Internet security

Huawei Soars In Russia As Putin Engages In New ‘Technological War’

Never one to shy away from a gunfight, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been nibbling around the edges of Washington’s battle with Chinese tech giant Huawei for months. In June, at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin met China's President Xi Jinping and technology was high on the agenda. Putin used the event to accuse the U.S. of “brazenly forcing Huawei from the global market,” adding that “in some circles, it is even called the first technological war of the coming digital era.”

Fast forward six months, and November has started with Putin taking a gloomy page from China’s technology copybook. The launch of RuNet—Russia’s Sovereign Internet Law—provides a theoretical kill switch to disconnect Russia’s internet from the world wide web, essentially reverting to a domestic DNS setup. This has been presented as a defence against U.S. cyberattacks, but the real enemies are much closer to home. The technology is likely to become a weapon for censorship, surveillance and monitoring.

The fear in Russia is that the state intends to emulate China’s “Great Firewall,” with an “Iron Cyber Curtain.” Digital parallels for the the real world. A spokesperson for Human Rights Watch warned that Moscow can “directly censor content or even turn Russia’s internet into a closed system—this jeopardizing the right of people in Russia to free speech and freedom of information online.”