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China The Internet Communications Government United States Politics

The Internet, Divided Between the US and China, Has Become a Battleground (wsj.com) 176

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The global internet is splitting in two. From a report: One side, championed in China, is a digital landscape where mobile payments have replaced cash. Smartphones are the devices that matter, and users can shop, chat, bank and surf the web with one app. The downsides: The government reigns absolute, and it is watching -- you may have to communicate with friends in code. And don't expect to access Google or Facebook.

On the other side, in much of the world, the internet is open to all. Users can say what they want, mostly, and web developers can roll out pretty much anything. People accustomed to China's version complain this other internet can seem clunky. You must toggle among apps to chat, shop, bank and surf the web. Some websites still don't seem to be designed with smartphones in mind. The two zones are beginning to clash with the advent of the superfast new generation of mobile technology called 5G.

China aims to be the biggest provider of gear underlying the networks, and along with that it is pushing client countries to adopt its approach to the web -- essentially urging some to use versions of the "Great Firewall" that Beijing uses to control its internet and contain the West's influence. Battles are popping up around the world as Chinese tech giants try to use their market power at home to expand abroad, something they've largely failed to do so far. Some Silicon Valley executives worry the divergence risks giving Chinese companies an advantage in new technologies such as artificial intelligence, partly because they face fewer restrictions over privacy and data protection. Further reading: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Predicts the Internet Will Split in Two By 2028 -- and One Part Will Be Led By China.
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The Internet, Divided Between the US and China, Has Become a Battleground More

The Internet, Divided Between the US and China, Has Become a Battleground

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  • With or without China's urging... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @11:48AM (#58121302)
    ... I expect the Internet world to segment into Internet countries. The Internet, as we know it today, will be a relic in 20 years.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yea, the powers that be try to wrestle control away from the people and to governments and lobbies.

      Russia recently had their "disconnect from the rest of the world" test.
      China has its Great Firewall.
      The EU soon gets filters and Internet-"light" as to not run afoul of copyrights.
      In the US it's more driven by private companies that separate between what they deem acceptable and what not.

      We had a good run.

    • The internet was great while it lasted.

      If you want to have something like that, I guess you have to do it yourself in the future.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes. In fact, that is true going backwards too: the internet we knew 30 years ago is a relic, and what have today is a poor imitation with much less control for users and much more control for multinationals and authoritarian governments.

      That trend shows no sign of slowing down.

    • Downgraded due to "overrated?" Wow.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Don't worry friend. I got downvoted into he ground the other day for criticizing mass surveillance. Among tech people that isn't controversial at all, so I don't know who does this.

        Could be paid government shills, but Occum's razor it's probably just boot-licking citizens, who follow tow the media line, and don't really understand tech issues.

        This cancer has spread to all corners of the internet, /. HN Ars reddit

    • Re:With or without China's urging... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by lgw ( 121541 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @01:22PM (#58121996) Journal

      The Internet, as we know it today, will be a relic in 20 years.

      That will obviously be true regardless. However, I think the early internet will resurface and some censorship-free platform, at least in countries that don't just ban all encrypted packets not to a whitelisted endpoint. Perhaps something like a v2 of Freenet, with its technical problems addressed. Something with no servers to take down. Hiding from large governments is hard - impossible if they just effectively ban encryption - but we could at least be free from corporate oversight, on a platform optimized for privacy over business.

      For now people are happy with VPNs, but with the rise of corporate censorship and the ever-increasing political power of content distribution corporations, I don't think that's stable.

      • It'll happen. It's already happening. But it won't be a mass-access thing - it'll be something users need to actively seek out and educate themselves on in order to gain access. Almost all users will be happy to use FacebookNet, because it does what they want: They can do the social media thing, look things up, chat to friends, check the news, contact their bank, buy goods, etc. It'll just be the minority who want to sneak over to the bad side of town, into that lawless realm.

      • Only VPNs that specialize in geo-unblocking are useful for this. Most VPNs are just too easy to detect and block. The VPN has to actually be willing to engage in a cat and mouse game which is no doubt expensive. I think it won't be too long before the arms race escalates enough that the sorts of servers most VPNs use now will be useless. Only genuine consumer ISP IP addresses will be accepted by the 1/3 of the internet that geoblocks. I can only hope that at least some VPNs will be able to make a deal with

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      It pretty much is already de facto segmented by language and local norms. I don't know about you, but I use zero Chinese, Russian, Iranian, etc websites now. But segmented how, exactly? As in, no longer using one global IP address space? Or some interconnectivity, but using firewalls to filter traffic? Or literally physically separated from the internet?

