This session is about Internet fragmentation. Internet fragmentation is a topic that one hears, mentioned quite a lot these days, it wasn't always. So if you went back 10 years ago, before Snowden, the notion of Internet fragmentation was something that you only heard from time to time among some technical people describing glitches with particular systems in the way they're operating, and so on. But after Snowden, and we saw the increasing politicization of the Internet, and the Internet governance environment and the growing discussions about whether or not countries like Russia, China and so on, might split off and fork that in the rut and become create separate internets. In particular circumstances, you start to have a lot of discussion about varying ways in which fragmentation was starting to occur in the environment, and people would refer to it both in terms of governmental kinds of sources, government policies, that were moving us towards a more fragmented ecosystem, but sometimes also the discussions of how corporate practices, things like walled gardens and, and so on, would would erect barriers and limit the and interoperability and movement of data and so on. And so fragmentation as a discourse began to sort of move up the agenda. And we you recall that in net mon DL in 2014, the NetMundial statement talked about fragmentation and how to avoid it, that the high star leadership team had the Montevideo statement that decried fragmentation and said we have to work against it. And so this started to really percolate a lot. And then, in 2015, at Davos, the World Economic Forum, we had a session on keeping worldwide in the web, where all these CEOs and heads of international organizations came together and said that this is a big concern. So this led to the WEF, asking me to run a project on this, which resulted in a paper with Vint Cerf and with can claim vector then, in 20, early 2016, then Milton did wrote a wrote a little book about it, then suddenly, there was an explosion of all kinds of people talking about fragmentation everywhere. And and governments began to talk about it in all kinds of different statements. And you'll see this now the European Union, or the UN Secretary General, it's just become commonplace to decry the possibility of fragmentation. And in every one of these cases, we find that there's no clear understanding of what are we talking about. There's just highly variable conceptions of what fragmentation might actually mean, where it comes from, where what are the consequences of it, and so on. And that lack of consensus is problematic. There's kind of a broad spectrum, somebody invoked yesterday, there was this paper written by a group of British academics that said, there's three or four internets now. So there's on one end of the scale of the continuum, you've got people saying, oh, any kind of variations and differences in policy, and so on, so forth, means that there's Internet fragmentation. And then on the other end of the scale continuum, you've got people who say, there's no Internet fragmentation going on. And all this is all just kind of misspecification of problems. And then you've got a lot of different people along different points of the continuum in between myself being one of them. So we have this variation between broad definitions and narrow definitions, which kind of is reflective of the same kinds of things that we had with the Internet governance, discussion 20 years previously about what the hell is Internet governance? How do we define it, who should be in charge, and so on. So this has consequences, how people specify the problem, and understand the problem has consequences for what types of policy models are followed? Which actors are engaged? What do you what issues? Do you focus on what issues you're not focused on? People who say that private sector behavior, for example, doesn't constitute fragmentation. That means that there's no discussion at all about walled gardens and things like that, right? So you map out by definition, certain kinds of problems that a lot of people think constant fragmentation by saying, that doesn't meet the criteria. So how you define it matters. And that's why we want to bring this panel of leading thinkers together to try to probe this question, and see if we can move towards some broader degree of consensus, or at least sharpen our differences in our understandings of what fragmentation is. Now we have two people here in the room and his mark online.
His mark there, okay, I am, can you hear me
agree to do this panel was more as more of an interactive talk show type thing, rather than just serial presentation. So I'm going to ask the group three questions that we agreed in advance and they're going to use those as a basis to organize the conversation and so and we're going up until what time exactly 123 So okay, and we'll we'll make sure that there's plenty of time for discussion with you all afterwards. So let's start with what is fragmentation? What is Internet fragmentation? How do we define the term? And how does how do people views of what Internet fragmentation is in this panel? Compare with the views that are out there in the larger discourse that we've seen taking place in multiple different settings. So what order shall Shall I just go in alphabetical order? You can start with Mark, and then go to Perry and then Milton. Okay. So Mark, why don't you lead off?
Can you hear me just fine?
We can't hear you.
Mark, hello. Testing, testing? No, but my phone is still muted. Yep, more on my side. It's it's x transmitting. Gotcha. Now you got me? Yeah. Oh, there we go. So thank you, everyone, for having me. I had to have a bit of change of plans in my flights, but and be there. But let's talk about data fragmentation. So when I think about that, that theme, the first thing that comes to my mind is, what exactly do we mean by that? And if we mean that we have stayed within the TCP IP protocol, then yes, the Internet is to a whole unique, single thing. That is true that much is true, even with the advent of the crypto space or the blockchain space, those still rely heavily on TCP IP. So in that sense, okay, we are not fragmented. But in terms of the actual user experience, if you're saying every user has access to the same content, every user can reach every website, that's not really true is it's we most of our Internet experience nowadays, is very much intermediated. Whether by content distribution networks, whether by local proxies and different ways of resolving the DNS, that are specific, even at the browser level. So we have to be very careful when we talk about Internet fragmentation. Because from a purely technical standpoint, we are probably not fragmented. But in terms of where the internet's is going and where it has come from when it was first conceived, then I believe, it doesn't make exactly sense for us to say that it's unfragmented. Every user has a different experience based on their geography and even the setup of their network, and will not have a consistent global unique experience, no matter what we do. So I will start with this FOTS so that we can get started on a bit of a discussion. Thank you.
