Ideal vs. Reality: Understanding the Liberal-Democratic Gap

China and Russia do not share the liberal-democratic view of the internet—quite the contrary, in fact. The Chinese and Russian governments have long emphasized security of the state over ideas of openness, resilience, and decentralization (online as much as offline). In addition to censoring content and aggressively cracking down¹ on the ability of foreign companies to operate in and thereby influence their internet, China has clear strategies on internet governance, covering everything from the digital economy to terrorism.² Its government and corporations are making significant investments in physical internet infrastructure, gaining control of valuable underwater cables in the Asia Pacific.³ Further, China’s government has begun pushing its policies within international organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and other standards bodies.⁴ Chinese policymakers have also made clear their prioritization of “cultural security” and “innovation security,” which collectively safeguard the domestic online environment from internal and external threats.⁵

China’s cyberspace strategy is “vastly different” from that of its liberal-democratic counterparts—perhaps foremost in its acceptance of the internet reality.⁶ Its government addresses security issues, digital and otherwise, head-on.⁷ But China’s policy is also cohesive: as one scholar puts it, “Beijing has moved to rapidly…[to] construct a policy and regulatory framework spanning cybersecurity, the digital economy, and online media content—all under one mantel.”⁸

The Chinese and Russian governments have long emphasized security of the state over ideas of openness, resilience, and decentralization (online as much as offline).

Similar to China, Russia actively seeks to control the internet governance narrative in its favor through the “politicization of global cyber issues”⁹ and its use (and export)¹⁰ of SORM-3, a system enabling mass censorship and surveillance.¹¹ Russia consistently pushes norms in the ITU, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to uphold multilateralism¹² over the West-favored multi-stakeholder approach.¹³ And its leadership acknowledges the fundamental use of the internet as a foreign policy tool, viewing cyberspace as a “chaotic domain…which reinforces global anarchy.”¹⁴ Russian treatment of the internet ties in visibly with its other economic, social, and political goals.

On the point of multilateralism, China and Russia actively cooperate on international cyberspace issues, signing a joint letter to the UN General Assembly in 2015 on an “international code of conduct for information security.” In addition to emphasizing the importance of sovereignty in cyberspace, it called for others “not to use information and communications technologies and information and communications networks to carry out activities which run counter to the task of maintaining international peace and security.”¹⁵ This comes back to China and Russia’s mutually-held idea that online information is “a potential threat to their political stability that demands tight controls.”¹⁶

These countries’ visions of the internet may not be desirable, but that does not mean their underlying assumptions (e.g., its insecurity) are flawed. It also does not imply a lack of consistent messaging: China and Russia actively pass laws in support of their own security-centric internet policies, from banning encrypted messenger Telegram¹⁷ and broadly regulating online discourse¹⁸ to controlling gateways to the global internet¹⁹ and punishing search engines that link to banned Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).²⁰ The same goes for authoritarian countries such as Iran, where violations of net neutrality²¹ are consistent with their professed internet strategy.²²

These countries’ visions of the internet may not be desirable, but that does not mean their underlying assumptions are flawed.

In contrast, many liberal-democratic laws and policies—that is, what happens in practice—may not align with their governments’ visions. The United States repealed its protection of net neutrality in June 2018,²³ a core element of an open internet. While the European Union is still officially committed²⁴ to net neutrality, some argue this falls short in practice.²⁵ National cyber defenses, such as the United Kingdom’s filtering of threats at the border,²⁶ run directly in the face of complete openness, as do the majority of liberal-democratic countries whose surveillance programs aggressively monitor the flow of online information.²⁷

In 2015, Freedom House named France as the nation with the second-greatest annual increase in internet censorship, in that case due to blowback from the terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo.²⁸ Censorship laws similarly passed in the name of domestic security have gained foothold in the United States,²⁹ Germany,³⁰ Canada,³¹ and the United Kingdom,³² to name several others. Again, this may be for legitimate reasons, but the passage of these laws represents at least some shift away from the idea of internet openness, freedom, and interoperability and further toward the idea of the internet’s inherent vulnerability and capacity for harm.

The United States permits challenges to internet resilience, allowing only a few internet service providers to control a significant amount of traffic.³³ Some argue this is a byproduct of the United States’ capitalist approach to the technology market,³⁴ but the centralization of control over internet architecture is at least evident. This challenges internet security insofar as single centers hold valuable access to high volumes of traffic (a goldmine for hackers and foreign nation-states wishing to spy on American internet communications).

The passage of these censorship laws represents at least some shift away from the idea of internet openness, freedom, and interoperability and further toward the idea of the internet’s inherent vulnerability and capacity for harm.

All of this said, most liberal-democratic nation-states strongly disagree with Russia, China, and other authoritarians on how to govern the internet; the U.S. government, for instance, does not hire citizens to pervasively spread propaganda (as with China³⁵ and Russia).³⁶ The Netherlands, to use another example, is known for open sharing of online information rather than aggressive internet censorship.³⁷ So the challenging of one’s own principles does not necessarily (and in this case, does not) constitute full alignment with authoritarian nation-states. However, liberal-democratic countries still need to shift their stances from the total ideal of freedom, openness, interoperability, security, and resiliency to one that is more attuned with today’s reality—raising the question of how this should be done.

Recognizing that the five characteristics of the idealized internet are a departure from the internet reality—what is a series of increasingly restricted, vulnerable, centralized, and often sovereign networks—we have built the following framework³⁸ to identify pitfalls, gaps, and tensions in the liberal-democratic policy community’s idealized portrait of the global internet. Importantly, this idealized version of the internet is not necessarily the same as that of the initial internet founders, technology companies, or internet users. Instead, it is an interpretation of the picture painted of the internet by liberal-democratic policy statements. It therefore serves as a baseline from which we can analyze current policies towards the internet (e.g., mapping and understanding the divergence from the baseline).

This, we believe, is where our framework proves useful. Highlighting the gap between the ideal and the reality allows us to better understand the challenges and tensions at play, from the physical wires that compose the global internet to the laws and social norms that shape its pervasive impact. Furthermore, understanding this gap helps us better understand the implications of policies and may assist in identifying just how far liberal-democratic societies are willing to push their internet regulations and restrictions in pursuit of cyber and broader security.