      • You don't have to speak Russian to use shady VPN services to conceal yourself when you want it. One thing the citizens of each country can agree upon: We may not like the other countries politics, but our government's having 0 good relations, and our citizens being able to connect to one another, might be valuable in bypassing each of our governments various totalitarian excesses (just make sure the crime you commit on that foreign VPN isn't being committed in that foreign country).

  • This is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @11:53AM (#58121314) Journal

    This is just stupid. What does the speed of wireless networks have to do with ANY of the other aspects in the story at all? At 4G I am not bandwidth bound. I can stream video at a far higher resolution than needed for a 4" screen. It has no impact on shopping, messaging, banking, etc. Further, what does the network have to do with the apps that communicate over that network? We tried AOL once. It had everything this story talked about in one unified place and interface. It sucked. It went away because that's how our markets work. People use what they want to use, which is typically based on what gives them what they want and the way they want it.

    The fact that China will be producing networking 5G networking gear is... inconsequential. I'm sure there are many, many products created in China that are sold at tremendous volume that the West does not buy nor care to buy. No one here is going to buy 5G hardware with built in Chinese Government Approved and Controlled AI to restrict communication just because they make a lot of them or use them there.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No one here is going to buy 5G hardware with built in Chinese Government Approved and Controlled AI to restrict communication just because they make a lot of them or use them there.

      Yeah, instead we'll just buy United States Government approved and backdoored chips to execute US corporate AI that monitors and analyzes our thoughts and movements for the powers that be to utilize and profit from in any way they see fit.

      Seems like hardly any difference between the two, except the US govt can put you in jail or do other things to you that the Chinese gov't can't do without somehow getting you to visit China first.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I can stream video at a far higher resolution than needed for a 4" screen.

      Hi Grandpa!

      You may not have noticed, but 4" screens are o-o-old. The phablets we used to make fun of back when 4" was considered large have taken over. "Phones" with screens approaching (if not exceeding) 7" are common. And they have insanely high-res screens. The kids streaming video to these devices won't be satisfied with something as low-res as full-HD; it's got to be quad-HD or UHD or whatever the highest-res they can get is. Nev

    • AOL didn't go away. It is still used by the less computer literate for just the reason you mention. I has everything in one place.
      • Wait...but that means..OMG, China is AOL! This adds so much depth to You've Got Mail. A story of two unlikely Chinese lovers: one a traditionalist bookstore owner, the other a Communist Party corporate overlord.

    • No one here is going to buy 5G hardware with built in Chinese Government Approved and Controlled AI to restrict communication just because they make a lot of them or use them there.

      Sure, no one here will but telecom companies that gets a deep discount (because it's subsidized) on the 5G hardware totally will. Do you really think businesses are above this?

      • If your country is part of the 5 eyes group then no, no you won't get that hardware in telecos.

        See TPG in Australia. They have pulled out of the 5g rollout here because huawei hardware was blocked on security grounds.

        • If your country is part of the 5 eyes group then no, no you won't get that hardware in telecos.

          I certainly hope you are right because we have fucking idiots in charge. They ZTE off the hook and tried to pay to make a FoxConn factory.

          • A close friend of mine owns a specialist telco. The hoops that they have to jump through for hardware compliance are significant.

            The concern is less about whether a foreign country can snoop on data than a foreign country could bring down the network by changing settings in the core networking equipment. While it is possible to isolate an internal network device, a core switch has to have its management interface accessible, and it is there that the risk is perceived.

    • The problem, or not problem but interesting fact is: you don't grasp how backyard you are.
      America has internet everywhere (more or less?), but broadband only where it "pays off".
      The stories that "this city" or "that town" sill has no broadband, fibre, DSL - you name it - are all over /.

      But your country is doing nothing about it, because: private business.

      In China perhaps 80% of the rural population has no internet or is stuck with DSL.

      Everything they build up now there will be G5.

      Guess what kind of connecti

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      This is just stupid. What does the speed of wireless networks have to do with ANY of the other aspects in the story at all? At 4G I am not bandwidth bound. I can stream video at a far higher resolution than needed for a 4" screen. It has no impact on shopping, messaging, banking, etc. Further, what does the network have to do with the apps that communicate over that network? We tried AOL once. It had everything this story talked about in one unified place and interface. It sucked. It went away because that'

  • not designed for smartphones (Score:3)

    by Megane ( 129182 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @12:02PM (#58121362)

    Some websites still don't seem to be designed with smartphones in mind.

    #secondworldproblems

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )

      Ah-not-this-crap-again.jpg

      First world = the USA and its allies (back when they pulled their weight and weren't useless freeloaders). Second world = the USSR and its satellites. Third world = everyone else.

      The second world ceased to exist around 1991. No, China isn't a part of it, they broke with the Soviets in the 1960s.

      • That is the US version of the mantra.

