Russia starts testing its own internal internet
Russia has begun testing a national internet system that would function as an alternative to the broader web, according to local news reports. Exactly what stage the country has reached is unclear, but certainly the goal of a resilient — and perhaps more easily controlled — internet is being pursued.
The internet, of course, is made up of a global web of infrastructure that must interface physically, virtually, and increasingly politically with the countries it connects to. Some countries, like China, have opted to very carefully regulate that interface, controlling what websites, apps, and services can be accessed from the local side of that interface.
Russia has increasingly leaned towards that approach, with President Putin signing a law earlier this year there, Runet, which would build the necessary infrastructure to maintain, essentially, a separate internal internet should such a thing be come necessary (or convenient).
Speaking earlier this week to the state-owned news outlet Tass, Putin explained that this was purely a defensive play.
Runet, he said, “is aimed only at preventing adverse consequences of global disconnection from the global network, which is largely controlled from abroad. This is the point, this is what sovereignty is — to have our resources that can be turned on so that we would not be cut from the Internet.”
Tech Crunch
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