Geopolitics at the Internet’s Core

Fiona M. Alexander, Laura DeNardis, Nanette S. Levinson, Francesca Musiani

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9783031894770
• eBook ISBN: 9783031894787
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Contentious geopolitical conflicts over digital technologies have arisen around a complex set of technical specifications at the Internet’s core. One of these is the Internet Protocol (IP), designed for addressing and routing information to its destination. China redesigning the Internet? Ukraine asking that Russia be disconnected from the Internet? The U.S. ‘surrendering’ the Internet? The Internet Protocol - rightly or not - has been at the center of many digital policy concerns for decades.

In examining entanglements between IP and public interest issues, Geopolitics at the Internet’s Core illuminates how technical infrastructure is now a proxy for political and economic power. Ongoing global controversies over the Internet Protocol ecosystem hint at its importance and why IP is a flashpoint mediating broader conflicts in various cultural and historic contexts. 

Geopolitics at the Internet’s Core analyzes the trajectory and possible futures of the Internet Protocol as a space mediating geopolitical and domestic controversies in an increasingly contentious digital world; it explains the IP ecosystem, a complex combination of virtual resources, abstract specifications, tangible infrastructure, functionally specific systems, and the institutions and rules that design and govern these systems.

With a view toward the future and insights into the governance of emerging technologies, this book identifies eight IP-related levers of power that illuminate technology governance debates. Opening up the black box of the Internet Protocol and related global governance challenges, it explains the political battles and the stakes of these battles at the heart of the Internet.

Table of contents

• Information Technology and Global Governance
• Geopolitics at the Internet’s Core
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Figures
• About the Authors
• 1. Internet Protocol Politics
• 2. A Radical Governance Innovation
• 3. Technical Design as Governance
• 4. The Internet Address Space as a Geopolitical Space
• 5. A Twenty-Year Control Struggle from U.S. Stewardship to Private Governance
• 6. The Internet Protocol and Content Battles
• 7. Internet Protocol Security Entanglements with Geopolitics
• 8. The Role of the Internet Protocol Ecosystem in Inclusion
• 9. Geopolitical and Technical Futures of the Internet Protocol
• Technical Appendix
• Books Referenced
• Index