Who controls the internet?

Joyce Hakmeh

Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to this session on Who Controls the Internet? My name is Joyce Hakmeh. I’m a Senior Researcher with the International Security Programme and the Co-Editor of the Journal of Cyber Policy. Today, just over half the world’s population is connected to the internet, making it one of the world’s most important economic and social infrastructure, for governments, organisations and individuals. Its centrality to our lives has been made even more evident by the COVID-19 pandemic and its sustainability is, therefore, crucial. But as Dame Wendy Hall and Kieron O’Hara argued a few years ago, “The internet is not a monolithic architecture whose existence and form are guaranteed in perpetuity. But it’s a fragile and contingent construction of hardware, software, standards and databases, governed by a wide range of private and public actors, whose behaviour is constrained only by voluntary protocols. It is, therefore, subject to evolution and political pressure.”

They also argued there are – that there are “at least four internets that they are emerging.” These internets are, at present, co-existing and may continue in this way for some time. But it is possible, however, that any of these internets might fall by the wayside, or one of them might become dominant, or that the whole intricate system may collapse from these pressures. How do we avoid this collapse from happening and how can we ensure and protect the future of the internet? In order to answer that, I think we need to answer many questions, amongst which the essential one, who controls the internet?

So, today’s event is about that, and we have a fantastic panel to help us navigate this very important and multidimensional topic. You all have very impressive careers, so I’m not going to read through the entire bio, but just a few, maybe a few headlines. So, starting with Sir Jeremy Fleming, the Director of GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence and security agency, where he was appointed as its Director in 2017. Before that – oh, he started his career in the financial sector and then, he joined MI5 in 93, where he was – he served as Deputy Director-General for four years. In GCHQ, Jeremy has overseen the creation of the National Cybersecurity Centre, the NCSC, which is the world’s leader in bringing together government, industry and international partners to address cyberthreats and inform the public.

Dame Wendy Hall, Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. She’s the Vice President and Executive Director of the Web Science Institute at the university. One of the first Computer Scientists to undertake serious research in multimedia and hypermedia and she has been at its forefront ever since. She co-founded, with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt, the Web Science Research Initiative in 2006. She’s acting as the Managing Director of the Web Science Trust, which has a global mission to support the development of research, education and thought leadership in web science. Dame Wendy acted as the Co-Chair of the UK’s Government Artificial Intelligence Review. She’s the Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute and has joined the BT Technology Advisory Board in 2021.

And last, but certainly not least, Sheetal Kumar, the Senior Programme Lead at Global Partners Digital. Sheetal provides strategic oversight for GPD’s Global Cybersecurity Capacity Building Programme, where they support civil society organisations across the Global South and protecting and promoting human rights and cybersecurity and cybercrime related discussions. She also facilitates civil society engagement in key relevant forums, including the UN, through research and co-ordination. Her studies focus on the evolution of the internet.

So, welcome to all of you. It’s a great pleasure to have you with us today, in particular, you know, in-person. So, we have missed those, sort of, in-person panels, so, welcome. And welcome to our audience who are joining us virtually, but also in the room. Just a few housekeeping remarks before we start with our panellists, that to say that this is event is on the record and if you would like to tweet, please use the #CHEvents. We will have time at the end of this session, or towards the end of the session, for questions and answers. So, we’ll start with the room here, but also, for the participants joining us virtually, please do use the Q&A function and we’ll make sure to answer as many questions as we can.

So, I’d like to start with you, Dame Wendy. You know, I referred, in my opening remarks, about these four internets and that paper that you drafted, I guess, in 2018, and the internet, as you also say, has been, sort of, developing and changing. Can you walk us through the key milestones in the internet’s evolution and the current state of play?

Dame Wendy Hall

How long have you got? So, I need to condense it down to the – to a story that – so, it – I’ve been working on the World Wide Web since it – since before it was the World Wide Web and I’ve, you know, been working on – worked with people who developed the internet. But the thoughts behind this – what’s become the book, Four Internets, and readily available on Amazon, on Kindle, there are very – there aren’t any hardback copies in the UK yet, because of the global supply issues, but there will be. And it started when I was at the Library of Congress, actually. I was a Kluge Professor in Society and Technology – Technology and Society, and I started thinking there about how, actually, the internet felt different in the US to it did in Europe.