Okay, so variations in user experience, the ways in which things resolve and so on this to you constitutes fragmentation, whereas the underlying infrastructure remains unfragmented. at a systemic level, okay. Perry?
Well, is it working? Yeah. Okay. First of all, thank you very much for this opportunity and industry. Yeah, in terms of fragmentation, I think first we should think about what is that oneness of Internet that we are talking about? So then we understand what is fragmenting or is not fragmenting? So Internet itself is a complex sort of concept. It's multi purpose it was designed from beginning as a general purpose. It's involves software's it's involves hardware infrastructure. So it's very hard thinking about this to think that we're exactly is it fragmenting because having this many devices attached to it as a network of networks. So it was never really this one thing that suddenly we think that now this one thing is fragmenting and falling to pieces. So having said that, an understanding that you're dealing with something which is multifaceted, then we have to think about added to complexity is the number of players that are involved various tools that are used to cause this fragmentation. So we are dealing with something very, very complex, and it's hard to to come up with a concept of fragmented or not fit augmented. So I want to shape the conversation I want to borrow a metaphor from, from Tim Berners. Lee, he talks about loser physic, and he talks about that we should be able to apply law of physics to Internet, meaning that if it holds true in one place, it should hold true everywhere. Arriving from that to what Mark just said, meaning that Internet users experience should be the same everywhere. Now, we know that's not the case. It's very, very different. Having said that, there are similarities. So are we. So while the flavors and is different, the core of Internet remains intact. So from radically different to completely similar, you're somewhere in between, I would say more close to that radical differences. Increasingly, we are getting closer there. But there are forces that are working in order to Brexit or not necessarily pushing towards fragmentation. But at the same time, the forces that are confronting it, and we are somewhere in between closer to I think fragmentation.
And for you, the forces that are pushing towards fragmentation include what
the critical one is geopolitical. And right now it would have what is happening in Russia. That's where I worry that within next five years, we could see a breakdown of Internet because we already on January 30, Russia actually activated also they claimed there was a malfunction of software, but they actually we know that experienced with different alternative routes. So they're experimenting with it. And we know that there are alignment happening. So the real critical, complex, difficult to resolve. One is the geopolitical Of course we have innovation in place. But innovation to me, technical parts are easy to resolve, we can always come to agreements, geopolitical is the one which is very difficult. Okay,
thank you. Well, you said the word alignment. So I'm sure Milton Sampey. Milton, your thoughts?
Yeah. Is this not no? Okay. So I think we have essentially three different sort of theories of fragmentation in front of us. One of them is that user experience is fragmented that the technical infrastructure is not that's what Mark was saying, as I understood it. And I would respond to that that user experience in any medium, certainly, the Internet is always going to be going to be different, right? You're going to have different information sources, different kinds of channels streaming into your home, that's always going to be different. So it makes no sense to attribute fragmentation to do differences in user experience. And indeed, if we tried to homogenize user experience, I think we're talking about a kind of power that nobody would want anybody to have. So what Mark is correct, that there really is no technical fragmentation in the sense that the world is still using TCP IP. That is to say, layer three, and layer four is still unified. Everybody uses it. So what is the problem? Well, Perry was hit the nail on the head, finally, at the end of your talk, that it is basically geopolitical, or that is to say, differences in policies and enforcement's organized around national jurisdictions. I mean, that's the threat. And that's why fragmentation is important, and something you should worry about, because, you know, there are policies that many people advocate that reinforce this kind of jurisdictional fragmentation. And there are policies that loosen that fragmentation and facilitate information flows and cooperation and markets around the world. So that's fundamentally the debate is that I mean, the definition of fragmentation that I would hold is that it is all about efforts by territorial sovereigns to establish boundaries of some kind on the Internet that they can regulate and control.
Okay, so let me pick up on two aspects to that one. You You were disagreeing with mark on the basis that you uniformity of experience is not a desirable thing. I don't think he is saying that everybody has to look at the same websites. I think he's saying that if people try to look at a given website, some for some people, it resolves properly. And for some people, it doesn't. Yeah,
it's accessibility, then universal accessibility. Yeah, that's great. And I hope that's what Mr. Berners Lee means by the laws of physics, which questions in my mind whether he understands laws of physics or of social systems, right. But you know, everything being uniform around you, the world being constituted of experiential atoms that we all consume uniformly? I mean, who wants that? And it's just not possible? No,
I think that's not what's being advocated. I think people talking about the same queries yielding different results, the same technical processes and attempts to send data yielding results, etc. The second point, though, and your definition, Milton, you're saying it's exclusively political, so for you then the commercial sources of fragmentation that other people talk about? Zero Rating, walled gardens, violations of net neutrality, none of that counts to you is fragmentation.
