The Splinternet, 2019-2024

The Splinternet Accelerates

From 2019 onward, the internet stops functioning like a neutral global commons and hardens into a contested architecture of exclusion, standards struggle, and sovereign fallback systems.

This module follows that shift across vendors, protocols, apps, routing systems, and satellite access so students can see where geopolitical control is actually asserted.

Reading lens

Track how the same political goal reappears at different layers: vendors, protocols, consumer apps, domestic routing, and emergency communications.

Bridge to AI

Once cloud, data, and standards become securitized, AI sovereignty follows the same logic of trusted ecosystems, restrictions, and fallback capacity.

Evidence points

60+ countries claimed by the Clean Network initiative
300+ Chinese apps banned in India by 2024
91 Huawei 5G contracts reported in 2020
80M+ Iranians estimated on the National Information Network

Section 1 / Analytical frame

Three logics drive the splinternet

The page becomes clearer if we stop treating every example as isolated. The cases below all express one or more of three logics: excluding unwanted dependence, rewriting the rules of technical order, and building sovereign fallback capacity.

Color key
Trusted-network exclusion Standards contest Sovereign insulation App-layer restriction Regulatory sovereignty
01

Exclusion

States identify foreign firms, apps, or infrastructures as security risks and remove them from trusted networks or domestic markets.

  • Vendor bans and trusted supplier lists
  • App store removals and market access restrictions
  • Telecom and cloud infrastructure screening
02

Standards competition

Control also happens upstream in standards bodies, where protocol design can redistribute power, visibility, and governability.

  • Competing visions of internet governance
  • Security versus surveillance debates
  • Diplomatic coalitions inside technical forums
03

Sovereign insulation

Instead of merely filtering content, states build domestic routing, storage, and service layers that can survive partial disconnection.

  • National DNS and domestic hosting
  • Deep packet inspection at chokepoints
  • Emergency control over spectrum and satellite access
In other words, the splinternet is not just about censorship. It is about architecture. Political conflict migrates into cables, cloud regions, standards committees, app markets, and redundancy planning.

Section 2 / Turning points

Seven moments that changed the argument

Read this timeline as acceleration rather than origin. The ideas existed earlier, but from 2019 onward they became explicit state strategies with visible diplomatic, legal, and infrastructural consequences.

Scroll horizontally through the sequence

May 2019 Trusted-network exclusion

US Executive Order 13873

The ICT supply chain becomes a national emergency question and opens the path toward vendor exclusion.

2019 Standards contest

Huawei submits "New IP"

The protocol layer itself becomes geopolitical: who should design the future internet, and with what assumptions about control?

Nov 2019 Sovereign insulation

Russia operationalizes Runet autonomy

The focus shifts from filtering content to ensuring domestic network survivability under centralized state control.

Jun 2020 App-layer restriction

India bans 59 Chinese apps

Border conflict reaches the app layer, demonstrating that platform access can be a tool of strategic response.

Aug 2020 Trusted-network exclusion

Clean Network expands

The United States frames telecom, app stores, cloud, and cables as one linked zone of trusted and untrusted infrastructure.

2022 Regulatory sovereignty

EU Digital Services Act

The regulatory state emerges as a third posture: not merely open, not fully closed, but sovereign through legal conditions.

2024 Sovereign insulation

Iran blocks Starlink at scale

Sovereignty extends beyond fiber and platforms into control over spectrum, terminals, and emergency communications.

Section 3 / Case studies

Five cases, five layers of digital power

Each case below is structured the same way: what happened, which instrument was used, what changed in the architecture of the internet, and why the episode matters once AI becomes the next strategic layer.

Clean Network Battle for the ITU India's digital strike Runet Iran's NIN
Trusted-network exclusion United States Telecom to cloud Refs. 1-2

The Clean Network turns dependency into a security category

Question to keep in mind: when does supply-chain security become bloc formation?

In August 2020, the United States presented the Clean Network as a broad architecture of trust. The point was not just to block Huawei. It was to connect carriers, app stores, cloud storage, smartphone ecosystems, and undersea cables into one security narrative about Chinese influence.

