Mandated Interoperability/ Cybersecurity: The Fateful Tradeoff Underlying the Crowdstrike Incident

We’ve learned a lot in the last ten days about the software update from Crowdstrike that crashed approximately 8.5 million Windows-based PCs. In retrospect, 8.5 million is a fairly small portion of the global Windows environment, 7 or 8% (according to MSFT less than 1% of Windows machines were impacted),...

The U.S. FCC’s intrusion into routing security: A comment

The Internet Governance Project (IGP) has submitted comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Matter of Reporting on Border Gateway Protocol Risk Mitigation Progress, FCC 24-146 and Secure Internet Routing, FCC-24-62. Internet routing was for many years left network operators to...

Surprise! National Security Controls on Drones are Harming National Security

Many government controls on the digital economy are justified by national security claims. Too often, these controls are motivated not by sound cybersecurity principles, but by an archaic economic nationalism. The prevailing idea in the U.S. Defense Department, for example, seems to be that something “made in the USA” is...

IGP to present at National Academies Workshop on Countering Disinformation

Disinformation online, and how it might be addressed, remains a persistent challenge for civil society, firms, and states. Tomorrow, April 10, the National Academies of Sciences will begin a workshop on Evolving Technological, Legal and Social Solutions to Counter Disinformation in Social Media. The workshop will feature two days of...

Yes, it’s a Ban – The Real Story Behind the New TikTok Law

The US Government is seeking new authorities to ban TikTok as a national security threat. If it sounds like deja vu, that’s because it is. In the year and three months since our study debunking the claims that TikTok is a national security threat, no new evidence or arguments have...

The Dutch in the grip of Internet nationalism

The Netherlands has a reputation for being a liberal, broad-minded place that is open to the world. Its scholars in Internet governance have emphasized the need for a globally recognized “public core” of the Internet. But apparently the virus of digital sovereignty has affected a significant portion of the Internet...

Here’s why 2023 wasn’t a Happy New Year

The year 2023 was a notable one in digital governance. A retrograde tendency by nation-states to pursue “digital sovereignty” peaked in Europe, China and the U.S., leading to numerous governmental barriers and restrictions on data, networks, computing devices and software applications. Meanwhile, breakthroughs in natural language AI applications convinced the...

Workshop Overview: What is ‘national’ security in a globally connected economy?

Diverse Experts challenge national security rationales underlying US digital governance Since 2016, the United States has abruptly reversed its liberal policies governing the Internet, global trade and regulation in the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector. This sea change in ICT policy rests on sweeping and largely untested claims about...

The Narrative: November 1, 2023

Dispatches from the evolving digital political economy AI Governance: Empty Gestures? The US government released an AI Executive Order October 31. The Halloween release comes after a year-long FUD campaign, backed partly by businessmen with a vested interest in AI, that frames AI as a frightening new technology that poses...