Russia’s recent declaration that it is prepared to operate its own internet should the West cut off access has struck some observers as more Putinesque bellicosity, which indeed it might be. But Moscow’s desire to build a web it can control is the dream of authoritarians everywhere. And not all the authoritarians are in government.
Regulating the flow of information has been the goal of every tyrant ever since Emperor Qin Shi Huang burned the books in 213 B.C. in the hope that later generations would believe that history had begun with his reign. 1 Nowadays one country after another wants the ability to control its own intranet — or at least to throw a kill switch.
Shutting off the web has proved easier than many imagined. When Hosni Mubarak’s regime ordered Egyptian telecoms to close down their internet service during the Arab Spring of 2011, traffic slowed to just about zero. Nowadays China’s Great Firewall is the best-known effort to restrict what a population can find online, but countries around the world are doing their best to follow Beijing’s example.