bodies with a certain power to sanction, was it possible, in some way, to come up with a more constructive scenario.
The internet increasingly needs those kinds of mechanisms. The response of the bully, to spend more and more on cyber-armies, to escalate the situation by creating weapons that can destroy infrastructure that’s increasingly dependent on the internet makes no sense: history shows us where this leads. We urgently need meaningful international treaties with effective tools to protect hospitals, utilities and other critical infrastructure, while developing systems to trace cyber attacks and establish responsibilities, and then impose international sanctions to isolate governments that do not comply with the norms. The way forward is not to get bogged down in a meaningless race, but to talk to each other to reach consensus on what can and cannot be done, on what is allowed and what is not. We must isolate those who intend to exploit the internet as a weapon and instead empower it to become what it should always have been. Unless we can advance in this direction and reach international consensus, we will be repeating the mistakes of history that so far have never produced anything positive.
(En español, aquí)