No, no. And he frankly, it's not a serious problem. And when you talk about walled gardens, you're talking about, oh, you have to subscribe to The Wall Street Journal before you can read their paper, right? That's essentially it or, you know, Google, all of the big platforms are not gated in any sense of the word, they are all accessible via but
you can't like take your data from Facebook. Like if you built up 10 years of life in Facebook, you can't just put your data,
you actually can put your data, but it's just a stupid hassle that nobody wants to do. Like, you know, you. You ask them for your data, and it's some weird, formatted record of everything you've ever done. And they dump it into your disk. And then what do you do with it?
Okay, so before I turn to the next question, I want to go back to Mark, Mark, how do you feel about the responses to your initial suggestion?
Thank you, Bill. So Professor Muller presents an interesting point. But I guess it depends on what's the promise of the Internet, you were sold. Right? When when I was growing up, what was sold to me was, everybody gets access to anything everywhere all the time, you can see the same thing that a person in this back
to access I agree with, it's a universal experience we were debating,
right. So whenever that was the big promise, and more and more, that is not the case, more and more, we are seeing the exact opposite. Actually, there's a move and again, that the point about geopolitical aspects makes sense, because this is largely state driven, but also tech driven. That is also, more and more browsers come pre configured with, for example, DNS over HTTPS, which allows for intermediation more and more people are acting behind firewalls by default, all these different things. I'm not saying they're bad. They're not bad things. They may be all the great things. But they changed the nature of the promise that was sold, at least to me, right, it completely changes the direction of what we are doing in terms of Internet. It's not a you type anything, you go anywhere. It's more like, you type anything, and you get intermediated in some direction. And maybe you get to where you are, is that fragmentation? I don't know. But I think it's a fair point for us to discuss. Thank you. Okay,
great. Thanks, Mark. All right, well, then let's take a second. Try to get a little bit more tightly focused in on the things that we do think are fragmentation. Everybody seems to agree that political governmental actions are leading towards fragmentation. Yes, sir. All right.
You're on and Melton sort of glibly said that walled gardens are things like paywalls for newspapers. But are there other examples like access programs that Facebook has an Africa for example, where they're making Internet available, but then in fact, your gateway to the Internet is, in fact, just Facebook. And that's a little bit different, I think, than talking about a paywall, in terms of so that feels like private action that does feel a little bit more like fragmentation and
zero rating is very widespread in a lot of parts of the developing world.
Let's talk about very limited let's talk about that. So you're saying that Facebook's subsidization of Internet access but limited access is a wall and they People are trapped in that wall. Yes,
I think I think the contention
of so they give them something for free. And it's a trap. Right? The contention, like if they wanted to buy their way out of Facebook's limitations by getting their own paid Internet subscription, they could do it right. What's stopping them? It's resources. And if that means that Facebook may be in fact helping them get access to part of the Internet,
I think also, we have to think of what we think of Internet. Is it a public benefit? If it is, then that diff that separating it that some people could pay and have access and others to Facebook? It's I think it's a bit unfair. But at the same time,
it's unfair for people to pay for services,
if it is public benefit.
So so I wouldn't say that 80% of the stuff on the Internet is some kind of commercial service. Okay,
we'll come we'll come back to zero rate, because I think people have more things to say about it. I just wanted to try and get a little interaction going around this point. But I think I think it's important, though, to raise the question is, how do we all accept the idea that it's exclusively governmental, which is Milton's position? Or do we also think that there are forms of fragmentation that originate either through bad code and engineering, things like that small technical glitches or commercial practices, which are intended to shape and direct people's access, and use of the Internet. And on that point, it sounds like we're in a disagreement.
I think that there are several forms of fragmentation, when we talk about politics is because the other ones are easy to resolve their ways of resolving them. However, when it comes to geopolitics, it hits an ideology, and it becomes very difficult to resolve it. Because basically, the foundation of Internet as we liked, and as Mark said that it was sold to him. It's based on civil liberty. And China clearly says that civil liberty is a construct of Western world, right. So there we it's very hard to resolve a concept like that. So he claims that claiming that it's a universal value is Western woods trying to impose their values on us. So how could we resolve a situation like that? I'm not saying it's impossible, but this is where the difficulty lies. With innovation, we have ways of resolving it with private sector. Of course, private sector is a big player. Problems arise from private sector activity, but we have means and tools to resolve it. But when it comes to geopolitics, it's complex. No
question. By the way, I'm noticing already that there are people who want to jump into the conversation. So I want to move this along and get through three questions just to set the table. And then we'll open up to everybody in about 20 minutes. So the second question we thought we'd say something about then, okay, we have the question definitions, what do we think it means? And then a second part that comes from that is impact? How do we assess concretely the impact people talk about fragmentation all the time, without giving any real sense of where is it physically, manifest empirically manifest? Or how do we, how do we, how would we map it, describe it in concrete terms, measure it, etc? So if we agree that political is definitely a source, then Okay, my question would be, which policies have what impact concretely that we see if you think it's also commercial practices, which what are the impacts that we can describe? So let's try and focus a little bit more on that. Mark, your thoughts?
