Russia is contemplating briefly detaching itself from the global internet at some point in the next few months, according to .
Despite appearances, the experiment isn鈥檛 a sign of the country鈥檚 mounting isolationism, but rather part of Russia鈥檚 efforts to test its defences against large-scale cyberattack, presumably in the case of an increase in hostilities with either major European powers or the US.
By its own logic, this isn鈥檛 a silly move or grandstanding. In theory at least, the internet is a network of networks: your home network connects, in turn, to a network operated by your internet provider, which connects to one on a regional or national scale, and so on.
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In a time of crisis, it is easy to understand why a country would wish to cut itself off from the global internet. It may be trying to block access to social media in the case of civil unrest or, as part of a military conflict, may be attempting to protect its critical infrastructure from cyberattack.
However, in practice, this has proven a risky endeavour. In its final days in 2011, Hosni Mubarak鈥檚 regime in Egypt attempted to take the country鈥檚 internet connection offline in a bid to thwart the organisation of protests in Cairo. This backfired as the nation鈥檚 internal network wasn鈥檛 robust enough to enable its own critical communications to continue, meaning it was unable to sustain the strategy of keeping itself entirely disconnected.
Severing ties
Russia wishes to test whether its national network 鈥� an internet in one nation, as it were 鈥� is strong enough to keep operating even when its international links are severed. This mirrors a similar effort by Iran, , to ensure its network could survive its international ties being cut.
That attempt proved prescient: a documentary by film-maker Alex Gibney later revealed that the US and its allies have prepared , so the country鈥檚 fears were well-founded.
Broadly, Russia鈥檚 planned move reminds us of two key lessons of the modern internet. The first is that major conflicts will now involve the online domain just as much as the physical one 鈥� and a daily battle goes on behind the scenes for online dominance, and by each nation to arrange effective countermeasures.
The second is that the internet isn鈥檛 the intrinsic force for globalisation that some imagined it might be. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad used his family relationship with the chair of the country鈥檚 telecoms company to help him trace and then capture or kill his enemies. In China, censorship is immediate and effective.
And in Iran and now Russia, preparations are in place to take down the global connections to the internet 鈥� for whatever reason they would wish to do so. The innocent online era is over.
