So much for the decentralized internet

The decentralized internet began as a way to preserve telephone service and military command-and-control in the event of nuclear war.

At the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s, the highly centralized United States’ communications infrastructure relied on major switching hubs – akin to regional airports – that handled telephonic and military messaging. An attack on any hub could have brought down the entire system. In 1962, a researcher at the defense contractor RAND came up with the concept of distributing information through a network of small independent nodes. Under that model, damage in one area would not bring down the whole network. By 1969, engineers in the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at the Pentagon built on this idea to create a multi-node network of computers called ARPAnet, thus establishing the DNA of the internet you know today.

“Over the years, the internet’s decentralized design became a metaphor for its social and political ethos: Anyone could publish information of any kind, to anyone in the world, without the assent of central gatekeepers such as publishers and media networks.”

Early uses of the internet reflected the open and decentralized spirit of its design. Anyone with some technical expertise and access to computing equipment could communicate and publish at will. The advent of the World Wide Web, created by Tim Berners-Lee, greatly expanded the internet’s ease of use and accessibility. But people without technical skills still faced meaningful barriers to entry.

The centralization of the internet progressed rapidly as it became more popular and commercialized.

The consolidation of access and services began when companies and individuals recognized the internet’s potential for commercial popularity. The race to monetize the web’s vast audience went hand-in-hand with the process of making internet use – blogging, chat, messaging, email, web presence – easier and more accessible to people without technical know-how. Big companies gobbled up smaller successful start-ups in order to acquire their devoted users and easy-to-use technology, and the age of the internet giants arrived.

“A thousand flowers still bloom on this global network, but all of them rely on, and return spoils to, a handful of nodes, just as communications systems did before the ARPAnet.”

Interface design encourages compulsive user engagement and connection, so major providers can sell users’ attention and personal data to advertisers. Huge internet companies – Facebook, Twitter, Google – are the de facto distributors and gatekeepers for the “content” that users want to publish or communicate.

The prospect of nuclear war may seem distant, but the security risks inherent in today’s social media era are potentially disastrous.

The internet created a globally connected information network, but rather than remaining widespread and distributed, the centralization of behemoth social media platforms foments terrifying new risks. Bad actors can target and weaponize information. This creates potent ways to spread disinformation and propaganda – and renders the United States’ democratic processes vulnerable in new ways.

“Bad actors target Facebook and Twitter for disinformation precisely because those services can facilitate its widespread dissemination.”

Because so many people look to the internet to get news and to follow celebrities, politicians, influencers and businesses, any cybersecurity failure affecting those channels or voices can be dangerous. Hacks that perpetrate fraud are bad enough – but, for example, a faked Presidential tweet could have history-altering consequences.

The Twitter hack of the accounts of Bill Gates, Barack Obama and other leaders is a wake-up call about cybersecurity vulnerability.

One hack sent out tweets seemingly from famous people promising that if you sent them Bitcoin, they would return it to you doubled in value. This hack wasn’t the work of a nation-state seeking to wreak havoc. Clever young hackers who gained access to internal Twitter tools – by conning Twitter employees via “social engineering” – ran the hack that granted them “ownership” of those celebrities’ high-profile accounts.

“The information itself had already become weaponized; now it’s clear how easily the actual accounts publishing that information can be compromised too.”

Twitter isn’t the biggest social media outlet, but it is a real-time information hub for politics, business and entertainment – and it gives a “blue check” to “verified” users, attesting to their authenticity and, therefore, their credibility. With this hack, original verified users lost access to their accounts, and their millions of followers had no way of knowing what had happened. The potential for serious disruption remains high, whether it originates from an informal group of hackers or a highly organized, disciplined information-warfare team from a hostile nation-state.

“The internet itself rose from that paranoid fog. Now we download first and ask questions later, if ever, until something goes terribly wrong — and maybe not even then.”

National security no longer focuses on nuclear war, and its operators don’t take cybersecurity as seriously as they should. All the web’s centralized personal information and all of its consolidated power to shape the news cycle and persuade billions of people pose tremendous risk to the United States’ political and economic well-being – and to yours.