10 ms·

Eric Schmidt, Ex-Google CEO, Predicts Internet Bifurcation with China

80 points by jedwhite 8y ago

hodgesrm 8y ago
I read this in another article and thought Schmidt's prediction sounded very plausible. It parallels the ebb and flow of trade between large economies, which has shifted considerably over the last few centuries. In retrospect it seems somewhat naive to think that this would not apply to information.
rainygold 8y ago
I look forward to kowtowing to our Chinese overlords.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here.
tomohawk 8y ago
He's already off by an order of magnitude.
jedwhite 8y ago
Some interesting comments on this (from fb) from Grahame Lynch who produces CommsDay: ''' I am inclined to agree with this. Looking at various tendencies in internet governance and national security legislation around the world right now there is more pulling the internet apart than pushing it together. This has been fairly likely ever since the world split 90-50 on how to/whether to regulate the net at a global level via the UN/ITU at WCIT a few years ago. In a sense, the Chinese internet already is its own thing, given how "separated" it is from the rest of the world by firewalls, deliberately constrained bandwidth connections and so on. You will also see the same trend in telecom supply chains. There will be one for America, Australia, India, Taiwan, Korea and other nations in their sphere of influence which will resist China-sourced kit and one dominated by China for the rest of the world. The moves against Huawei in various countries is the forerunner of what is an articulated but little publicised US-drive to favour non-Chinese actors in the network technology supply chain. Samsung will be a big winner from this (as will Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco). https://www.cnbc.com/…/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-…|linkedin&par=sharebar https://www.cnbc.com/…/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-…... I've reported on this for a quarter of a century and, to be frank, I am surprised that the net and global supply chains have remained as open as they have for all this time. The next few years are going to be very interesting - or disturbing, depending on your POV. ''' EDIT to reflect CommsDay which I think is the correct short title for Communications Day newsletter.
- quink 8y ago
  I learned around NBN time that Grahame Lynch is an uninformed hack. Saying 90-50, and I can’t be arsed to verify if your quote was accurate because the intersection of uninformed ramblings, hack and Facebook I’m not deigning to visit, lines up perfectly with the numerical literacy I have seen him exhibit. The idiot argued endlessly against government owned last mile wholesale fibre in one of the most urbanised countries in the planet. And no, Huawei aren’t being excluded by the US, there’s both evidence there and other countries are coming to the same conclusion independently. And out of those four companies only one is American.
  - jedwhite 8y ago
    I believe the 90-50 is a reference to the vote on the ITR agreement put together at the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in December 2012. There is a breakdown available of the signatories, non-signatories and other available here, which lists 89 signatories: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/540516-copy-of-wcitsignatories-dataextract.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/540516-copy-of-wcits... There is further information available: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121214/14133321389/who-signed-itu-wcit-treaty-who-didnt.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121214/14133321389/who-s... https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2012/12/14/the-u-n-fought-the-internet-and-the-internet-won-wcit-summit-in-dubai-ends/#59d8666137cc https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2012/12/14/the-u-...
    - quink 8y ago
      OK then, fair enough. Here is me talking about his scientific illiteracy at least four years ago to give people a rough idea: https://delimiter.com.au/2014/06/17/nbn-debate-heats-ieee-conference/#comment-667853 https://delimiter.com.au/2014/06/17/nbn-debate-heats-ieee-co...
      - GrahameLynch 8y ago
        Rod Tucker originally modelled a wireless only NBN as having access to only 20MHz of spectrum and that this represented the sum total of what the nation's broadband demand would be funnelled through if a policy decision was made to use wireless in the last mile. Do you regard Tucker's 20MHz premise as scientifically accurate or plausible given the NBN actually does have around 75MHZ of spectrum that it uses to serve just 3% of its base with wireless? I take it you would endorse that as the counter-factual. The fact is that there is scores of gigahertz available for the communications needs of end users. The V-band alone (which is being used for last mile for various applications) has 35GHz of spectrum alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_band mmWave bands add another 14GHz of spectrum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_high_frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_high_frequency Four years ago I said there was 80Ghz available in service of the nation's communications needs. You interpreted that to mean the needs of a "government owned last mile fibre network". The point I was making is that it is fraudulent to model the limitations of a technology (in this case, wireless) on the basis that any given network only has the use of a tiny fraction of what it could be using (and indeed does). Sorry everyone for hijacking this thread but hopefully it means that the quoted points I made above re China and WCIT make more sense, because I actually do have more than half a clue.
