Strategic competition guarantees it.
Levy 21 – Technical Director of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre.
Ian Levy, “Get ready for the death of the global internet. It won’t be pretty,” WIRED, 01-29-2021, https://www.wired.com/story/internet-balkanisation-ian-levy/
States compete and – as we now know – are increasingly weaponising information to gain advantage, breaking into other countries’ networks to steal data, seed misinformation or disrupt infrastructure. But now we are seeing states use the development of and access to technology as tools of statecraft.
States don’t like strategic dependence and so, in 2021, they will develop standards and technology that diverge from global commons, and which embody their values and which they control. This will be more than the different “flavours” of the internet we are already seeing emerge. It will be a fundamental shift in how technology is developed, owned, accessed and leveraged by nation states and companies.