war in ukraine – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Russia’s Other War – Against A Free And Open Internet

from the isn't-one-enough? dept

Ten years ago, Techdirt was one of the few sites to be following closely some obscure but important machinations at the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to create a top-down regulatory scheme for the Internet. The fact that the two main proponents of this move were Russia and China gives an idea of the underlying intentions. Had the plan succeeded, it would have granted governments greater control over the parts of the Internet within their borders, including domain names, ISPs, traffic management etc. Fortunately, the final 2012 treaty was something of a damp squib, since many key players, including the US and EU countries, refused to sign.

Since then, things have gone relatively quiet on the ITU front. However, an interesting paper from Justin Sherman warns that Russia never gave up on the idea of increasing government control online, and is quietly making a renewed push for the ITU to assume a far greater role in running the Internet:

This report examines Moscow’s efforts to move Internet governance processes and authorities to the UN’s information and communications technologies agency, the International Telecommunication Union, instead of permitting multistakeholder bodies that include civil society, nonprofits, and corporations to have a major role. This report draws on Russian primary-source documents and media, ITU documents, and other sources to describe and analyze Russia’s strategic view of the Internet, Russia’s historical efforts in the ITU, and Russia’s campaign for its candidate to take over the ITU secretary-general position in September 2022.

The report provides a handy history of Russian efforts to promote the ITU, including what has been happening since 2012:

Russia has continued pushing this line about the ITU controlling Internet governance well after the 2012 proposal failed. In 2015, Nikolay Nikiforov, Russia’s Minister of Communications, said “the Internet’s vital infrastructure should be managed by existing international organizations, for example, within the United Nations or by the International Telecommunication Union.” Later that year, Dmitry Medvedev, then-Prime Minister and former President of Russia, repeated the same line: “strengthening of the international community’s role in managing the Internet, as well as the development of a global Internet strategy” must be done “under the aegis of leading international institutions, including the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union.”

In April 2021 Russia announced its candidate for the ITU secretary-general position: Rashid Ismailov, the president of VimpelCom, one of Russia’s largest wireless and telecom operators, former Deputy Minister of Russia’s Ministry of Communications, and former executive at Chinese telecom Huawei. As Sherman explains:

While Ismailov’s platform references organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force, it reflects the Russian government’s perspective: the ITU should be a centralizing and coordinating force for Internet governance, even if other entities remain involved.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has complicated its plans somewhat. The ITU member countries voted to exclude Russia from certain study groups and leadership roles, as Sherman notes. Undeterred:

days after governments voted against Russian delegates in the [World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly] and ITU, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov said, “the most important thing for us is to promote the candidacies of Russian representatives to the governing bodies of the International Telecommunication Union: Rashid Ismailov for election as Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union and Nikolay Varlamov for reelection as a member of the new composition of the committee of the Radio Regulations Board during the elections at the Plenipotentiary Conference in 2022.

There is a rival for the post of ITU Secretary General, the US candidate Doreen Bogdan-Martin. For most people the vote is likely to pass completely unnoticed, and yet the outcome could have a significant impact on everyone using the Internet. Watch this space.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: china, governance, internet governance, itu, russia, war in ukraine

U.S. Buries Fact It Gave Elon Musk $3 Million To Send Satellite Dishes To Ukraine

from the self-made-men dept

Mon, Apr 11th 2022 03:42pm - Karl Bode

A couple months back, Starlink and Elon Musk got several weeks of press adulation for shipping thousands of low orbit satellite terminals to Ukraine. The units, generally capable of 100 Mbps speeds with low latency, were likely a huge help to locals struggling to maintain Internet access while under Russian assault (with the small caveat that they could inadvertently act as beacons for Russian airstrikes).

To be clear it was a good thing to help folks in a desperate situation. And, unlike past Musk promises (ventilators, innovative cave rescue submarines, working “full self driving” technology), he actually delivered and the technology wound up being useful.

But at the time, Starlink and Musk had repeatedly implied that they had donated the terminals to the Ukraine as an act of pure altruism. But a new Washington Post report indicates that the U.S. government not only wound up footing a large chunk of the bill, they wound up paying Starlink nearly three times the retail value of the hardware ($600), plus shipping:

“USAID actually agreed to purchase closer to 1,500 standard Starlink terminals for 1,500apieceandtopayanadditional1,500 apiece and to pay an additional 1,500apieceandtopayanadditional800,000 for transportation costs, documents show, adding up to over $3 million in taxpayer dollars paid to SpaceX for the equipment sent to Ukraine.”

Musk’s company still did donate 3,667 terminals, and three months of free service. That said, other NATO countries have helped foot portions of the effort, and it’s not clear to what extent, because neither government representatives nor SpaceX much want to talk about it. As a rule, Musk companies generally refuse to respond to media inquiries, then get upset about press mischaracterizations.

Again, trying to help Ukrainians get online via a public/private partnership is good (especially since the Ukrainian government asked for the help). Less good is the way that Starlink soaked up millions of dollars in free press headlines that repeatedly implied this was all an act of pure altruism:

“…the company has cast the actions in part as a charitable gesture. “I’m proud that we were able to provide the terminals to folks in Ukraine,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at a public event last month, later telling CNBC, “I don’t think the U.S. has given us any money to give terminals to the Ukraine.”

Musk’s outward facing public persona routinely maligns government subsidization, and bristles at the idea his companies receive such aid. But under the Trump FCC, Starlink and the controversial billionaire received nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer funds in exchange for vague promises to deliver Starlink service to some airport parking lots and traffic medians.

Nobody involved in the arrangement seems particularly interested in taxpayer transparency, or offering precise details on how much taxpayers paid. In fact, the U.S. government appears to have retroactively edited a press release to remove mention of the fact the partnership is valued at around $10 million:

Sometime after the announcement, the agency removed key details from its release. It now states that USAID “has delivered 5,000 Starlink Terminals” to Ukraine “through a public-private partnership” with SpaceX, but does not specify the quantity nor value of the donations.

In short, taxpayers wouldn’t have even known they paid Musk $3 million if not for the leaked documents. The Post being a Bezos-funded paper, and Bezos’ Blue Origin being a direct Musk competitor, means it should be fairly trivial for Musk fans to concoct reasons to casually dismiss the report.

But there’s every indication Musk not only got millions in free press for his Ukraine altruism, he was able to get the U.S. government to pay him subsides three times greater than the hardware was worth. The government, knowing that subsidizing billionaires isn’t a great look given U.S. budget shortfalls elsewhere, then obscured the total. That’s fairly innovative, just not in the way headlines initially suggested.

Filed Under: broadband, elon musk, government waste, internet access, satellite, starlink, subsidies, telecom, ukraine, war in ukraine
Companies: spacex, starlink