Splinternet: how geopolitics is fracturing cyberspace

In 1989, Tim Bern­ers-Lee and his team at CERN intro­duced an innov­a­tion that would change the world: the World Wide Web. This innov­a­tion, known simply as the Web, linked the entire world through almost inter­na­tion­al com­mu­nic­a­tion. This was its primary goal¹: to enable research­ers in dif­fer­ent fields to com­mu­nic­ate with each oth­er and share their know­ledge instantly.

The Splin­ter­net is the estab­lish­ment of a mul­ti­polar Inter­net, frag­men­ted into as many closed cyber­spaces as there are com­pet­ing blocks in the world.

The Inter­net there­fore comes from a dream, that of exchange, com­mu­nic­a­tion, and mutu­al aid. But today, this dream seems increas­ingly unreal­ist­ic. Why is this? Accord­ing to Asma Mhalla, a spe­cial­ist in the polit­ic­al and geo­pol­it­ic­al stakes of the digit­al eco­nomy and a lec­turer at Sci­ences Po Par­is and École Poly­tech­nique (IP Par­is), cyber­space has under­gone a pro­cess of mil­it­ar­isa­tion, “It has become a battle­ground for power struggles between nations, and more pre­cisely between dis­tinct ideo­lo­gic­al blocs, lead­ing to a frac­tured glob­al net­work,” she says. “As such, the Splin­ter­net was formed.”

To bet­ter under­stand what the Splin­ter­net is, it is neces­sary to under­stand what cyber­space is. This space is struc­tured in three inter­de­pend­ent macro-lay­ers². The first is the phys­ic­al lay­er, and revolves around the vari­ous infra­struc­tures that enable this net­work of con­nectiv­ity to be estab­lished: the data­centres, the serv­ers, the cables, etc.  The second is the logic­al lay­er: pro­to­cols, lan­guages, inform­a­tion sys­tems. And the last, the semant­ic or cog­nit­ive lay­er, refers to all the applic­a­tions in dir­ect con­tact with the user. 

“Ini­tially, this space was inten­ded to be free and open. It was con­ceived in the 1960s with the ideas of its time and was then marked by the idea of happy glob­al­isa­tion,” explains Asma Mhalla. “How­ever, the poten­tial of this tech­no­logy even­tu­ally turned it into a stra­tegic issue. The Inter­net has thus become a new arena for influ­ence, con­front­a­tion, and power rela­tions between dif­fer­ent world powers.” Today, its ubi­quit­ous use and the wealth of data it gen­er­ates make it a tar­get of war­fare – even a weapon. “This pro­cess of mil­it­ar­isa­tion of cyber­space has made it the 5th dimen­sion of con­ven­tion­al war­fare (the first 4 being: land, sea, sky and space),” she says. “The three macro-lay­ers have become tar­gets for the mil­it­ary strategies of states.”

Take the example of the war in Ukraine: Rus­sia is attack­ing the infra­struc­ture (phys­ic­al lay­er) to cut off the Inter­net, or at least dis­rupt it. The Net­b­locks asso­ci­ation also accuses Rus­sia of hav­ing redir­ec­ted the Ukrain­i­an net­work to its own net­work, with the aim of recov­er­ing data (logic­al lay­er). Finally, the Krem­lin’s influ­ence on applic­a­tions in dir­ect con­tact with the user (semant­ic lay­er) allows it to spread its pro­pa­ganda and jus­ti­fy its invasion. 

“Through this pro­cess of mil­it­ar­isa­tion, some states, such as Rus­sia, are begin­ning to dis­con­nect from the glob­al Inter­net,” she notes, “in favour of an isol­ated and dis­con­nec­ted Inter­net, a kind of scaled-up intranet. Basic­ally, and bey­ond the ques­tion of tech­nic­al feas­ib­il­ity, the sub­ject is noth­ing less than ideo­lo­gic­al: the Splin­ter­net is the estab­lish­ment of a mul­ti­polar Inter­net, frag­men­ted into as many closed or semi-closed cyber­spaces as there are com­pet­ing blocks in the world. This phe­nomen­on is tak­ing place in sym­metry with the recom­pos­i­tion of the world order cur­rently being pushed by states such as Rus­sia and China, which are work­ing towards a mul­ti­polar inter­na­tion­al order that will dis­rupt Amer­ic­an predominance.”

