In the article ‘Who’s the true enemy of internet freedom-China, Russia, or the US?’ -Morozov(2015), the author mentions that the US is the true enemy of internet freedom. The article shows that the US is the one who forces other countries like China and Russia to action whenever US internet space is threatened. China and Russia try to control their citizens' internet accessibility by forcing browsers to change their internet services from US companies to their own country's companies. On the other hand, the US tries to control browser information on a global scale by leveraging on it's considerable political and economical power over the rest of the world, in addition to the 'soft power' of US' pop culture themes.
The article shows that although China and Russia take actions to limit browser accessibility and impose heavy restrictions on internet freedom, ultimately the US is to be blamed for the implementation of these actions.
The article shows that although China and Russia take actions to limit browser accessibility and impose heavy restrictions on internet freedom, ultimately the US is to be blamed for the implementation of these actions.
Internet access has become a necessary tool for daily life in developed countries, and this means that whoever controls the internet may very well be the dominant power in the future. Hence, I think it is absolutely reasonable and in fact necessary for individual countries to actively defend their own internet freedoms.
The US has a big advantage in the internet game. As mentioned in the passage, much of the communication infrastructure is run by Silicon Village, not to mention the US ownership of most of the giant internet companies. Many of these companies are branched out to the whole world, and this builds up a hardware infrastructure that will prove hard to remove by the local government. Evidently, the US holds a vastly better hand compared to other countries. Let us think on a question: what if a country has the free access to all the data on internet, essentially run by its own country, and the governing body decides to make full use of it?The damage that can be done will no doubt set a precedent for widespread chaos. No one can forget the Jasmine Revolution of 2010 and its severe repercussions. Facebook, Twitter and their social media cousins, all of which belong to US companies, may not have been the direct cause of the revolution, but they definitely served an important role in accelerating the revolution.
The measures undertaken by China and Russia in order to protect their online borders are, in the wake of these considerations, very understandable. This is a war, and no one likes to lose in a war. Based on my understanding, the internet freedoms that are mentioned here no longer refer to the privacy of individual browsers, but the rather the collective online freedom of countries.
One man’s internet freedom is another man’s internet imperialism. This sentiment forms the basis of a great number of recent international conflicts, and I wholeheartedly agree with it.