Thank you. So whenever is discussed what impact fragmentation could have, there's always this blank left after that, right. In my opinion, this is because the discussion is a lot on the on the political or on the conceptual side. So that blank, in my opinion, would be fueled by we would make protocols that would bridge this different Internet, we would make them work together anyway. Right? Unless there was some some very, very strong hire for stopping that. Well, what if Russia becomes its own Internet? I'm very doubtful. They would segregate themselves from global commerce from global activities. They would want a specific thing to be kept the site we wouldn't build an intermediate protocol. Just like the Internet wasn't in the beginning. So the Internet going that if our TCP IP, we had a bunch of smaller networks and smaller protocols, and eventually TCP IP glued them together. So if we have to switch back to that model, is that the is that ideal? I don't think so we lose a lot of optimization, we lose opportunities for freedom, speech and access. But is it the end of the word? I don't think it's the end of the word. I think it's a technical challenge that will be we will have to overcome. Thank you.
Okay. So, again, coming to the question, concrete impacts of the kinds of things that you think of fragmentation? Can you give me some examples of things that, you know, we can see and touch and say, Ah, that's because of fragmentation.
You know, for example, we were talking about private sector, some of the problems we have is when we talk about walled gardens, is the silos created in a social fabric of our society, where people are only hearing their own voices. And we saw the impact in terms of elections, we have seen impacts in values, aspects of, you know, our daily lives. So that's one, one type. The other one is, again, I'm talking about sensor chips. So if you live in some of the authoritative countries, you know, how difficult it is to get the information, even have access to information, have communication have connection. So we have some tools and innovations that try to overcome it. But it's a game of moths and chase. So it's constantly something innovated, and it's censored. And something else, you know, related to government policies in terms of censorship in terms of limiting the access. So we discussed private sector. So these are some of the concrete examples. Can
I press you on this point to Milton, I've had disagreement about this aspect of thinking the past censorship, let's take that as an example. For when it when you say censorship is is a creator of fragmentation. Is that any instance of censorship? Or are we talking only about sort of systemic sustained censorship? Like, there's obviously a qualitative difference between the Chinese Great Firewall blocking, you know, hundreds of platforms and 1000s of websites on a permanent ongoing basis? Versus India turns off the Internet for a little while, during an election and turns it back on or, or something like that, right. So doesn't have to be sustained and comprehensive to matter, it causes fragmentation or any
I think that, you know, it needs to be structural in a meaningful way. And, yes, permanent, having said that, even a small doses of fragmentation still is harmful, and they cause effects. But generally speaking, if you're talking about fragmentation, we are talking about structural changes that are often permanent.
Okay. So even though people may experience censorship in a direct sense as they're being limited, you would think of it more in terms of a sustained program. Okay. If
I must say goes, but one is, okay.
Dr. Mueller, tell us about concretely how we see you think a lot about cyber sovereignty, these securitization, these kinds of things. How concretely do we see the impacts of that? Well,
in the States, we're seeing extremely concretely as concrete as a brick upon the head. We have executive orders that are banning specific apps. So we're saying the United States is going to set up its own great firewall, and we're going to decide what apps you can have access to and which ones you can't.
The Montana? No, I'm
not, I'm talking about the federal government. This was an executive order declared under a national emergency, which is a wartime special powers bill. Apparently, the United States is at some kind of war. So tick tock is like this new weapon aimed at our hearts and we must block it.
Reverse though.
Yeah. So chips, we need to talk about CHIP sanctions, right, and export control. So in effect, the United States is organizing a geopolitical block to control the trade in devices and in computing devices, basically. And some of the crazy people who talk excuse me not crazy. Okay, some of the Wilder people talking about AI regulation, are saying that The world, the world should come together to actually regulate compute, precisely because it is the most concentrated and easy to control component of the digital ecosystem. So, if you start making devices, software, application services, digital services, as well as the Internet, a part of a national security agenda, right weaponization, as they call it, then you are going to have serious forms of fragmentation in terms of access to services and content and even infrastructure on the Internet. Okay,
so the Biden executive order a couple of days ago, saying that sensitive personal data cannot be transferred to countries of engine of concern such as China, Russia, Iran
is great that the United States has adopted a Chinese law. I mean, it's like its ultimate compliment. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
So to you that constitutes a Internet fragmentation.
If you're putting borders up around territorial borders up around the flow of information, Hell, yes. That's okay. That is fragging.
