Geostrategic clashes centred on the Internet will result in lose-lose for all

THE Internet may have started as a Pentagon research project, but since its inception, the high-tech information technology has been seen as an agent for global economic and political liberalisation.

The revolution, it was expected, would erode the power of the nation-state and help create the foundations of a global village that would reflect democratic values and free-market principles. Silicon Valley business leaders, joined by policymakers in Washington, have promoted this universal message of the Internet that would shape the digital world's global architecture, and have pressed governments to refrain from trying to interfere and manage it.

In fact, while criticising China and other governments for putting constraints on the operations of American social media companies like Facebook and Google to silence political dissent, the consensus in Washington until recently has been that governments, including the US government, should not be in the business of managing the Internet.