Nanette S. Levinson – författare

This edited volume brings together experts from around the world to provide coverage and analysis of infrastructure's role in Internet governance, both now and in the future. Never in history have conflicts over Internet governance attracted such widespread attention. High-profile controversies include the disclosures about NSA surveillance by intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, controversy over a decision by the US government to relinquish its historic oversight of Internet names and numbers, and countless cybersecurity breaches involving unauthorized access to Internet users' personal data. Much of the Internet governance ecosystem—both technical architecture and coordinating institutions—is behind the scenes but increasingly carries significant public interest implications. An area once concealed in institutional and technological complexity is now rightly bracketed among other shared global issues—such as environmental protection and human rights—that have considerable global implications but are simply incongruous with national borders. This transformation into an era of global governance by Internet infrastructure presents a moment of opportunity for scholars to bring these politicized infrastructures to the foreground.

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.