Weekend Gedankenexperiment - The Kill Switch

Fri Feb 4 22:27:32 UTC 2011

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 1:49 PM, Hayden Katzenellenbogen
<hayden at nextlevelinternet.com> wrote:
> Not sure if it has been said already but wasn't one of the key point for
> the creation of the internet to create and infrastructure that would
> survive in the case of all out war and massive destruction. (strategic
> nuclear strikes)
>
> Does it not bode ill for "national security" if any party could take out
> a massive communication system by destroying/pressuring a few choke
> points?

As has been noted previously, it's all about your frame of
reference.  If the US is removed from the Internet, it does not
mean the Internet stops working; from the perspective of the
rest of the world, the Internet is still there.

likewise, when Egypt shut down the internet (from their perspective),
it was essentially a complete shutdown, from their viewpoint; nothing
on the internet was reachable.  This did not mean the Internet shut
down; for most of the rest of the world, they barely noticed Egypt was
gone.

The Internet itself will continue to function, no matter what silliness the
US political system attempts to engage in; from the perspective of those
in the US, it may appear that "the Internet" is unable to survive such an
attack; but from the perspective of the rest of the world, it really will be
localized damage in the US, and not at all a case of the Internet being
shut down.

Matt