Beyond the Great Firewall
When analysts discuss internet fragmentation, the conversation typically centers on content filtering — China's Great Firewall, Russia's Roskomnadzor, Iran's National Information Network. These are significant, but they represent only the application layer of a much deeper structural transformation. The more consequential fragmentation is occurring at the protocol and standards layer — where competing visions for how the internet should fundamentally operate are being encoded into technical specifications that, once adopted, create path dependencies lasting decades.
The internet's foundational protocols — TCP/IP, BGP, DNS — were designed in a specific geopolitical context: Cold War-era US defense research, later opened to commercial and academic use under assumptions of good-faith participation and decentralized governance. These protocols embed no identity layer, no centralized control point, and no mechanism for sovereign oversight. For authoritarian governments, these are not features — they are design defects to be corrected.
New IP: China's Alternative Architecture
In 2019, Huawei and China's major state-owned telecoms (China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom) jointly submitted a proposal to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for a fundamental redesign of internet architecture under the banner "New IP." The proposal, while framed in technical language about efficiency and IoT optimization, embeds several capabilities absent from current internet protocols:
Mandatory identity verification at the network layer — every packet traceable to a verified entity
A "shut-up command" allowing network authorities to disconnect specific endpoints unilaterally
Centralized address allocation replacing the distributed model of regional internet registries
Built-in content awareness allowing network-level filtering without deep packet inspection
Western technical communities rejected the proposal at the IETF, where the consensus-based process and commitment to decentralized architecture made adoption impossible. But the ITU operates on a one-country-one-vote model — and China has systematically cultivated voting support among developing nations through digital infrastructure investment tied to Belt and Road Initiative connectivity projects.
3
Disconnection tests
Russia's RuNet isolation exercises since 2024
78
Countries
Using Chinese-built internet infrastructure
42%
ITU proposals
Submitted by Chinese entities in 2025
Russia's Sovereign Internet: From Theory to Practice
Russia's approach differs from China's. Rather than proposing alternative global standards, Moscow has pursued technical sovereignty — the ability to operate a functional national internet disconnected from the global network. The 2019 Sovereign Internet Law (Federal Law No. 90-FZ) mandated the installation of deep packet inspection equipment at all international traffic exchange points and the creation of a domestic DNS system capable of resolving all .ru domains without accessing the global root server system.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has accelerated implementation. Three large-scale disconnection tests — in which Russian internet traffic was routed exclusively through domestic infrastructure — were conducted in 2024 and early 2025. Reports from Russian network operators suggest these tests achieved approximately 95% domestic traffic containment, though with significant service degradation for applications dependent on foreign CDNs and cloud infrastructure.
“The internet was built on the assumption that everyone benefits from interconnection. We are entering an era where some states calculate that the benefits of control outweigh the costs of isolation.”
— Vint Cerf, co-designer of TCP/IP, speaking at RIPE 89, October 2025
The Standards Bodies as Battlegrounds
The geopoliticization of technical standards extends beyond protocol design to the governance of standards bodies themselves. Three trends are reshaping the landscape:
Voting Bloc Formation at the ITU
The 2022 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference elected a Russian candidate as Secretary-General — a result that demonstrated the effectiveness of coordinated bloc voting. Chinese and Russian delegations now routinely coordinate positions across ITU study groups, presenting joint proposals that embed state-control capabilities in next-generation network standards.
3GPP and 5G/6G Standards
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which develops mobile telecommunications standards, has become another arena of competition. Chinese companies hold more 5G essential patents than any other national bloc, and proposals for 6G standards are already embedding design choices with surveillance and control implications — including mandatory lawful intercept capabilities at the radio access network level that exceed what current standards require.
IETF's Eroding Consensus Model
The Internet Engineering Task Force, long the bastion of rough consensus and running code, faces pressure from government delegations seeking to influence protocol development. While the IETF's individual-participation model has so far resisted government capture, participation patterns show increasing coordination among delegates from state-affiliated research institutions.
Cybersecurity Implications of Fragmentation
For cybersecurity practitioners, internet fragmentation creates operational challenges that compound existing threats:
Reduced threat intelligence sharing: As networks fragment, the ability to observe and share indicators of compromise across jurisdictional boundaries degrades. National CERTs in sovereign-internet jurisdictions may withhold or delay threat data.
Incompatible encryption standards: China mandates SM2/SM3/SM4 cryptographic algorithms for domestic use. If sovereign internets require sovereign cryptography, cross-border secure communication becomes technically complex.
Balkanized vulnerability disclosure: Coordinated vulnerability disclosure assumes a global community of researchers and vendors. Fragmentation creates information asymmetries where vulnerabilities known in one internet sphere remain unpatched in others.
Routing manipulation: Sovereign routing policies create opportunities for traffic interception and manipulation at national borders, expanding the attack surface for man-in-the-middle operations.
The Path Not Yet Taken
Internet fragmentation is not inevitable — but it is the current trajectory. The technical community, democratic governments, and private sector actors face a narrowing window to preserve the interoperable, decentralized architecture that has enabled both economic growth and (imperfect) human rights protections online.
Preserving this architecture requires engagement on multiple fronts: active participation in standards bodies, investment in alternative connectivity infrastructure for developing nations (breaking the BRI digital dependency), and — critically — demonstrating that open internet protocols can address legitimate governance concerns without embedding authoritarian control. The failure to offer credible alternatives to New IP and sovereign internet models will, by default, cede the architectural future of the internet to those who see decentralization as a flaw rather than a feature.
This analysis draws on ITU proceedings, IETF participation data, academic research from the Oxford Internet Institute and Stanford Internet Observatory, OONI network measurement data, and interviews with technical standards participants from multiple jurisdictions.