See all these languages ​​above?We translate Global Voices articles to make citizen media accessible to many parts of the world.Image courtesy of Flora Weil, Alexandra Smorodinova and Danya Orlovsky.In the early 1990s, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the research institute, MIT Media Lab, announced that the internet would “level organizations, globalize society, decentralize controls and contribute to harmony among people”.Thirty years later, this premonition couldn't be further from the truth.While the internet has led to unprecedented globalisation, innovation and participation in previously inaccessible sectors, over the past two decades, slow and persistent efforts by governments around the world have seen private technologies integrated into national regulatory regimes. and security.The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks the next inflection point as it moves away from 20th century dreams of a libertarian and egalitarian internet.The war accelerated three significant trends in the geopolitical dynamics of the internet, making any major reversal unimaginable.First, the war accelerated the unprecedented prominence of civilian protagonists acting as war officials.Second, he emphasized the importance of information networks in physical conflicts.Third, it has accelerated the worldwide fragmentation between the United States, Europe, Russia and China, along with technology platforms.At a United Nations (UN) conference in June, a Google executive predicted that Russian operations in Ukraine would be an indication of the new world status quo: “This war is our crystal ball of what is to come.” .In most of Modern History, wars have as their main characteristic the dominance of national territories.Ivan Sigal argued that since the 1970s, “there has been a growth in undeclared interstate and civilian conflicts involving non-state and irregular combatants, with conflicts occurring in the midst of civilian life where most victims are not combatants”.While non-state actors have participated in past conflicts—the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) emerged during the Crimean War in the 1850s, and modern terrorism has its roots in 19th-century anti-colonialist rebellions—in the last 20 years, particularly , the presence of NGOs, international organizations and terrorist groups violently seized the state monopoly.Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane described the international relations of this emerging world as one of “complex interdependence”.Interdependence, because during the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Mali, governments waged national wars against armed autonomous organizations, spectators of a wide range of independent observers, and with peripheral support from hundreds of NGOs in peace attempts.Complex, because the line between aggressor and peacemaker has become blurred.The internet has made global conflicts even more complex, anarchic and interdependent, due to the vast and unprecedented amount of interventions available.Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a decentralized community of researchers was already warning about the unusual movement of Russian troops on the Ukrainian borders.The proliferation of satellites, social media, public flight data and mapping techniques have provided a whole new world of open source reporting capable of identifying patterns of warfare before weapons even begin to fire.The growing interdependence of global networks and the uncontrolled access to them from any part of the world indicate that we can wage a war in Eastern Europe from an apartment in Berlin or a cafe in Shenzhen.In February, the Ukrainian government made a worldwide appeal to hacker groups to help defend important infrastructure.Since then, an unidentified group of “justice hackers” has disrupted Russian news channels, Russian government websites and military supply networks.Simultaneously, unidentified groups of hackers began targeting “foreign officials from Northern Treaty Organization (NATO) governments, humanitarian organizations, think tanks, Information Technology (IT) groups, and energy providers.”Western intelligence agencies attributed the attacks to groups allied to the Russian government, but due to the very nature of the internet it is impossible to accurately attribute such attacks.Ultimately, the war has given new meaning to technology platforms.A Microsoft company in Seattle, the Threat Intelligence Center, has been successful in predicting heavy attacks on Kiev's military and government networks.Google and Meta banned Russian media, defended against Moscow's biggest foreign-influenced operation and favored Ukrainian voices.An American facial recognition company, Clearview AI, has donated its software to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to identify downed soldiers.While technology platforms in Europe and the United States face antitrust lawsuits, the war in Ukraine has been used as a convenient new argument against new antitrust actions: harming technology platforms could contribute to Russian propaganda.Telecommunications has been a vital part of military operations since the First World War.The development of the internet itself was justified in the 1960s as a necessary precaution to maintain communications during a nuclear war.But over the past decade, specific movements have highlighted the growing importance of connections in the cloud to physical realities.Global Voices' Unfreedom Monitor platform highlights the unprecedented rise of internet censorship initiatives around the world.The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 is the latest and perhaps most important example of the use of the internet as a weapon in physical conflict.The day before Russian troops entered Ukraine, modems on Viasat's KA-SAT satellite internet network were mass disabled.Other cyberattacks on government websites and infrastructure operators have unsuccessfully attempted to cripple Ukrainian command and control centers.In short, the war in Ukraine is the most recent example in which telecommunications control has both directed military movements and served as a justification for annexing territories.In 2015, before the annexation of Crimea, Russian forces occupied the main offices of ISPs on the peninsula, cut off all connections to Ukraine, built an undersea fiber optic cable and redirected internet traffic to the operator Miranda Media in Moscow. .This ensured that local internet traffic was monitored by Roskomnadzor, Russia's Communications, Information Technology and Media regulator, and subjected Crimean residents to Russian standards of expression, publishing and internet.Map courtesy of Kevin Limonier.Moscow follows the same strategy on an unprecedented scale in the occupation of new territories.ISP offices within Kherson and the recently occupied cities in eastern Ukraine were redirected to Russian networks, ensuring Russian control of information over the regions and laying the groundwork for future separation referendums.This has become such a concern that Ukrainians have destroyed telecommunication infrastructure when flying over occupied cities.Security and control of national telecommunication channels are becoming especially vital for smaller nations that rely on foreign providers for military intelligence, such as satellite imagery.Volodymyr Usov, former president of the National Space Agency of Ukraine, highlighted in June, “​​every nation that claims to be independent… needs to have its own constellation [of images].”Usov stressed that partnerships are not enough: “It is necessary to have autonomous access to satellite images”.Ukraine is considering developing its own satellite launch technology to protect the communication infrastructure from ground interventions.The involvement of non-state actors and the growing military importance of telecommunications are leading to an accelerated balkanization of the internet along national lines.The war in Ukraine has drawn an even more explicit curtain between national internet regimes.With the deplorable tit-for-tat method, Russia has banned most Western technology and media companies.At the same time, Ukraine and the West banned Russian government websites.Moscow tried to ban TOR and VPN networks, which have the ability to elude government censors.In a final ruling on internet sovereignty, Russia has been working to indict its citizens for publishing negative statements about the war even if they are living in another country.National boundaries no longer end at borders, they are now extended to the media spheres of any geographical location with an internet connection.The war in Ukraine drew an even sharper line between the fragmented financial, informational and infrastructural realities of Europe and the United States faced by Russia and China.A movement of infrastructural non-alignment is taking place, according to the senile logic of the Cold War.In the 21st century, the choice for most of the world is not between communism and capitalism, but which supply chain network should penetrate their countries.Image courtesy of Giovana Fleck.This post is part of the RuNet Echo, a project by Global Voices that interprets the Russian-speaking internet.All publications · Read more»This post comes from the website GV Advocacy, a project by Global Voices with its own website that defends freedom of expression and fights against network censorship.· AllThis article is part of the Technology for a Network of Transparency website where we investigate technology that promotes accountability and civic engagement around the world · All articlesThis article is part of the RuNet Echo, a project by Global Voices to interpret the Russian-speaking internet.All ·This article is part of the Technology for Transparency Network in which we research technologies that promote accountability and civic participation around the world.· AllThis post comes from the website GV Advocacy, a project by Global Voices with its own website that defends freedom of expression and fights against network censorship.· AllCollaborators, please log in »Email (will not be published) (mandatory field)Receive comments on this post in your emailGlobal Voices is supported by the efforts of our volunteers, foundations, donors and mission-related services.For more information please read our Fundraising Ethics Policy.Special thanks to our many sponsors and funders.Please support our important work:This site is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Some rights reserved