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...
Recently, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) decried that Apple is considering adding Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC), a Chinese state-owned manufacturer specializing in flash memory, to its supplier list for iOS-based devices. Today, bipartisan support exists to blacklist YMTC, threatening to bar Apple from contracting them...
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...
As Congress passes legislation designed to onshore and re-nationalize the production of semiconductor-based integrated circuits, the hype of the industry backers of this plan proclaims that “The Future is Built on Semiconductors.” Is it, now? It would be more accurate to say that the “The Present is built on Semiconductors”...
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...
A February 1 speech by India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, outlined some aspirational goals for the Indian Digital economy. Two announcements that stood out were the launch of Digital Rupee, India’s version of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC); and taxation of virtual digital assets. India will now tax income...
Representatives of the Biden administration are now saying that its “Alliance for the Future of the Internet” will be launched "in coming weeks.” Despite our earlier article indicating that the initiative might have some promise, the more we’ve heard, the more pessimistic we are about it. The Alliance has three...
November 1, 2021 Facebook tries to change the subject After becoming the scapegoat of choice for all of society’s ills, from the “death of democracy” to teenage girls’ social comparisons to amplifying hate speech, Mark Zuckerberg announced a change to the company’s name and a shift in its focus. While...
At this point, it’s certainly not news that the Kremlin has been seeking to exert full control over what it regards as its national, Russian-only information space (информационном пространстве). For almost a decade – that is, since Putin returned to office for his third presidential term in 2012 – the...
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”