Five layers
  • Clean Carrier
  • Clean Store
  • Clean Apps
  • Clean Cloud
  • Clean Cable
What changed

Telecom policy stopped looking like a narrow infrastructure debate and started looking like alliance management across the whole digital stack.

Instrument
Executive order authority plus a diplomatic campaign for trusted vendors and trusted data pathways.
Target
Chinese infrastructure firms, cloud exposure, and platform dependence framed as national security vulnerabilities.
Why it matters for AI
Once cloud and chips are securitized, AI compute access naturally follows the same logic of trusted and untrusted ecosystems.
Pedagogical note

The novelty here is not only exclusion. It is the stitching together of many layers into one geopolitical map of trust.

Standards contest ITU standards politics Protocol layer Refs. 3-4

The battle for the ITU shows that protocol design is political

Question to keep in mind: can a network standard ever be neutral once it changes who controls visibility and routing?

Huawei's New IP proposal argued that the future internet needed deterministic routing, stronger built-in identification, and more centralized coordination for the 5G and IoT era. Supporters called this security and efficiency. Critics saw the risk of surveillance, kill switches, and a move away from the multistakeholder internet model.

Proponents said

Current TCP/IP was not designed for massive machine-to-machine traffic, guaranteed latency, or intrinsic traceability.

Critics said

The design assumptions would normalize centralized control and make technical surveillance easier to institutionalize.

Instrument
Standards entrepreneurship inside an international technical body rather than direct market bans.
Political effect
The dispute forced governments to reveal their preferred internet governance model, not just their telecom preferences.
Why it matters for AI
AI governance will also be shaped by standards, evaluation norms, safety rules, and interoperability assumptions that look technical but redistribute power.
Pedagogical note

Students often focus on firms. This case is about rules of design. Whoever defines the protocol can pre-structure what kinds of control become normal.

App-layer restriction India Platform layer Ref. 5

India's "digital strike" brings border conflict into the platform economy

Question to keep in mind: is app prohibition a security tool, an industrial policy, or both at once?

After the June 2020 Galwan Valley clash, India used Section 69A of the IT Act to ban 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok and WeChat. The move translated territorial conflict into digital exclusion and created room for domestic alternatives and other non-Chinese platforms to expand.

Immediate trigger

Military confrontation at the border became the political context for platform removal inside the domestic market.

Aftershock

By 2024, more than 300 apps had been restricted or removed, and Indian competitors such as ShareChat, Moj, and Josh filled part of the vacuum.

Instrument
Domestic legal authority over public order, sovereignty, and national security at the app-distribution layer.
Target
Consumer-facing platforms with large user bases and symbolic ties to Chinese digital influence.
Why it matters for AI
Control over platforms determines data access, recommendation systems, model deployment channels, and which firms get to scale locally.
Pedagogical note

This is the clearest case of geopolitical rivalry arriving at the everyday interface used by ordinary citizens.

Sovereign insulation Russia Routing and survivability Refs. 6-7

Runet makes sovereignty about endurance, not only censorship

Question to keep in mind: what counts as autonomy when the system depends on centralized filtering and inspection?

Russia's sovereign internet law built toward a domestic network that could keep functioning under partial disconnection. That meant national DNS capacity, state-supplied inspection equipment, and recurring tests of whether the network could survive external disruption while remaining governable from the center.

Core mechanisms
  • National DNS mirrors
  • TSPU deep packet inspection equipment
  • Annual disconnect tests
Conceptual shift

The move goes beyond content filtering. It aims at infrastructural survivability under conditions of conflict or sanctions.

Instrument
Legal mandate plus technical chokepoints installed at ISP exchange points and centrally coordinated by the state.
Target
The architecture of connectivity itself: routing, packet visibility, and the ability to degrade or sever external dependence.
Why it matters for AI
AI sovereignty also requires domestic compute, domestic hosting, and the ability to keep critical digital services operating despite external pressure.
Pedagogical note

Ask students to distinguish between "filtering what users see" and "rebuilding the network so it can stand alone."