And then I – we didn’t – I didn’t – with Kieron O’Hara we told this story about what was happening, and I tried it out, actually, with Jeremy, here, at a private meeting we had about where the internet was going. And the story, which became that white paper and is now developed into the book, is basically, there – it started as one open system, with – as the internet. Anyway, we’ve seen the resilience of that open system. As we all piled onto the internet in March 2020 and TikTok spread around the world, it stayed up and running. I mean, we saw what happened yesterday with Facebook. It’s a sort of, different issue, ‘cause that’s more like a private internet. But the open – the standards that Vint and Bob Kahn developed, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, are still there and it’s still a global standard, a global technical standard, and if that goes, then the – all bets are off as to what’s going to happen. And there are pressures on that technical standard from, particularly from China and other countries that would like more control over the internet.

But what has happened on top of that technical standard is that different countries, with different cultures, or different regions of the world, are establishing different internets. And this is where our other – so, the first internet we talk about is the open, ubiquitous standard one, and the other three we talk about are the – the way it is evolving in the US as a market force-led internet, with – that’s where all the big companies are. In Europe, it’s a data protection-led internet that – and much more about the human rights about our data and who manages that and how it’s managed. And in China, of course, you might want to call it more of a surveillance internet. In the book we call it ‘paternalistic’, because it’s about, more about control for the good of the society that they’re trying to control and so, those are the four internets we talk about.

And then you’ve got the hacking, the, you know, the – that countries like Russia do, but we don’t call that an internet, because it’s more like a – they’re more like parasites. They need the open internet, in order to do what they do. And in the book, we also have a chapter on India, because India is such a huge country and you mentioned – and, you know, we’ve got 50% of the world, just over, or – can have access to the internet, if they can afford it and they’ve got the technology. And we could talk about how that’s happening in a developing world, but that means there’s another 50% of the planet still to come onto the internet, and they will largely be people in rural China, rural India and rural Africa. And they are huge populations and how they come onto the internet and the sort of internet that that creates, is going to affect what – how our internet could be.

So, in 20 years’ time/30 years’ time, if it’s still technically a global internet, we could have a – the majority of the world in a internet culture that’s run by China, ‘cause China is very influential on what’s happening in Africa and it really depends on what – how India brings its people onto the internet. And at the moment, the signs are quite good, but it’s really – because, you know, it’s such a big population. They’ve got the digital identity, the Aadhaar number, so they – and they’ve used that very effectively during COVID to get money to people. And so, there’s a lot – but it really depends on the culture that emerges there as to whether – what the internet’s going to look like in the next ten/20/30 years. And I could say more, but I want to hear from what others say and we should come back on…

Joyce Hakmeh

Sure. Well, just before we go to Sir Jeremy, follow on from what you were mentioning. Can we expect a fifth, a sixth, a seventh version of the internet?

Dame Wendy Hall

Hmmm hmm.

Joyce Hakmeh

And is it factually incorrect, then, if we have all these versions, to keep referring to the global internet?

Dame Wendy Hall

Well, I – we, basically, are – what we say at the end of the book, and I would tea – you know, we actually point to – we leave it – when I was a Mathematician, my Lecturers used to leave things as “easy exercises for the reader.” So, we leave it as an easy exercise for the reader to think of what other internets might emerge. I could come back – and I’ll come back with a couple, maybe, later, but – and you could think about it. But what we say in the book is that “It’s so important that” – the answer to – my answer to the question you pose on the panel is nobody, overall, controls the internet, but actually, it’s ours. It – everyone has – plays a part in it and so, you know, it – we can’t just leave it to other people.

And the key, key thing is those technical standards. If they cease to be global, then we will have real fragmentation of the internet and the sorts of things we did during COVID will not be possible. It will change the way our businesses evolve. They won’t be global businesses in the sense they are today. I mean, with – when Facebook went down yesterday, that affected businesses deeply, but that’s a, as I said, a sort of, a private internet. If the whole – if the internet breaks up because different countries develop different technical standards, or they’re not – there’s not one global standard, then the whole idea of running a global business online ceases to be. And there could be – yeah, so I think that, yeah, we – there could be more types of internets emerge and some people argue that the European one, the data protection one, is less important than the two behemoths of the US and China. That’s what Kai-Fu Lee would tell you, or others have argued that, but anyway, we’ll see what the – our colleagues…

Joyce Hakmeh

Great.

Dame Wendy Hall

…say.

Joyce Hakmeh

So, from what you’re saying, like, they are still co-existing, but we might get to the point where, actually, the situation will become – will get to that collapse?

Dame Wendy Hall

And that’s technical standards. You see, they’re not – they are discussed at the IETF, the Internet – I can’t remember the…

Joyce Hakmeh

Task Force.

Dame Wendy Hall

Yes, Internet and Task Force, and they are discussed at the UN, and they are dis – the ITU, the International Telecoms Union, discusses these standards. At the moment, despite the pressures from other coun – some countries, they have held as global standards, but that’s not a given forever.

