February 2, 2023 DoJ’s pointless swing at Google adtech On Jan 24, the Justice Department, along with the Attorneys General of eight states, filed a civil antitrust suit against Google for monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products, including its ad publisher, exchange, and advertiser network platforms. The complaint is the...
According to the Atlantic Council’s tracker, 17 countries currently have their Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in the pilot phase and 11 countries have rolled it out, with several others in either research or development stage. Three key drivers of interest for the central banks around the world to propose...
December 15, 2022 US-EU Data Privacy Framework Moves Forward The European Commission published a “draft adequacy decision,” about the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. In a largely unheralded but highly consequential decision, the US committed itself to privacy protections for European citizens in an October Executive Order from the Biden administration....
UN IGF meets in Addis Ababa The UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) convened this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, using a fully hybrid format. Avoiding Internet fragmentation and digital sovereignty are two of the most popular topics, along with a somewhat contradictory combination of calls for controlling & regulating AI...
September 15, 2022 What’s so great about The Merge? Ethereum finally upgraded its Proof of Work architecture to Proof of Stake, thus completing what was commonly being called "the merge." Up until September 15, 2022, there were two chains running in parallel on the Ethereum network: 1) the Mainnet used...
What do you do when the chips are down? Samsung warned that chip demand will weaken if the global economy downturns. Intel also reported disastrous quarterly results this week highlighting operational challenges and managerial missteps. Undeterred, among a wave of governments seeking to build domestic manufacturing capacity, the US Congress...
China Hawks Revive Trump’s Tiktok Gambit FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is trying very hard to revive former President Donald Trump’s TikTok ban. Even as the House January 6 Committee explores the details of a real threat to national security created by the very man who appointed Carr to the FCC...
June 30, 2022 IGP’s Annual Conference We’ve extended the deadline for submitting proposals to our annual workshop: From Internet Governance to Digital Political Economy. The event will be held in The Hague, October 17-18 and will feature presentations on redefining the field, the political economy of data, export controls on...
June 1, 2022 Trust in Aadhar deteriorates India’s long-running experiment with digital identity is still controversial. On May 27, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) issued a notification asking people to not share photocopies of their Aadhaar card as it could be “misused”. Yes, 13 years after Aadhaar was...
March 8, 2022 The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put global interconnection to the test as never before. Every media outlet is now talking about “Splinternet.” The ruptures extend beyond the internet and web to include many forms of cooperation and trade, especially in financial systems. This Narrative briefly comments...
Declaring Independence in Cyberspace tells the story of the struggle between governments and the global Internet community over control of the Internet registries (IANA). It offers new insights into a pressing question with profound implications: is state sovereignty the immutable foundation of global governance, or can new technological capabilities change the model?
“This is a book that needed to be written, and no one is better placed to write it than Milton Mueller. This full, rigorous account provides researchers and policymakers with a precious resource on global internet governance.”