anvandare 8y ago
It won't just be China. The Internet was, initially, a terra incognita for governments. (Which is ironic given its origins.) At first any wilderness is home only to pioneers, explorers, and other kinds of people who love the freedom that a frontier (Wild West) region gives. But inevitably (as is the way of humans) more humans appear, business pops up, government follows, laws are made, property is titled, walls go up, and freedom goes down. All valuable wilderness inevitably becomes civilized. Eventually governments will simply cut the cables (so to speak) to make the digital borders match the geographical borders, only allowing international traffic via heavily supervised data-ports for registered and licensed data-traders. The Big Companies will love and encourage this, as it means even less possible competition for them. A cyber-war might speed up things as well, but it seems inevitable anyway. (GDPR has already added a new row of bricks for the wall, with some sites just refusing to serve my EU-based browser at all.)
- madrox 8y ago
  This echoes speeches given even by the likes of John Perry Barlow. The internet is a frontier slowly being tamed.
  - ilove_banh_mi 8y ago
    Ok then, where's the next frontier? I can't see myself happy while continuing to work in an increasingly oligopolized, regulated industry. I'm young enough that I can switch to another career if it's worth the personal satisfaction and some monetary reward.
    - lainga 8y ago
      Space?
    - sputknick 8y ago
      I'm not sure the proper term but maybe crypto currency/dapps/blockchain. A feature there is it's decentralized and anonymous nature.
exabrial 8y ago
After living in Beijing for 5 weeks earlier this year, I can say, not only the internet, just all of China. It's very tough to run a business in China as an outsider. Eventually, the government will sponsor a domestic company to replace your business and push you out with regulation and licensure. This is a double-edged sword for Chinese companies. They are assured a domestic monopoly, and given the population of China, that's a very big one. However, when said companies try to compete in a global marketplace, they struggle without their government-sponsored monopoly.
willart4food 8y ago
how about 3 internets: * censored * "uncensored" but monitored by the DC-alphabet soup & Co * the dark web
GrahameLynch 8y ago
Great article here from Foreign Affairs on the same topic https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-08-13/when-china-rules-web https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-08-13/whe...
stevenicr 8y ago
I posted a suggestion a few days ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18022586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18022586 ) that cloudflare start to do this in order to protect itself and it's users. With so many censoring rules popping up in different countries, a centralized service could easily be forced to eliminate tons of information. right to be forgotten, not just from host country, but whole planet. GDPR. dmca, things that are fobidden in Asia, things that are to be blocked in and around Indonesia and such. When a small group of trolls uses other people's policies to harass and deplatform women because they have issues with cleavage ( https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/14/paypal-ban-asmr-sound-art-therapy/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/14/paypal-ban-asmr-sound-ar... ) - it should be obvious that more and more of these kinds of censor those you don't like by using the policies of others is only going to grow. Especially as more and more places are developing more censoring policies, and people are sharing methods for removing / de-platforming. (they came for Alex Jones, and we kept using paypal, then they came for girls not dressed in Burkas and most still used payal, then they came for..) The big internet companies are being used against the smaller groups of people all over the world. Cloudflare ordered to give customer location data recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039208 Google and others have been forced to do the same, and even though some big G and Fbook occasionally try to deny some of the data sharing, they did not stop SESTA, instead looking to use these things as excuses / pass the blame. What was the case where Msoft had to drop the appeals about sharing data from computers in other countries with the US?, as a new law was made, cloud-sharing or something like that? Big G working on tracking and auto censoring for China and other places. Facebook, Instagram having to rush censoring in areas around the world. Canada and the US have some of these things in the bargaining for the NAFTA re-agreement I think as well. This is all happening much faster then most people realize I think, the ramifications have yet to understood. Bifurcation, or divarication - it's getting split up much more than just in two. Sadly the giants like Google and Cloudflare are being used as the largest hammers, or may be biggest saws to cut up and split up the worlds knowledge. These are interesting times indeed.
- stevenicr 8y ago
  and now articles are being published in the UK asking govs to use cloudflare, google and others to stop the transmission of information in just this way -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107919