Accord­ing to this defin­i­tion, it is clear that the Splin­ter­net is already here. And China was the first to launch this frag­ment­a­tion. It star­ted with the imple­ment­a­tion of the Great Fire­wall of China, aimed at block­ing access to all web­sites that do not sup­port the Chinese Com­mun­ist Party (CCP). While not cen­sor­ing the entire Inter­net, the Chinese gov­ern­ment has man­aged to estab­lish per­vas­ive con­trol over its con­tent. “This shield, which lim­its access to Amer­ic­an tech­no­logy giants, par­tic­u­larly for uses that inter­face dir­ectly with users, has cre­ated a rel­at­ively closed eco­sys­tem,” says Asma Mhalla. “The aim was to quickly cre­ate a sov­er­eign Chinese tech eco­sys­tem, and more spe­cific­ally the BATX, the Chinese digit­al giants, enabling the CCP to devel­op a form of tech­no­lo­gic­al sov­er­eignty under con­trol, essen­tially social and polit­ic­al con­trol.” Today, the CCP has been able to devel­op a Chinese Inter­net, with its 3 macro lay­ers, and its own worldview.

How­ever, China is not the only power to have embarked on a pro­ject of this scale. Iran, too, has developed its own struc­tures to have an Inter­net cut off from the world. And recently, Rus­sia seems to be mov­ing in the same dir­ec­tion, as Kév­in Limoni­er, a Rus­si­an-speak­ing cyber­space spe­cial­ist, notes. The Rus­si­an net­work was con­nec­ted to the glob­al Inter­net, but, accord­ing to Limoni­er, Putin is gradu­ally devel­op­ing the idea of inform­a­tion­al sov­er­eignty⁴. This can be seen in vari­ous pieces of legis­la­tion issued by the Krem­lin over the past dec­ade. The law “On the cre­ation of a sov­er­eign Inter­net”⁵, adop­ted in Novem­ber 2019, is the most sig­ni­fic­ant with regard to the Splin­ter­net. This 100% Rus­si­an inter­net has been named the RuNet.

China is not the only power to have embarked on a pro­ject of this scale.

In Rus­sia, as in China, the Inter­net was ini­tially con­nec­ted to the glob­al net­work, and it remains dif­fi­cult to dis­con­nect from it. “Rus­sia is still in a test and learn phase for the first two lay­ers of cyber­space,” says the spe­cial­ist. “As for the third lay­er, the semant­ic lay­er, it is gradu­ally dis­as­so­ci­at­ing itself from it. RuNet will accel­er­ate the pro­cess.” The Rus­si­ans are begin­ning to have their own net­work of applic­a­tions in dir­ect con­tact with the user: search engines, social net­works, e‑mail sys­tems, etc.

With these three Inter­nets, developed by these dif­fer­ent powers, we can con­sider that the glob­al Inter­net, ours, is a fourth part of the Splin­ter­net – albeit not a closed one. 

The Splin­ter­net is there­fore already present, and the coun­tries that have pro­voked this state of frag­ment­a­tion have one thing in com­mon: they are author­it­ari­an regimes. This com­mon­al­ity seems logic­al: the Inter­net has the char­ac­ter­ist­ic of facil­it­at­ing debate and the exchange of opin­ions, which can be seen as ant­ag­on­ist­ic to dic­tat­or­ship. Moreover, the Inter­net offers the pos­sib­il­ity of con­trolling the inform­a­tion that is dis­sem­in­ated on it, and there­fore the pos­sib­il­ity of inform­a­tion­al sov­er­eignty: author­it­ari­an regimes have an interest in hav­ing this type of con­trol, which is syn­onym­ous with the con­trol of loc­al com­mon opinion.

How­ever, cir­cum­ven­tion strategies exist, such as the use of a VPN. Even if in a dic­tat­or­ship these strategies remain isol­ated acts and are not main­stream, VPNs show that this frag­ment­a­tion is not water­tight. The con­cern is that the level of impen­et­rab­il­ity is not the same between dic­tat­or­ships and demo­cra­cies, for the simple reas­on that the glob­al Inter­net remains access­ible to powers with their own Inter­net. The destabil­isa­tion of our Inter­net can there­fore be massive, as for­eign inter­fer­ence is easi­er to achieve.

“This is the great weak­ness of demo­cra­cies in this story, because the net­works remain por­ous by nature,” says Asma Mhalla. “This poros­ity rep­res­ents an oppor­tun­ity for inter­fer­ence and influ­ence at low cost for author­it­ari­an regimes. Demo­cracy can, in the long run, be really weakened by this. The West­ern bloc is thus in an exist­en­tial crisis and must quickly cla­ri­fy its tech­no­pol­it­ic­al mod­el.” In April, in the midst of the war in Ukraine, Joe Biden called for a “free and open” Inter­net. This appeal, which was signed by some sixty coun­tries⁶, shows the con­cern of West­ern coun­tries, and their will­ing­ness to act, about the dir­ec­tion that cyber­space is tak­ing. How­ever, the future of the Inter­net also raises oth­er ques­tions for European coun­tries, par­tic­u­larly con­cern­ing their depend­ence on the Amer­ic­ans in this area.

Pablo Andres