Backbone Internet Services Now Banning Russia

There was a logical push by Russian nationalists for “internet sovereignty” over the last few years.

This included banning censorious Western social media companies which were regulating the national discussion in Russia to promote Western-Analist interests, as well as ensuring that Russia maintained its own backbone services to keep the internet online without the support of the West.

The Russians have now finally done the former, banning all of the Western social media from the country. Hopefully, they also did the latter.

CNN:

Big tech platforms have joined the global backlash against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, with Facebook (FB), Google (GOOGL), Twitter (TWTR), Spotify (SPOT), Netflix (NFLX) and others placing at least partial restrictions on Russian content — if not exiting (or getting themselves blocked) altogether.

In the past week, however, the severing of Russia from the global internet went one layer deeper. Two of the world’s largest internet service providers, Lumen Technologies and Cogent Communications, said they would block Russian customers from their networks over fears that their networks could be used by the Russian government for cyberattacks against the West. But a knock-on effect is that it will be even harder for citizens in the country to use the worldwide web.

The move highlights the tension over Russia’s effort to erect what’s being called a digital Iron Curtain to close its citizens off from outside information, much like China has done for years. Companies find themselves caught between helping Russians freely access the internet and ensuring their services are not used by the Russian government to spread disinformation, propaganda or worse.

The implications are massive. Lumen and Cogent collectively preside over nearly 600,000 miles of optical fiber that forms the piping for the global internet, with each boasting operations in more than 50 countries, according to their websites.

Fear of cyberattacksBoth companies insist their moves were squarely directed at the Russian government and not the Russian people, and any impediment to the latter’s ability to access outside information is an unfortunate side effect.

“We as a company are a very strong believer in an open and uncensored internet,” Dave Schaeffer, Cogent’s CEO, said in an interview with CNN Business. “This was a very difficult decision.”

Dave Schaeffer, a man who constantly agonizes about freedoms and stuff

According to Schaeffer, cutting Russia off is a preventative measure against cyberattacks that may be perpetrated through Cogent’s network by the Russian government or individuals linked to it. The company, which is based in Washington D.C., has limited its action to around 25 customers that are incorporated in Russia and are directly on Russian networks, he said. That means Russian businesses that use Cogent’s network outside the country through non-Russian state entities can continue to do so.

“We felt that the downside of having the possibility that these connections could be used offensively outweighed the negative of terminating some services,” he added.

An unprecedented decisionLumen, headquartered in Los Angeles, cited similar reasoning for its decision, which came a few days after Cogent’s.

“We decided to disconnect the network due to increased security risk inside Russia,” Mark Molzen, the company’s global issues director, said in an email. “We have not yet experienced network disruptions but given the increasingly uncertain environment and the heightened risk of state action, we took this move to ensure the security of our and our customers’ networks, as well as the ongoing integrity of the global Internet.”

If Russia isn’t prepared for this, they are going to have to go to the Chinese.

Russia has shown thus far that they were prepared for all of the economic attacks, but Putin is only one man, and he’s a boomer, so he might not have been thinking all that much about the structure of the Russian internet.

However, with the current level of economic and military integration with China, asking them to use their internet services is not a really big ask.

Unlike Russia, China employs a lot of young people to manage their tech sector. Obviously, the two countries have different histories, with Russia having been “modern” much earlier than China. China entered the modern world in the age of the internet, so it was something already on their minds, and they’ve done a fantastic job managing the tech sector generally.

However, just like the shutdown of the Russian ability to participate in the Western economy has a lot of people shook, the idea of America being able to shut down the functioning of the Russian internet is something that the entire world is going to be watching. This will be one more reason to slowly back away from ties to America, which is now effectively a rogue state on the global stage, acting out in a tantrum-like fashion that, needless to say, does not benefit global stability.