
Eric Schmidt, Ex-Google CEO, Predicts Internet Bifurcation with China - jedwhite
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-internet-split-china.html?__source=sharebar|linkedin&par=sharebar
======
anvandare
It won't just be China.

The Internet was, initially, a terra incognita for governments. (Which is
ironic given its origins.) At first any wilderness is home only to pioneers,
explorers, and other kinds of people who love the freedom that a frontier
(Wild West) region gives.

But inevitably (as is the way of humans) more humans appear, business pops up,
government follows, laws are made, property is titled, walls go up, and
freedom goes down. All valuable wilderness inevitably becomes civilized.

Eventually governments will simply cut the cables (so to speak) to make the
digital borders match the geographical borders, only allowing international
traffic via heavily supervised data-ports for registered and licensed data-
traders. The Big Companies will love and encourage this, as it means even less
possible competition for them. A cyber-war might speed up things as well, but
it seems inevitable anyway. (GDPR has already added a new row of bricks for
the wall, with some sites just refusing to serve my EU-based browser at all.)

~~~
myko
This depresses me greatly. Is this inevitable?

~~~
TeMPOraL
At this point it feels like a race between getting a global government vs.
splitting up the Internet. Sadly, the latter is much more likely.

~~~
remir
I guess it depends how far in the future we're looking.

Seems like, long term, the formation of a global government is inevitable if
we take in consideration global resource management, climate change and
environmental degradation.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
If you look at what is going on in the EU and the Euro problems it seems
people don't have much of an appetite for it. Even the US struggles with
reconciling the different requirements of local and federal government.

Unless we have WW3 and somebody wins.

~~~
remir
Today is one thing, but in 2050, 2080, things could be vastly different.

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jedwhite
Some interesting comments on this (from fb) from Grahame Lynch who produces
CommsDay:

'''

I am inclined to agree with this. Looking at various tendencies in internet
governance and national security legislation around the world right now there
is more pulling the internet apart than pushing it together. This has been
fairly likely ever since the world split 90-50 on how to/whether to regulate
the net at a global level via the UN/ITU at WCIT a few years ago. In a sense,
the Chinese internet already is its own thing, given how "separated" it is
from the rest of the world by firewalls, deliberately constrained bandwidth
connections and so on.

You will also see the same trend in telecom supply chains. There will be one
for America, Australia, India, Taiwan, Korea and other nations in their sphere
of influence which will resist China-sourced kit and one dominated by China
for the rest of the world. The moves against Huawei in various countries is
the forerunner of what is an articulated but little publicised US-drive to
favour non-Chinese actors in the network technology supply chain. Samsung will
be a big winner from this (as will Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco).

[https://www.cnbc.com/…/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-
predicts-…...](https://www.cnbc.com/…/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-
predicts-…|linkedin&par=sharebar)

I've reported on this for a quarter of a century and, to be frank, I am
surprised that the net and global supply chains have remained as open as they
have for all this time. The next few years are going to be very interesting -
or disturbing, depending on your POV.

'''

EDIT to reflect CommsDay which I think is the correct short title for
Communications Day newsletter.

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hodgesrm
I read this in another article and thought Schmidt's prediction sounded very
plausible. It parallels the ebb and flow of trade between large economies,
which has shifted considerably over the last few centuries. In retrospect it
seems somewhat naive to think that this would not apply to information.

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exabrial
After living in Beijing for 5 weeks earlier this year, I can say, not only the
internet, just all of China. It's very tough to run a business in China as an
outsider. Eventually, the government will sponsor a domestic company to
replace your business and push you out with regulation and licensure.

This is a double-edged sword for Chinese companies. They are assured a
domestic monopoly, and given the population of China, that's a very big one.
However, when said companies try to compete in a global marketplace, they
struggle without their government-sponsored monopoly.

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tomohawk
He's already off by an order of magnitude.

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GrahameLynch
Great article here from Foreign Affairs on the same topic

[https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-08-13/whe...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-08-13/when-
china-rules-web)

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willart4food
how about 3 internets:

* censored * "uncensored" but monitored by the DC-alphabet soup & Co * the dark web

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stevenicr
I posted a suggestion a few days ago (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18022586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18022586)
) that cloudflare start to do this in order to protect itself and it's users.

With so many censoring rules popping up in different countries, a centralized
service could easily be forced to eliminate tons of information.

right to be forgotten, not just from host country, but whole planet. GDPR.
dmca, things that are fobidden in Asia, things that are to be blocked in and
around Indonesia and such.

When a small group of trolls uses other people's policies to harass and
deplatform women because they have issues with cleavage (
[https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/14/paypal-ban-asmr-sound-
ar...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/14/paypal-ban-asmr-sound-art-therapy/)
) - it should be obvious that more and more of these kinds of censor those you
don't like by using the policies of others is only going to grow.

Especially as more and more places are developing more censoring policies, and
people are sharing methods for removing / de-platforming.

(they came for Alex Jones, and we kept using paypal, then they came for girls
not dressed in Burkas and most still used payal, then they came for..)

The big internet companies are being used against the smaller groups of people
all over the world.

Cloudflare ordered to give customer location data recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039208)

Google and others have been forced to do the same, and even though some big G
and Fbook occasionally try to deny some of the data sharing, they did not stop
SESTA, instead looking to use these things as excuses / pass the blame.

What was the case where Msoft had to drop the appeals about sharing data from
computers in other countries with the US?, as a new law was made, cloud-
sharing or something like that?

Big G working on tracking and auto censoring for China and other places.
Facebook, Instagram having to rush censoring in areas around the world.

Canada and the US have some of these things in the bargaining for the NAFTA
re-agreement I think as well.

This is all happening much faster then most people realize I think, the
ramifications have yet to understood.

Bifurcation, or divarication - it's getting split up much more than just in
two.

Sadly the giants like Google and Cloudflare are being used as the largest
hammers, or may be biggest saws to cut up and split up the worlds knowledge.

These are interesting times indeed.

~~~
stevenicr
and now articles are being published in the UK asking govs to use cloudflare,
google and others to stop the transmission of information in just this way ->
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107919)

