Keeping the Internet Together through Technical Standards

The Internet is held together as a globally interoperable communications platform through its shared set of technical protocols, message formats, and computer languages, collectively known as "Internet standards." A growing chorus of national governments – including China and Russia – has argued that the organizations and processes that lead to standardization are both outmoded and inequitable. They contend that the current process unfairly favors American firms; that it produces standards with insufficient built-in security; and that it leads to standards that allow for a degree of freedom fundamentally at odds with the social norms of some nonwestern nations.

While efforts at reform have remained largely unsuccessful, the technical design decisions that were historically the sole province of engineers and academics have increasingly come under the political pressures of governments seeking to influence and reform them. Standards bodies continue to churn out new and improved standards for the international market. Yet there is concern about the future. Should a large country, or a coalition of countries, withdraw from the current standards process, they might effectively cleave the Internet at the technical level.

Such challenges represent a real and present threat to the continuing growth and value of the Internet. Nations supporting the current system, including the United States and its allies, need to use traditional, diplomatic persuasion, economic muscle, and “soft power” to sustain a system that has benefited not just the west, but those nations so desperately in need of the development potential that the Internet offers....

For the full article, see "A Balkanized Internet? The Uncertain Future of Global Internet Standards." Georgetown Journal of International Affairs