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That's not going to be a problem. When it comes to censorship of the Internet, your primary risk is the 5 / 14 / 19 eyes groups, not China. China isn't a criti
by adventured 5y ago
That's not going to be a problem. When it comes to censorship of the Internet, your primary risk is the 5 / 14 / 19 eyes groups, not China.
China isn't a critical part of the global Internet today and they'll be even less a part of it in another decade. They operate their own separate network that only poorly connects to the Internet, by design. That separation will increase considerably over this decade.
Xi is currently putting new restraints into place to pull Chinese tech companies back even further from the Internet and into their own isolated network.
When China becomes the largest economy by GDP, it'll be meaningless to the operation of the Internet, which they'll only kinda-sorta be a part of.
Further, China is now widely regarded as the top adversary to the US and the West. That context will get increasingly confrontational and war-like in the coming years. Nearly all members of Congress are on board the anti-China bandwagon now, they've all gotten the message from above (the military industrial complex, which dictates nearly all foreign policy). The cultural atmosphere will increasingly become like it was when the USSR was the primary adversary for decades. As that confrontation increases, China's influence over the Internet will be intentionally reduced by the powers that actually do control the Internet today. China sees that coming as well and is taking steps ahead of time to reduce its exposure, points of influence and risk. At this point China views a military confrontation with the West as close to inevitable (which recent Xi speeches have elaborated on).
This increasing separation effort by China is in part designed to make it possible for China to attempt to destroy/damage the Internet - if it comes to that - without posing much terminal risk to their network and economy in the process. If they take down the Internet, it'll butcher the economies of their adversaries, while their own network remains highly functional. This is something the West is almost entirely unprepared for, and China is aggressively preparing for it; an epic mistake by the West.
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoThe enormous trade between China and the West is likely to mitigate some of this isolation - along with how exactly can you bring down the "western" internet? plus the chinese internet seems to be built on the same tech and protocols as "ours" - it's just the companies that are different ? I am happy to be corrected but interested at the counter point to such doom and gloom