80 points by jedwhite 8y ago

I read this in another article and thought Schmidt's prediction sounded very plausible. It parallels the ebb and flow of trade between large economies, which has shifted considerably over the last few centuries. In retrospect it seems somewhat naive to think that this would not apply to information.

rainygold 8y ago

I look forward to kowtowing to our Chinese overlords.

dang 8y ago
Please don't do this here.

tomohawk 8y ago

He's already off by an order of magnitude.

jedwhite 8y ago

Some interesting comments on this (from fb) from Grahame Lynch who produces CommsDay: ''' I am inclined to agree with this. Looking at various tendencies in internet governance and national security legislation around the world right now there is more pulling the internet apart than pushing it together. This has been fairly likely ever since the world split 90-50 on how to/whether to regulate the net at a global level via the UN/ITU at WCIT a few years ago. In a sense, the Chinese internet already is its own thing, given how "separated" it is from the rest of the world by firewalls, deliberately constrained bandwidth connections and so on. You will also see the same trend in telecom supply chains. There will be one for America, Australia, India, Taiwan, Korea and other nations in their sphere of influence which will resist China-sourced kit and one dominated by China for the rest of the world. The moves against Huawei in various countries is the forerunner of what is an articulated but little publicised US-drive to favour non-Chinese actors in the network technology supply chain. Samsung will be a big winner from this (as will Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco). https://www.cnbc.com/…/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-…|linkedin&par=sharebar https://www.cnbc.com/…/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-…... I've reported on this for a quarter of a century and, to be frank, I am surprised that the net and global supply chains have remained as open as they have for all this time. The next few years are going to be very interesting - or disturbing, depending on your POV. ''' EDIT to reflect CommsDay which I think is the correct short title for Communications Day newsletter.

quink 8y ago
I learned around NBN time that Grahame Lynch is an uninformed hack. Saying 90-50, and I can’t be arsed to verify if your quote was accurate because the intersection of uninformed ramblings, hack and Facebook I’m not deigning to visit, lines up perfectly with the numerical literacy I have seen him exhibit. The idiot argued endlessly against government owned last mile wholesale fibre in one of the most urbanised countries in the planet. And no, Huawei aren’t being excluded by the US, there’s both evidence there and other countries are coming to the same conclusion independently. And out of those four companies only one is American.
- jedwhite 8y ago
  I believe the 90-50 is a reference to the vote on the ITR agreement put together at the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in December 2012. There is a breakdown available of the signatories, non-signatories and other available here, which lists 89 signatories: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/540516-copy-of-wcitsignatories-dataextract.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/540516-copy-of-wcits... There is further information available: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121214/14133321389/who-signed-itu-wcit-treaty-who-didnt.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121214/14133321389/who-s... https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2012/12/14/the-u-n-fought-the-internet-and-the-internet-won-wcit-summit-in-dubai-ends/#59d8666137cc https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2012/12/14/the-u-...
  - quink 8y ago
    OK then, fair enough. Here is me talking about his scientific illiteracy at least four years ago to give people a rough idea: https://delimiter.com.au/2014/06/17/nbn-debate-heats-ieee-conference/#comment-667853 https://delimiter.com.au/2014/06/17/nbn-debate-heats-ieee-co...
    - GrahameLynch 8y ago
      Rod Tucker originally modelled a wireless only NBN as having access to only 20MHz of spectrum and that this represented the sum total of what the nation's broadband demand would be funnelled through if a policy decision was made to use wireless in the last mile. Do you regard Tucker's 20MHz premise as scientifically accurate or plausible given the NBN actually does have around 75MHZ of spectrum that it uses to serve just 3% of its base with wireless? I take it you would endorse that as the counter-factual. The fact is that there is scores of gigahertz available for the communications needs of end users. The V-band alone (which is being used for last mile for various applications) has 35GHz of spectrum alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_band mmWave bands add another 14GHz of spectrum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_high_frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_high_frequency Four years ago I said there was 80Ghz available in service of the nation's communications needs. You interpreted that to mean the needs of a "government owned last mile fibre network". The point I was making is that it is fraudulent to model the limitations of a technology (in this case, wireless) on the basis that any given network only has the use of a tiny fraction of what it could be using (and indeed does). Sorry everyone for hijacking this thread but hopefully it means that the quoted points I made above re China and WCIT make more sense, because I actually do have more than half a clue.