        First world: the developed word around 1950, that included USSR (and others).
        Second world, poorer countries mostly agriculture, less industrial development.
        Third world, poorly developed lacking infrastructure, starvations, dictatorships, usually no industries.
        Fourth world: even worth.

        Your "definition" never was an established one, and it is not the one the creators of the terms defined.

        I wonder why one of your age in our times still/silly reiterates that myth. Political

        • This is literally what First World, Second World, and Third World mean. There was no such fourth world. All terms were in common usage - except Second World which ceased to exist thirty years ago. This led people unfamiliar with the terms, but nonetheless hearing "first world" and "third world" erroneously concluded that "second world" must be some kind of intermediate step. It is not, it refers to the Soviet bloc. I wish you all the best in your ongoing battle with reality. Yours respectfully, a logi

          • This is literally what First World, Second World, and Third World mean.
            No it is not, I explained what it means in my previous post.

            There was no such fourth world.
            Yes there was, e.g. Somalia and Ethiopia belonged to the fourth world, now they are third world, Ethiopia even approaching "developing nation" status.

            Your definition is a retarded american redefinition of the original terms, and was never used anywhere outside of the US. I doubt it was the standard in the us anyway.

            It is not, it refers to the Sov

            • You are literally wrong. There was no such concept of fourth world. Third World was unaligned countries, India and so forth. These terms are in common usage and for you to invent new ones is utterly retarded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] "The Second World is a term that was used during the Cold War to refer to the industrial socialist states that were under the influence of the Soviet Union."

  • buzzword compliant (Score:3)

    by bigdavex ( 155746 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @12:20PM (#58121528)

    Some Silicon Valley executives worry the divergence risks giving Chinese companies an advantage in new technologies such as artificial intelligence, partly because they face fewer restrictions over privacy and data protection.

    Umm, yeah, and block chain.

  • One app to rule them all? (Score:3)

    by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @12:28PM (#58121600)

    No thanks! I don't want my banking app to do anything else!

    And websites designed "with smartphones in mind" tend to stink on a desktop. I really don't want my experience to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.

  • Internet is not the only thing it wants to control (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday February 14, 2019 @01:29PM (#58122046) Journal
    All mosques must fly Chinese flag along with any religious flags they choose to fly. All imams must be approved by the government.

    All bishops in all churches must be state approved. Vatican is ok with this arrangement it seems

    All Buddhist monastery lamas must be state approved. It has disrupted the centuries old tradition of Panchan lama finding the reincarnation of the Dalai lama and Dalai lama finding the reincarnation of Panchan lama. The current Dalai lama is in exile. Old Panchan lama is dead, replaced by government approved lama. They did not permit current Dalai lamas emissaries into China looking for the reincarnate. So Chinese government will identify the next Dalai lama once the current one dies.

    Now, internet? Why would anyone think China will accept an international control of the internet?

  • Look, it was designed to be segmentable.

    Just block stuff from countries that host hackers

  • The Internet in many ways is already turning into a shithole even without it being like in China; if the Internet as a whole went the way China would have it, then I'd yank it out of the wall and forget about it, it wouldn't be worth having anymore.

  • "China aims to be the biggest provider of gear underlying the networks, and along with that it is pushing client countries to adopt its approach to the web -- essentially urging some to use versions of the "Great Firewall" that Beijing uses to control its internet and contain the West's influence."

    Pure nonsense, nowhere does China try to urge anyone to use its firewall.

    "Users can say what they want, mostly, and web developers can roll out pretty much anything."

    Laughable considering how gab.com was no-platfo

  • Turns out the Chinese people are exactly like you and I. They use more than just smartphones... lol

  • Funny (Score:2)

    by sjames ( 1099 )

    I love how the SV guys try to slip in a permission slip to violate privacy and be careless with our data. Perhaps THAT is why things fall behind. We don't have mobile payments because the banks are too busy fighting over whose fee will reign supreme.

    It's all a totalitarian play, the only difference is who gets to be the God Emperor.

  • We need a secure and anonymous internet where all traffic and content are encrypted and no bulk surveillance or government manipulation are possible or allowed. If the evil dictators cannot accept this, they do not deserve to be connected to the rest of the world - disconnect them. In reality, the internet is already fragmented anyways. Disconnecting the evil dictatorships would help to reduce the hacking and massive spam currently tainting our internet.

  • the superfast new generation of mobile technology called 5G.

    "5G E is better. It has more E." - AT&T.

  • One side, championed in China, is a digital landscape where mobile payments have replaced cash. Smartphones are the devices that matter, and users can shop, chat, bank and surf the web with one app.

    Sounds like Genisys.

  • The internet long united, must divide; long divided, must unite. Thus it has ever been.

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