Joyce Hakmeh

That’s not a given. So, on that impact, Sir Jeremy, can I ask you, from your point of view, what impact does this sort of fragmentation, those different models, have on, sort of, from a – on the geopolitics, on security, on prosperity? How do you see that – the impact of those different versions?

Sir Jeremy Fleming

Well, firstly, let me say how nice it is to see people in the room. I think we’ve all been dying do this sort of stuff, haven’t we? And it’s great to be here. The last one of these Chatham House ones I did was completely online, so very good to be here. Of course, you know, Wendy’s done what Wendy does, which is to give you such a tour de raison there that it’s quite hard to know where to pick up some of those things. But let me start by going back into that room when Wendy brought this up a couple of years ago, because I remember it very clearly for two reasons. The first was that it was completely obvious that the internet hadn’t been a single thing for a long time, and we hadn’t really ingested that. So, this idea of a free, open, secure, what I think in your book you call a “Silicon Valley type…

Joyce Hakmeh

Valley.

Sir Jeremy Fleming

…idealistic version of the int” – you know, that hadn’t been here for a long time. And the way in which the internet has grown and the way in which influences around it have grown have been central to our economies and our societies and actually, to our values, in different ways, depending on where you are and how you access the internet. And so, that was the first thing I remember feeling really deeply about that.

The second was, and it led to a whole chain of thought and some things that I’ve been talking about publicly, as well, which is that it – if that is the case and if this other half of the world are coming on, I think it’s about 100 million users a year are coming onto the internet, still, then there is a real point of reckoning for us, as Western liberal democratic countries. When we need to think about what sorts of values do we want built into these systems and these various internets, and which system is likely to be more prevalent? And so, for – from my perspective, it led to us thinking and saying that we’ve built an internet, it hasn’t been ubiquitous for a long time, but now is the time for us to make sure that as it is reinvented, it’s reinvented in a way that fits with our society and our values. So, that was the – that was that moment, then, Wendy, and I remember it well and it’s – and the way in which it’s developed, including the book, I think’s really, really interesting.

In terms of how that plays out across geopolitics, and I think what we’ve experienced over the last 18 months has provided fantastic examples of that, because we’ve seen the internet as a much more fundamental thing in how it underpins all of our societies and our communities. We’ve seen it as a medium for the data that has been so important for public policymaking during this period. I think governments everywhere have really woken up to the importance of data-led policymaking and there are long-term implications from that. But we’ve also seen it being misused, being used to progress misinformation and disinformation, being used to control populations, in other parts of the world in ways that we would find anathema.

And so, that sense of what’s happened over the last 18 months and the way in which, you know, the underpinning platform and the way in which it manifests itself in all these regions, I think that’s really come to life. So, there is a moment for us and it’s a moment that feels, to us, not only the national security world, but more broadly, that moment is now. And we need to really think about the alliances and partnerships, the geopolitical alliance and partnerships, as well as the societal alliances and partnerships, that we need to have in place to invent the next generation of internet.

Joyce Hakmeh

You mentioned that we need to be careful as the internet is being reinvented. Do you want to say a bit about that? Like, what do you mean when you say ‘reinvented’?

Sir Jeremy Fleming

Well, I think Wendy has already pointed to some of these issues. The internet sits on a common set of internet protocols and standards and those have long been debated. And there are a range of interests around the world that are seeking to project different forms of those underlying protocols and technologies and that’s really important and it’s really important we get it right, and two reasons, for me, in all of that. But the first is, are we sure that the values that underpin these competing versions of this are the values that we subscribe to? And the second is, are we sure that they’re going to work in a way that enables the world to join up and connect, that we know is so essential for our trade and for the movement of ideas and data in the future?

So, it seems to me that those groups, which are – you know, they’re not government or UN-led, often, they are the legacy of the way in which the internet has – was built up in a very, you know, what we’d call now a crowdsourced fashion, and those sorts of governance arrangements and institutions. They are not formally part of something which has ‘real governance’, is the way that Wendy describes it in the book. So, there’s a, you know, how do we reinvent the governance around all of this? How do we make sure that it is still the people’s internet, in the way that Wendy set out? But equally, how do we make sure there’s proper balance in the conversations about where it goes next?

Joyce Hakmeh

Brilliant, thank you. Sheetal, so, we’ve talked about the fragmentation and the sort of like, you know, different versions. We talked about the needs for alliances and, kind of, flagged the impact on geopolitics, but also on rights. So, how do you see that? From your work on human rights issues, how do you see the manifestation at that level and what kind of impact do you see these different versions are having on rights?

