
The U.S. government couldn’t shut down the Internet, right? Think again - 7402
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-government-couldnt-shut-down-the-internet-right-think-again/2020/03/06/6074dc86-5fe5-11ea-b014-4fafa866bb81_story.html
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simonblack
The whole idea of the Internet (originally 'ARPANET' or 'DARPANET' -'Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network') was designed so that if whole
areas were destroyed in a nuclear war, the system would rout around the 'dead
area' and continue working.

Shut down the US networks - and the rest of the world would continue normally
and disregard the US as a 'dead area'.

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jsjddbbwj
The rest of the world will surely continue normally once Google, Facebook,
YouTube, etc are down, sure.

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kdtsh
There’s ‘normally’ and ‘normally’. There might not be as much English-language
content, but the Internet exists outside of FAANG.

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wuwuno
It's a nice click bait article, it isn't explicitly mentioned the article but
it's implied that if the COVID-19 got out of hand the government could
shutdown the Internet. It can't happen in the U.S.

There is too much critical infrastructure that relies on the Internet, and I'm
not talking about Government stuff, I mean water utilities, electric
utilities, gas utilities, finance, and not their SCADA systems, but their ERP
systems, finance systems, etc. Almost all B to B commerce runs across the
Internet. I'm sure there are still some hold over dinosaurs, but most things
traverse the Internet.

Trump is doing everything he can to placate big business and the stock market.
If he were to turn off the Internet he would stop almost all U.S. Businesses,
it would be like driving into a 30 ft thick concrete wall at 180 MPH.

Turning off the Internet would also cause a public panic of epic proportions,
taking a bad situation and making it so much worse.

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HomeDeLaPot
I agree with the sentiment that shutting down the entire Internet would cause
potentially catastrophic damage to society, but I'm not sure that's the point.
Take this quote:

>That means if a sitting president wants to shut down the Internet or
selectively cut off a social media outlet or other service, all it takes is an
opinion from his attorney general that Section 706 gives him the authority to
do so.

Selectively cut off Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, news sites, blogs? Still
damaging, but much more realistic than basically shutting off utilities. I
think the author is right to point out that the President has an incredible
amount of power over the Internet and that this arrangement should be
reconsidered.

