I'm concerned that, even here on HN, we are underestimating both the magnitude of this looming conflict and also its inevitable conclusion. The internet is big

I'm concerned that, even here on HN, we are underestimating both the magnitude of this looming conflict and also its inevitable conclusion. The internet is bigger than you and me, and it's bigger than computers. It is an evolutionary force. It is not going to be stopped, and certainly not by states whose popularity and authority are waning so rapidly. Moreover, the internet keeps as its core function the proclivity to copy and store bytes, and from this very simple mechanism emerges a large set of tools and norms that supplant nearly all of the ways that nation states perpetuate power. What we desperately need are the elder statesmen and women to stand up and soberly see the writing on the wall, and gracefully deprecate the systems of which they will soon lose control, starting with nuclear weapons. I don't believe this has to end in violence or acrimony of any kind. But we have run out of time to act like petulant children, crying that somebody took our empire away. Very soon (ie, in the next couple centuries, maybe sooner), a few small nation states will adopt frameworks of zero IP, allowing all the content of the internet to be housed there, and from there, accessed by the entire planet. Some other nation states may attempt some kind of embargo or sanctions, but these will obviously fail, just as the attempts by Russia and China to censor the internet within their borders have failed (and are failing with greater volume with each passing day). And before you cry that adoption in China is too low to support this conclusion, consider that the work to resist the GFW has begat some of the best networking tools in the world, with rapidity of evolution increasing, not decreasing. Even if fear and violence can stem adoption for a few decades or even centuries, the toolchain continues to grow and will tip the scales over sufficiently long time scales. Let's not let this become a world information war. Let's install peace now while it's still easy to do. Let's dispense with IP and live in a world of joyous open access to information.