I thought we weren't. Okay, good. All right. That's interesting. All right. Before we go to the audience and open things up to the conversation, let's let's go to questions. What is to be done as Lenin said, Davies the wrong person to quote these days? Or what? Let's put it more generally, what should the world do? What what is the fragmentation we don't want? How about that? In the current UN phase. So seriously, the what is to be done? What kinds of responses by governments multistakeholder groupings other processes, would do, we think would be advisable to be pursued? Because we've got, as I said at the outset, all kinds of proclamations coming down, raining down like crazy from think tanks, governmental entities, international organizations, everybody's decrying fragmentation saying and must be avoided. But aside from saying that, in concrete terms, what can be done to try to address the kinds of fragmentation we've identified? Mark, your thoughts?
Thank you. So one thing for that is for sure, we need to keep fighting for the DNS. It is still the unifying point of the Internet, no, no matter how you look at it, right, it is still how we are all together. So in the most practical sense, to me, we need to keep improving the DNS actually, the DNS still has a lot of, you know, small for pitfalls and things that are not quite right. We don't do enough to we ensure that it's available, but we don't do it enough to ensure that it's not hacked and spoofed to our hell. So we need to keep working on actually making the DNS as strong, stronger, let me put it that way, a stronger environment, because that's what will keep does Internet that unfragmented network that we want, what states will do around that, and how they will force their way around this and that, then that becomes something that needs to be fought on the at the local level, right? What we need to do as a community is ensure that those resources, not only still they're still doing everything together, but that it keeps getting stronger, we take the DNS for granted. Well, we need to think of it as a product that we keep on improving, we need to keep making it attractive, interesting, good, reliable, more and more, instead of just saying, hey, is there right? It is, after all, when we talk about fragmentation, more or less, we are looking towards two protocols, right? We're looking towards TCP IP, or UDP, if you want as well. And the DNS that's more or less what's keeping this cohesion. So I would say that that will be the priority of someone who really wants to see at least at the conceptual at least at the possibility level for us to keep having a whole Internet.
So then it stands that I can reason that ICANN would be a leading edge in this effort to fight fragmentation, since if the DNS is the main concern.
I personally consider it to be that way, but others may see it differently. Okay, good. All right.
I think that first of all, we have to realize that Internet as a exact same experience, if it ever was was a thing of fats, and in future we are looking at Internet which has which is diverse and has its own flavors. Having said that, then we have to think about I think If the main problem is geopolitical, then we need a lot of diplomacy there. In order to resolve the problem, I think that there is a need for West to make a very good case that why there is luck, if we can call it is blood. But anyway, for these alternative countries, why it's to their advantage to be part of a system that they claim, it's unfair to them because we know all the discussion and disputes about values standardization, the whole concept of Internet, so we need to really to make a good case to convince them that it's to their advantage. And maybe we have to give some things away in order to shape the situation in a way to be acceptable to other countries, maybe to be more fair to them, I don't know. But it needs intensive diplomacy, in my opinion. And also another part of Internet that is very important to emphasize is the multi stakeholder model. It sits at the center of discussion and dispute between alternative countries and Western democracies. And it's important to safeguard it and ensure that it remains, but we need to make it more inclusive, to resolve it. And I want to bring an example that, you know, there are serious grievances, they need to be answered by alternative countries, because we cannot change their ideology. That's the ideology they have. That's the way they are gonna exist. So, for example, in early 2000, China started to to be concerned about the English language being the main language for the codes and IPs. So they started their own when their voices wasn't heard, they started to have their own system. And that's when actually, in 2011, ICANN started international domain names, and that's actually put that concept into rest. So there are serious concerns that I think they need to be addressed in order that we can go forward but we need intensive diplomacy. So
diplomacy is presumably in, you know, all institutional settings and so on. IDN timelines aside, Milton, your, your thoughts about what has to be done where where should we be concentrating?
I think we do have to concentrate on the the eye star organizations that we need to protect these globalized and private sector based institutions from being the incursions of states and we need to insulate them from states. And we need to globalize and privatize other aspects of the Internet infrastructure. And by privatize I mean, insofar as the governance of it can be handled through private sector entities rather than states, which are going to bring in the geopolitics Sorry, do
you mean private sector or non state?
I mean, well, private sector is non state. Okay.
Well, okay. Do you mean business or non state? Both? Okay.
Both. I mean, yeah, business and civil society. Yeah. That's who does governance and ICANN and that's who does it in the regional address registries and so on. So I think the the if it was Martin, but
yeah. If the goal has to be
have
so much
rational as you can either just plastic policy or its foreign policy removal can be very constrained. Absolutely. That's are not going to be easy to deal with. And I think we may actually end up with some kind of fragmentation in almost a technical sense if the way Western democracies and the eastern authoritarian states cannot agree to cooperate, which is why the US China relationship is so important, you know, we really have to keep the US and China interlinked on the Internet. And frankly, I think was Mark was talking about the Russians don't want to disconnect from the Internet and how the Chinese do not want to disconnect from the Internet, as much as they hate the its freedom and its openness in terms of the information. They're aware of the economic value of connection to the rest of the world, and the the way in which information technology plays into efficient government and efficient economic management. So they think nobody wants to disconnect the this global infrastructure that we've set up around the internet's identifiers. And we need to make sure that it doesn't get dragged into these geopolitics. And we need to understand that there are all many other forms of self governance out there, like what's happening, or what's been happening around the, the web PKI, the public key infrastructure for the web, which is a cybersecurity and encryption enabler. You know, that whole thing is governed by the private sector, mostly by businesses. And it works very well. And the important thing about it is that it's globally compatible. So it's an infrastructure of authority is outside of states. And if we have states forcing the browser's to stick their own certificate, or certificate authorities into their root stores into the trust stores, we're relating to this trust theme. Now, finally, you know, you you will literally fragment the compatibility of the web PKI. Right. You will have a European trust jurisdiction, you will have a North American trust jurisdiction a Chinese a Russian, go down to whatever micro level of states you want to you might eventually end up with that.