anvandare 8y ago

It won't just be China. The Internet was, initially, a terra incognita for governments. (Which is ironic given its origins.) At first any wilderness is home only to pioneers, explorers, and other kinds of people who love the freedom that a frontier (Wild West) region gives. But inevitably (as is the way of humans) more humans appear, business pops up, government follows, laws are made, property is titled, walls go up, and freedom goes down. All valuable wilderness inevitably becomes civilized. Eventually governments will simply cut the cables (so to speak) to make the digital borders match the geographical borders, only allowing international traffic via heavily supervised data-ports for registered and licensed data-traders. The Big Companies will love and encourage this, as it means even less possible competition for them. A cyber-war might speed up things as well, but it seems inevitable anyway. (GDPR has already added a new row of bricks for the wall, with some sites just refusing to serve my EU-based browser at all.)

madrox 8y ago
This echoes speeches given even by the likes of John Perry Barlow. The internet is a frontier slowly being tamed.
- ilove_banh_mi 8y ago
  Ok then, where's the next frontier? I can't see myself happy while continuing to work in an increasingly oligopolized, regulated industry. I'm young enough that I can switch to another career if it's worth the personal satisfaction and some monetary reward.
  - lainga 8y ago
    Space?
  - sputknick 8y ago
    I'm not sure the proper term but maybe crypto currency/dapps/blockchain. A feature there is it's decentralized and anonymous nature.

exabrial 8y ago

After living in Beijing for 5 weeks earlier this year, I can say, not only the internet, just all of China. It's very tough to run a business in China as an outsider. Eventually, the government will sponsor a domestic company to replace your business and push you out with regulation and licensure. This is a double-edged sword for Chinese companies. They are assured a domestic monopoly, and given the population of China, that's a very big one. However, when said companies try to compete in a global marketplace, they struggle without their government-sponsored monopoly.

willart4food 8y ago

how about 3 internets: * censored * "uncensored" but monitored by the DC-alphabet soup & Co * the dark web

GrahameLynch 8y ago

Great article here from Foreign Affairs on the same topic https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-08-13/when-china-rules-web https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-08-13/whe...

stevenicr 8y ago

I posted a suggestion a few days ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18022586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18022586 ) that cloudflare start to do this in order to protect itself and it's users. With so many censoring rules popping up in different countries, a centralized service could easily be forced to eliminate tons of information. right to be forgotten, not just from host country, but whole planet. GDPR. dmca, things that are fobidden in Asia, things that are to be blocked in and around Indonesia and such. When a small group of trolls uses other people's policies to harass and deplatform women because they have issues with cleavage ( https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/14/paypal-ban-asmr-sound-art-therapy/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/14/paypal-ban-asmr-sound-ar... ) - it should be obvious that more and more of these kinds of censor those you don't like by using the policies of others is only going to grow. Especially as more and more places are developing more censoring policies, and people are sharing methods for removing / de-platforming. (they came for Alex Jones, and we kept using paypal, then they came for girls not dressed in Burkas and most still used payal, then they came for..) The big internet companies are being used against the smaller groups of people all over the world. Cloudflare ordered to give customer location data recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039208 Google and others have been forced to do the same, and even though some big G and Fbook occasionally try to deny some of the data sharing, they did not stop SESTA, instead looking to use these things as excuses / pass the blame. What was the case where Msoft had to drop the appeals about sharing data from computers in other countries with the US?, as a new law was made, cloud-sharing or something like that? Big G working on tracking and auto censoring for China and other places. Facebook, Instagram having to rush censoring in areas around the world. Canada and the US have some of these things in the bargaining for the NAFTA re-agreement I think as well. This is all happening much faster then most people realize I think, the ramifications have yet to understood. Bifurcation, or divarication - it's getting split up much more than just in two. Sadly the giants like Google and Cloudflare are being used as the largest hammers, or may be biggest saws to cut up and split up the worlds knowledge. These are interesting times indeed.

stevenicr 8y ago
and now articles are being published in the UK asking govs to use cloudflare, google and others to stop the transmission of information in just this way -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107919