The Third Tech Stack and the Digital Cold War
tl;dr: The Internet is forking into multiple, parallel universes. There’s one way to ensure that humans can stay connected with each other and trust each other. It’s the “Third Tech Stack.”
A recent tweet from my friend, and world-famous analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, got me thinking:
He’s right.
The “Two Internets” is already happening though.
Ben Thompson outlined it beautifully in the days following the Daryl Morey tweet in his post, The China Cultural Clash.
It is already as if we live in two different worlds.
The Great Firewall and the Great Cannon
For example, the so-called “Great Firewall of China” makes it so that Chinese citizens are unable to access sites like Wikipedia or Google.
Censors make sure that the internal social media sites prevent any mention of Tiananmen Square or the current situation in Hong Kong.
Much of these blockages are outlined on sites like Great Fire.
But the cyber-battle is far more than defensive.
According to Thompson,
“The Guardian reported last last month:
TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the site’s moderation guidelines. The documents, revealed by the Guardian for the first time, lay out how ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered technology company that owns TikTok, is advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app.
The revelations come amid rising suspicion that discussion of the Hong Kong protests on TikTok is being censored for political reasons: a Washington Post report earlier this month noted that a search on the site for the city-state revealed “barely a hint of unrest in sight”.
My 11 year old daughter is a big fan of Tik Tok. She also reads the Wall Street Journal (yes, it’s a point of pride), but my point here is that she’s both very digitally savvy and informed about world events.
So, I asked her to explore TikTok for videos of Hong Kong.
Just as Thompson said, it’s as if the event doesn’t exist.
Thompson brought my attention to something that a team of researchers called “the Great Cannon.” It refers to China’s desire to point their digital capabilities outside of their Firewall, now that they have figured that part out, and start playing offense.
This is that the TikTok situation is all about and, as Western countries and companies look for cash to fuel growth, they will turn to Chinese companies.
After all, “that is where the money is.”
And the money will come, but most likely with Godfather-like terms.
And one of those terms might be “put yourself in the path of the Great Cannon.”
China is Just the First, Not the Last
We’ve come a long way since the early, utopian-vision driven days of the commercial Internet.
Things like freedom and freedom and democracy were supposed to increase, not decrease. Yet, we’ve gone the other way.
More and more countries, particularly, but not limited to those run by autocrats are seeing this model for control (at least on the defensive side) and imposing it.
When I was in Turkey this summer, for example, I witnessed it. Wikipedia was simply not available there. (Get a VPN)
So, we’re not going to have “two Internets,” we’re going to have 10s or possibly 100s of them. A “balkanization” of the Internet, though we may have, as Jeremiah said, “two tech stacks.”
It’s like the Cold War all over again.
There was a “western stack” based on American military hardware and an “eastern stack” based on Soviet hardware. Then, each country, say East Germany of Canada would build its own society on top of that.
Whichever stack you pick determines your set of alliances.
Today, as China establishes $29B fund to wean itself off of US semiconductors and US companies increasingly choose profits over values, the key area of western technical superiority is eroding.
In The Rising Threat of Digital Nationalism in the WSJ recently, the question was asked “as the internet turns 50, the global vision that animated it is under attack. What can be done?”
The Crypto Stack
However, there will be a third stack.
This is the stack of software that can circumnavigate the globe and firewalls for information, independent of national firewalls.
It’s also the mechanism through which economic transactions between the “balkanized” Internets will occur. It’s not going to rely on US banks.
This is the “crypto stack” and it has the potential to restore the original intent of the Internet’s founding fathers and mothers.
A crypto stack will sit outside of the control of any one country or person because it is designed to specifically NOT be that way.
As the Blockstack guys say “Can’t be evil”.
Now, just to be clear, blockchain-based systems, when deployed, have a lower risk of monopoly or oligopoly control than centralized systems do, but they are not impervious entirely.
Also, there are plenty of ways that blockchain-based systems can be used to drive operational efficiencies, further cementing control by a centralized power.
For example, Paul from Pantera wrote about his recent trip to China and a new initiative there
“Each provincial or district Party organization can serve as a node of the blockchain system. With hybridchain technology, each node has different clearances and can participate in the maintenance of the local database.”
Essentially, the Communist Party is using blockchain tech to reduce the cost and administration time of tracking its citizens. Surveillance on steroids. This is the kind of example that shows the downside to blockchains in a permissioned system.
But I suspect that China’s new “blockchain push” (see: China on course to reap rewards with blockchain push by Xi Jinping) is about owning the third stack as well.
It won’t be fully open, but it will be “open enough” to facilitate global trade and micro-transactions (probably denominated or backed by a digital Yuan.).
Then, as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, they will help other countries deploy a blockchain economic network as well. One by one, they will link them together, creating a network of digitally interconnected states/entities that have the necessary controls of information and economics to keep the powerful in power.
This won’t be a true “crypto stack” since it won’t be open and permissionless in the way that Satoshi and other crypto/cypherpunks envision, but “it’ll do” for most people.
The alternative is to go “hard open” on information and economies. Yes, there will be downsides such as money laundering, but we have to ask ourselves if the alternative is preferable?
The alternative is an economic and information environment that allows anyone, anywhere, regardless of their ticket in the “geographic lottery” to participate in a free and open society, connecting and trading with other people for mutual benefit.
In my mind, it’s not easy, but it is a no-brainer.