Okay. Sounds good. Well, I mean, not sounds good, but sounds sounds like a good summary of your position.
Ill Drake advocate of fragmentation. Yeah.
Let's bring it up. All right. So we have 15 minutes, then to open it up to everybody. We'd love to hear people from the audience here. I think Eduardo had a thought that why don't you want to kick it off?
Hello, hello. Yeah, just have a comment that, you know, when I think about fragmentation, I've seen it in my mind, like, it's a switch Ethernet on and off, you know. And, you know, and we're talking here about that, in the fact that, you know, like Mark said, if everybody uses TCP IP, we are not fragmented. I mean, we're all using the same language. So the way I see on the conversation that is going to, which is right, we're trying to make a definition of what fragmentation is, which is think about a soft fragmentation, because you still connected to the Internet. And I look at this, like, let's say, we look at a country, you know, look at a corporation as a as an example, where they have a place where traffic comes in and out. If at the time when I switch that traffic, when they switch that, I mean, that firewall, it becomes an intranet, that's fragmentation, there you have fragmentation, or otherwise, you're talking about experiences that you see different applications here. You can get filter here, you get different places and other places. And that's soft fragmentation. And this has been there for as long as I I know, I've been there. So I'll just comment.
No, it's very important comment. And a lot of the discussion has been precisely around. And I think most people concede that in terms of systemic underlying the underlying integrity of the DNS and TCP IP, and so on. Yes, of course, it's still there. Right. So nobody's arguing that there we have systemic structural, total breakdown, fragmentation that Chinese China and 1.4 billion people are in a completely different universe, but what you call soft, what other people call behavioral, other people would call it the level of user experience. There are all kinds of techniques and behaviors that begin to create separations, when you have things like the Chinese Great Firewall, when you when you have a country of 1.4 billion people, nobody can use Google, nobody can use Facebook, nobody can use whatever. So the experience and the activities that people elsewhere are participating in, they don't have access to and that's multiplied across multiple jurisdictions. Some people would say, that's not to call that soft is not maybe not the right thing, but But I understand the distinction you're drawing this is a very important one. Could
I get into that so much Hmm, I think again, what gets lost in some of these fragmentation, dis conversations and one of the reasons I put so much emphasis on states is that the Internet is in fact designed to be fragmented. It is a, it is an agglomeration or a concatenation of private networks. And you can make your private network as private and as closed off as you like, you can you can program your router to let in one packet a day. Not that that would do you any good. But you can do that it's your bloody network, it's your router, so that the whole point of the Internet is that people control their own networks. And that means it's at the private sector level, there'll be all kinds of soft fragmentations, if you will, and that if it's private property, I don't want anybody coming in and messing around with my data or my network, right? So enterprise networks, clouds, all of these things that are now holding the Internet together are basically programmable boundaries, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. It's when the boundaries are forced on us by hierarchical authorities that it becomes a problem. Okay,
but the here's the question, in that point, I think nobody disagrees that autonomous systems are different, that can be governed differently. But it's one thing to say a company can have private, protect his private space through for security reasons, whatever else. But when they are imposing those rules, and others, that becomes the issue. So you think it's a problem when governments impose rules on people, but you don't think it's a problem. And when private firms that have large user populations will do the same?
If the private firm forces you into its walled garden at gunpoint, and then won't let you leave, or extract money from you in a criminal fashion, then yes, that is a problem. But if you're saying I joined the service provider, and they have a walled garden, was if you don't like the walled garden, don't don't join that service provider.
Okay. Libertarian answer? Okay. Good. We have lots of people. Let's come back to you. Can I get some other new people on first? Okay, so back here? Yes. Just go down the row, all three of you will take several will take several interventions, and then we'll respond. Sure.
Thanks a lot. For really interesting discussion. I'd like to hear the panelists thoughts on fragmentation at the level of standards. I know, Milton's got strong views on this. And also, you know, I think that where we've ended up as the panel on sort of think, focusing on the crucial role of the domain name system as the sort of glue that that holds everything together. What about private sector driven type of alternative naming systems. So you've got, on the one hand, you've got standards proposals, which seek to re architect the naming and addressing, and you've also got sort of the web three domains, we're seeing about 7 million of them at the moment in which we're not tracking all of them at the moment. So they seem to be great, gaining some traction. I'd really like to hear the panel's views on that. And then one final thing, if I may, is fragmentation at the level of regulation, which you both touched on the sort of the digital sovereignty approach where you're restricting data from flowing across borders. So thanks a lot for a really interesting discussion.