Sovereign insulation Iran Spectrum and gateways Refs. 8-9

Iran's National Information Network extends sovereignty into the spectrum

Question to keep in mind: where are the borders of the internet once even satellite connectivity becomes governable?

Iran's National Information Network is one of the most explicit attempts to maintain domestic digital services while retaining the ability to sharply restrict access to the global internet. By 2024, the system was paired with measures capable of disrupting Starlink, showing that sovereignty claims now reach beyond domestic fiber into the electromagnetic spectrum.

Architecture
  • Domestic hosting for local domains and services
  • International gateways that can be restricted quickly
  • Filtering, monitoring, and protocol blocking layers
2024 escalation

Jamming, terminal seizures, and criminalization of possession turned supposedly borderless satellite connectivity into a contested territorial question.

Instrument
Domestic redundancy combined with coercive control over gateways, devices, and radio frequencies.
Target
Any path that might let information bypass the domestic infrastructure stack during periods of unrest.
Why it matters for AI
As AI services become critical infrastructure, states will seek the same power over model access, compute pathways, and emergency communications.
Pedagogical note

This case pushes the concept furthest: sovereignty is no longer just about platforms or packets, but about every communication channel that crosses territory.

Section 4 / Synthesis

By 2024, fragmentation looks like a triple-stack reality

The result is not simply an "open" camp and a "closed" camp. A third posture matters: states that prefer conditional openness, regulation, and strategic multi-alignment rather than total alignment with either Washington or Beijing.

Trusted-network exclusion

US-led trusted network

Security language sorts vendors, clouds, and infrastructures into trusted and untrusted zones.

  • Alliance-based vendor screening
  • Private platforms inside a strategic security frame
  • AI spillover: compute and model access become strategic assets
Standards contest

China-centered infrastructural ecosystem

Infrastructure, standards proposals, and overseas network projects support an alternative technical sphere of influence.

  • Digital Silk Road and platform expansion
  • State-compatible control assumptions in network design
  • AI spillover: domestic models, chips, and cloud substitutes
Regulatory sovereignty

Regulatory and multi-aligned sovereignty

States such as the EU and India use law, market leverage, and selective restriction to shape digital order without fully exiting the global internet.

  • Data localization and conditional access rules
  • Platform accountability and legal oversight
  • AI spillover: risk regulation, domestic capacity building, strategic hedging
Comparison matrix
Dimension US-led stack China-centered stack Regulatory / multi-aligned stack
Primary tool Trusted supplier networks and exclusion Integrated infrastructure and protocol influence Law, market conditions, and selective restriction
Preferred story Security and resilience against adversaries Development, efficiency, and state-compatible order Digital rights, accountability, and strategic autonomy
Control layer Vendors, cloud, platforms, cables Standards, infrastructure financing, domestic platforms Data flows, platform obligations, legal compliance
Main risk Bloc hardening and supply-chain bifurcation Deeper state visibility and surveillance capacity Regulatory fragmentation and uneven interoperability
Bridge to AI Trusted compute ecosystems and export controls National model stacks and strategic substitution AI regulation, sovereign data, and industrial hedging
Looking ahead

The next step is AI sovereignty

Once the internet is reorganized into trusted zones, regulated gateways, and sovereign fallback infrastructures, it becomes easier to understand why states next compete over model training, cloud regions, chips, datasets, and AI deployment rules. Module 05 follows that transition directly.

Continue to Module 05 →

Section 5 / Sources

Reference points for the cases

Sources follow Part IV's sequence: stack exclusion, standards conflict, market sovereignty, and national-network bifurcation.

Part IV / 4.1-4.3 Stack exclusion and standards

  1. Executive Order 13873, "Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain" (2019)

    The legal starting point for the Huawei/ZTE and 5G security section.

  2. U.S. Department of State, The Clean Network Initiative (2020)

    The official source for the Clean Carrier, Store, Apps, Cloud, and Cable stack logic.

  3. Financial Times, "Inside China's controversial mission to reinvent the internet" (2020)

    Reporting on the New IP standards dispute at the ITU.