Digitally self-reliant like China perhaps complicates its citizens with VPN in order to use Western technology, now Russia too hits the road to leave Western automation.
This is the most updated records from the progress of Russia’s Independent Digital Geopolitics.
Mr. Putin strongly believed that he has two enemies lingering over the shoulders of government; the enemy within and without. Alexei Navalny, Mr. Putin’s top-tier enemy utilizes YouTube to battle Mr. Putin. Apparently, it reaches 120m viewers worldwide. So, for Mr. Putin both YouTube and Google are enemies for him.
Mr. Putin aims at having his own digital infrastructure to secure him from external or internal threats. To make it succeed, early this year Gazprom (state-owned gas) took over VK (Russia’s online conglomerates) said The Economist. Next, Russia penalize Alphabet a platform owning Google as much as $98m for its failure to delete illegal contents talking about Russia.
It does not stop here. ISPS internet service provider installed block Tor, a widely used tool in Russia to mask online activity. These actions is the form of digital geopolitics independence or national readiness for digital infrastructure. But it could also be another mask of tyranny.
This is called ‘stack’ in Silicon Valley, where particular application relies on all technology and services. In this case, it becomes Russia’s national stack. It constructs its own digital sovereign space hardware for payments, controlling information, and establishing online identities.
So far, America has the biggest digital stack where everything is rooted here and spread worldwide. But some countries try to create its own stack. Not only China and Russia, countries like India, Taiwan, and Japan are building too. But China and Russia’s digital geopolitics are almost the same. They need to own all resources, censorship, as well as surveillance.