Okay, I was gonna take several questions, and then have people respond, but actually, Emily's questions are media enough? That I think we've, yeah, there were three of them. So I think we probably should take that first. But let's try to be concise so that we because we got several people have questions, and we've got 10 minutes left, I want to make sure we get everybody in. So briefly mark any responses to Emily's questions and standards and alternative routes and so on? And the regulations?
Yeah, let's do it. I'll take the web three aspects, the alternative aspects, I think that while those may indeed generate some fragmentation, at the same time, the challenge of implementing them at a global level is astounding, I'll use universal acceptances. As an example, we have been trying to make the DNS work a little bit better in terms of accepting of characters for years now, I myself have in both been involved in a project for seven years. And it's so hard to do, because implementing a new fundamental resolver making it change a little is such a hard task. So the idea that the web three, you know, entrepreneurs will be able to do that. I mean, if they have infinite money and are willing to do that, great, but otherwise, I think that they will just keep peeking, piggybacking on top of the DNSSEC They are. And this will be more like an alternative than a real contender. I might be proven wrong. Maybe they do have the infinite money that they want to invest on this. But so far I haven't seen it's. And
there's a lot of things MIDI mitigating against it network economies, such a Parsi effect.
So on the question of standards, and the question of standards, I think that there is, as we know, there is a lot of dispute about the ITU but ICANN about the whole system. Again, the whole dispute to me is becomes geopolitical. And I don't see in foreseeable future. Any collapse of these systems? I think it's continued the way it is. And I don't see any major problem developing there. I see geopolitical problem there that needs communication. But I don't see actually separate the standards in the foreseeable future to start to evolve,
to call for Skulker.
Just that there's lights out there. But I am too cool. So she was you were worried Emily about standards proliferation and fragmentation. At the standards level, I'm worried about the opposite. I'm worried about standards, ossification, because this is very powerful force in the universe called the network externality. And it's like, the more sane people use the same platform, the more valuable it becomes. And those network externalities are what made everybody accept TCP IP and why we can't get off of it. And and same with DNS, like DNS is so embedded now into the Internet. It's inconceivable to get rid of it. And I remember in the early days of ICANN, people were running around saying, Oh, this is this is probably going to be superseded by a better standard. And we won't even be talking about DNS five years from now. And it's like, nope. So if somebody in this environment can come up with a standard, let's say a naming standard, that is so much better that everybody adopts it, they first sake, the network externalities of the ICANN route, I can go out of business, there's no more schools of Internet governance. Good, onward, progress. Right. If the standard is that good, and it won't, you know, it already has a hill to climb, right. It's like gotta get that critical mass. And so I'm trained, that reminds me of an ICANN, your two minutes are up, Bill. But anyway, yeah,
okay. All right. Let's take, I just want to get everybody's questions, and then we'll do what we can to answer them before. The boss here tells me you have to stop. So just everybody tried to be more concise, because we're running short. Go ahead.
Perfect. I wouldn't like to go back to the commercial program fragmentation part, because it seems that most of it came from the need to put some responsibility on platforms and companies. But it's actually very hard to point out what is in a practice that is fragmentation in it's mostly I believe in located consumer abuse, Mac market market competition issues, or a dispute between governments and platforms. And this is not really fragmentation. But this, and in this point, they disagree with me, what I agreed with him until then, until now, is that this does not mean that they do not have responsibility on it. So they are not the one causing the fragmentation the government's are doing when they're regulating the issue. But they may be responding to some abuses that are not fragmentation of abuses by consumer competition market views. And this overreaction is mostly common. And it's more common on countries that not have the extra expertise or leverage to go against these platforms, for example, developing countries. So it's much more common to attribute the blame on these countries to try to react and try to get a response and equilibrium with this platforms. Even if the platforms are not creating the fragmentation effects. They are responsible, at least in part for is happening for this thing happening. Great.
Very good comment and not not a question. So that's good. Let me let me get everybody's voices. Okay. And then we'll come back. Okay. So wait other people. Yes. Over here. Can we give us five more minutes? Okay.
