Saving the Internet

We have seen this pattern emerging for years. Beginning in 2012, with our own clever (at the time) joint US-Israel cyber-attack on Iran that undermined its nuclear enrichment facilities dubbed “Stuxnet,” which disabled 1,000 of Iran’s 5,000 centrifuges.

In 2014, a Chinese hacking group (Unit 61398), penetrated the computer networks of major US companies like Westinghouse and US Steel to steal IP and trade secrets. In 2016, Russian government hackers accessed the Democratic National Committee’s computer networks, stole sensitive information, and systematically leaked it to impact the U.S.  presidential campaign.

And just last year, the United Arab Emirates hacked Qatari government social media accounts, igniting one of the most dangerous diplomatic crises in the Middle East in decades.

As more countries seek to project power in cyberspace, we will continue to see an escalation in attacks of this nature. The internet’s role in these attacks can go in one of several directions. One, we could see the world’s major powers unleashing malicious code on one another, irreparably destroying each other’s vital infrastructure. We have seen this movie already with the Russian attacks on the Ukraine power grid. As proofs of concept, those attacks set a new precedent: In Russia’s shadow, the decades-old nightmare of hackers stopping the gears of modern society did become a reality.

Another direction might be a world in which the internet becomes a powerful tool for subjugation, monitored and restricted by state powers, or by Twitter and Facebook or their heirs apparent.

It is also possible though increasingly unlikely through today’s prism, that the Internet will remain a free and uncontrollable instrument of global connection, interaction, commerce and freedom of speech.

The apocalyptic direction is one where we see a no-holds-barred exchange of every single malware kit we've developed duking it out in cyberspace, and the worst possible outcome would be that the global infrastructure is destroyed irreparably and cannot be reconstituted.

In cyber-war, we are not deterred by mutual assured destruction as in the nuclear-influenced physical world, the participants need not be super-power nations but literally a nation-state actor in his bedroom with a laptop and a botnet. The Internet has created a virtual battle field where states no longer need giant militaries and enormous material capabilities to inflict serious damage on other states.

And here in the U.S., as opposed to say, China, we will never entertain the idea of disconnecting from the global Internet. And because anything that uses internet technology is connected to an internal network somewhere, we open an avenue of entry to the control fabric of our computing infrastructure itself so that whether one is directly connected to the global internet or not, every single device, down to cameras, control panel switches in energy supply systems and tractors in agriculture, are potential targets of attack.

A decade ago, we were excited about the ways in which the internet levels the playing field and equalizes everyone, giving voice to individuals who wish to counter inequities ushered in by large enterprises, businesses and government. But we now see that the tables have turned, and the Internet is now being used by government, business and social media platforms to collect and monetize private data, obstruct and subvert certain speech and ideas, essentially making war on and targeting individuals and ideologies with which these actors don’t agree. So, instead of flattening hierarchies, it has allowed many actors to gain more not less power.

And while both nation-states, giant intelligence agencies and teenage hackers have been empowered, we haven’t even begun to address the restraints that need to be imposed on ourselves, either legally or morally.

Russia and China have been pushing for a long time to “bring peace to cyberspace,” which is code for bringing the Internet under state control. Their “Code of Conduct” attempts to establish a multilateral, intergovernmental solution to anything and everything regarding the internet. More breaches, more cyberattacks, and increasing chaos in cybersecurity continues to serve the interests of states like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea and their justification for more control and more security which translates to state control. China saw no need for justification however when they built out their closed quantum Internet in Shanghai last year.

Responding to these threats as we have with covert strategic operations of our own, is not a good idea because we pave the way for the escalation of information weaponization. Soon, everything from the New York Times to Facebook becomes weapons of war and we are seeing the beginnings of the outcry and demands for government adjudication right now. The last thing the Internet needs is the U.S. federal government stepping in to censor what information may or may not be transmitted. We cannot revert to the status of a third world country like China and Russia.

And we have to find a way to stop the dangerous precedent that the Zuckerberg’s, Pichai’s and Dorsey’s have started by continuing to censor free speech on their platforms.

International law tells us that war requires very special circumstances typically involving death, destruction and physical damage, but authoritarian states prefer laws that indict anything that threatens their hold on power. The legal framework of the 19th and 20th century however has not adapted to this new world where a few bytes of malicious code can be every bit as destructive as a nuclear bomb, and it remains unclear as to the point at which information transforms to become a material threat, but it clearly can and does. Ask the citizens of the Ukraine.

What is required and is as unlikely as discovering life on Mars, is an initiative by the international community to come together and agree on a template for Internet security, economy and governance.

But if we can’t find a way to establish agreed upon norms for all state behavior in cyberspace and not simply by a bunch of government leaders who have demonstrated historically a consistent inability to work together for a greater good, then we are doomed to continue this never-ending cycle of attack/defend/counter-attack that will surely lead to the war of the worlds.

We need corporate and institutional actors from business, commerce, media and civil society organizations along with government leaders to participate in creating a new governing manifesto for peaceful coexistence in cyberspace.

The Internet is an invention that now impacts everyone’s lives in every corner of this planet. It is as essential to our existence in the modern world as air, water and food. Any attempt to advance singular interests cannot be tolerated, and ultimately, it will require the focused attention of the entire free society that built the Internet to save it before it succumbs to what now appears to be its inevitable destruction.