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 to which it connects. Some countries, like China, have opted to very carefully regulate that interface, controlling which websites, apps and services can be accessed from the local side of that interface.
Russia has increasingly leaned toward 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 become 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.”
More recent reports, in Tass and Pravda as relayed by the BBC, indicated that this effort has gone beyond the theoretical to the practical. Tests were done on the vulnerability of the so-called Internet of Things, which must have been disheartening if Russian IoT devices have security practices as poor as U.S. ones. ..
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