Thank you for that. So, I am looking at in terms of Internet fragmentation and three from the technical aspect, the government aspect and the commercial fragmentation. Looking at these three, they all have a role to play. But this is my concern, because I'm doing an interesting talk. Pick on geopolitics in my academic level. And what I am looking at that in terms of in the future, the world wars that we're fighting against on a physical military shoot and will be on the Internet war, whereby nations will try shutting down different nation in terms of cyber war, Internet wars and shut shut down. Totally. How are we preparing towards that future in terms of the military settlement of this kind of fragmentations? Thank you. That's my question. Great
question. Okay, who else? Lucien, did you want to ask something or no? Last Man in the MC, did you have a question? Okay, well,
thank you. I'll try and make it quick because we now eating into my session. Internet fragmentation, I'm thinking about the governance of the Internet around ICANN. And the DNS, which is our bag, we're very interested in that there are problems like IDN, internationalized domain names a really good solution to the lack of character support and non Latin support in the domain name system. But the biggest app in the world email is still not working. And it's, it's possible for potential Governors of the Internet who might want to be more interested in sort of taking over the management of the Internet to, to cite those problems as insolvable. You know, I can't have 20 years to have a goat that is suffering from contamination, because it's not really controlling those sorts of things. There's also substantial problems with increasing DNS abuse. And so in the light of wishes, plus 20 coming up, who is managing the Internet is up for grabs, and I'm, I'm interested in, in the panel's view on, on on the threat of fragmentation by basically having different managers managing it.
Okay, cool. Mr. MC, did you have something you want to let it go? Okay, so we are requested is that in commercial geopolitical strife, and management, quick truth, the top of everybody marked by it.
So DNS abuse was mentioned, of course, I have to step in, right? It's a trope. But for real. The thing is, we need to be more attentive to that topic. When I say we need to make the DNS more reliable, more trustworthy and better. That's what we need to value this resource more, we need to tactically find ways to mitigate abuse, while preserving the freedom of the Internet and the freedom we want. Free for always really good. Until you know, people start to get scammed on masks, you start to have botnets using the DNS freely, that sort of thing is the thing we're trying to contain, especially if the changes being made to the contracts that I can. And I hope we continue to find ways to target and mitigate very specifically, as bad actors so that we keep building a more resilient protocol. And we keep building trust with people so that they don't think, hey, web three would be better, because then we already have a very good solution, why we switch things?
Well, I take the question of geopolitics, citing the Ukraine war actually gave us a glance of what would happen in the in this day and time with the Internet at the center of it. We know that early days of the war, actually I can was asked to disconnect that or you and I can refuse to do that. So your concern that values country resistor to switch the Internet of it was actually responded by both happened in terms of Ukraine, nothing happened. The Internet was not disconnected. Also, some private sector entities misread the sanctions and they disconnected some parts of Internet, but that was their own misinterpretations, which then was resolved, but I can actually show that it won't take site and Internet remained as it was. Yes.
I'll jump right into I think we're short on time. He's standing there and patiently looking at me like he's gonna grab my microphone. I think he would never do so firstly, deal with the question about the that, essentially the theory that the platforms cause fragmentation by being so bad that the states had to rush in and regulate them. Right. And that might have a little bit of validity in Europe, although I'll notice that Europe was attacking the platforms for antitrust reasons. For years before these alleged privacy abuse. as is and really GDPR is not a form of regulation that was invited by platforms, although you could say again, that data data governance issues triggered GDPR. But for the most part, the interventions and regulations applied at forums are coming in at the content layer. They're from states that simply want don't want unwanted information coming into their country through social media. That's most of the regulation. I really want to get to the question about the the militarization of cyberspace that was asked by the gentleman in the back, I really think that that is the most important issue, I think that's what we're seeing is, as I said before, the subordination of so much of cyberspace to national security interests to put it nicely, or to sort of military conflict, put it in a more direct way. And so you see this, both with infrastructure, and with content. So when the US is regulating social media now, actually, the platform's are doing a lot of it. It's a lot of self governance about so called coordinated, coordinated, inauthentic behavior is what they call it. So it's influence campaigns, it's propaganda campaigns run by foreign governments are attributed to foreign governments and then shut down by the social media platforms. So fundamentally, I think the platform's are doing fine. I think it's okay, that we have tick tock in I think there are market constraints on how much they can propagandize people without losing their audience and their advertisers. So I don't think that's a threat. However, politicians are using these foreign incursions of information to tighten up controls, and that has a direct interest for national policymaking elites, and certain businesses that would be protected from competition if we shut out foreign providers. Right. So this really is I wouldn't use the word war, sir, I would, I would, I would refrain from that unless they're actually shooting at each other. And cyber is part of that. But as we've learned in Ukraine, the cyber war, you know, Russia didn't try to take over Ukraine by bringing its networks down. And they didn't even you know, they did have a propaganda operation. But fundamentally, if they wanted to take over the country, they had to invade it with tanks. So the idea that we're going to want fight and win wars, purely through cyber means, I think is off the table. I mean, if Russia can't do it to Ukraine, who can do it? To whom? Right? So, but I think that is really one of the big policy drivers that we're facing right now is, in fact, the militarization of cyberspace. And we need to be aware of how things how globalization and the privatization that I talked about sort of helps the Internet stay out of that and make it compatible.
Okay, so Mr. czaka is looking like he's going to explode. So I'm gonna wrap this up. I've had I've done several dozen workshops on fragmentation around the world that never got one close to an hour. So this is, this is the most concise discussion of this topic I've ever had. We're only five minutes late. So I want to thank all the speakers mark, remotely and the others here and thank you all.