Sheetal Kumar

Well, thank you, Joyce, and thank you for having me here. It’s, as Jeremy said, great to see you all in-person. I think I want to start by just saying something quite obvious, but I think it’s important to say, which is the internet is human made, of course, and humans existed well before the internet. And for that reason, the way that it’s being shaped and governed is impacted by these complex relationships that well precede, as I say, the internet, between states, between different stakeholders and, also, all the inequalities and all the challenges we faced before. And so, I think it’s really important to keep in mind that complex and interdependent relationship between our society and this technology, because otherwise, we end up, often, trying to manufacture easy or simple solutions to what is actually something much more, unfortunately, messy, but that’s life.

And yeah, so we are seeing, as a result of our increasing dependence on this technology and use of it as a kind of, tool of power, I think what we’re seeing is increased attempts to regulate it and for certain countries, use it as a way to extend their control over their populations. But it’s important to know that we do need regulation and I wouldn’t say that we don’t, but we are seeing a lot more regulation, especially of Big Tech platforms, that is, in some cases, being used as a way to control speech and to survey populations, and that’s not just in authoritarian states. We’re also seeing regulatory efforts, even, you know, in this country and in democratic states, that would result in disproportionate, unfortunately, impacts on people’s speech, and it’s just rushed regulation which isn’t inc – developing in inclusive way.

Or one – well, I’m sure we’re going to come onto this in a bit, but as a result of, sometimes, a securitised narrative about the internet and who should be able to access it and when and how, etc., we’re seeing attempts to build in, for example, back doors to survey communication. There’s legislation, as they say, even in democratic states, which would require platforms to build in proactive monitoring of their users. And so, that’s, of course, of concern and this general sense that it’s something that’s being used to result in crime or – and it – you know, this is what I mean by the securitised narrative, is resulting in attempts to control it in a way where we would, as a result, see a less free and open and secure internet.

So, we really need to be very aware of what – as Sir Jeremy was saying, the values that are driving our governance of the internet, and make sure that it’s underpinned by the human rights frameworks that we have committed to. And that’s the great thing about the international human rights framework, is that these are commitments that have been made and they are common understandings, and we should use this framework to shape the internet. Unfortunately, as I said, we are seeing a downwards trend, and I’m sure, as many of you are aware of the Freedom on the Net Report, which is developed research by Freedom House and their network of experts in various countries. And they have just released their latest report, which shows a downward, as they say, trend, in terms of freedom on the net, more countries using regulation to clamp down on dissident speech, for example, more arrests for speech online, shutdowns and censorship. And so, this is a worrying trend, but as I say, you know, and as we’ve just heard, it’s up to us to shape it differently.

Joyce Hakmeh

Great. So, how do we do that? Like, how do we fix that problem? Obviously, we talked about security problems, problems of the networks stop – you know, to stop working. We talked about the human rights implications. So, there’s a lot of problems and concerns that we should be thinking about and doing something about. So, I’d just like to talk a little bit about what we should do. I think it was Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, who said recently that “If we are to preserve a truly open global internet, that works for people, that sparks innovation and helps us to collectively tackle the challenges we face, we must act now to build the globally accepted norms to shape the digital future that we want.” Now, how do we do that? Is the – to you, Dame Wendy, is the current model for internet governance, is it fit for purpose…

Dame Wendy Hall

Well, there isn’t one.

Joyce Hakmeh

…or is it broken?

Dame Wendy Hall

There isn’t one.

Joyce Hakmeh

There isn’t one.

Dame Wendy Hall

So…

Joyce Hakmeh

So, how do we make that happen?

Dame Wendy Hall

So – and I want to – also, I see Patricia sitting there. I mean, another inspiration for all this thought was the Global Commission on Internet Governance, which was Chatham House and the Canadian CI – oh, I forget what…

Joyce Hakmeh

CG, yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall

…the C – yeah, CG. In fact, they published the white paper.

Joyce Hakmeh

Yes.

Dame Wendy Hall

And that – we were very grateful to them for that, and that – there were so many wonderful people that inspired me on that commission, as we travelled round the world, and…

Sir Jeremy Fleming

Remember those days, yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was the – and – but the, you know, the thing that always struck me about it, and we’d talked about this at the meetings, was we didn’t have anyone from China on that commission. We had a person from Hong Kong, but he was very, very constrained in what he could say. And the Global Partnership in AI is another – I mean, we – this is – none of this is separate from all the other things that are happening, like the world of data and the world of AI, because this all relies on the internet working, right? So – but the Global Partnership on AI, which the UK is firmly a part of, it’s led by the OECD, has – China’s not a part of it. And it’s a bit like having – well, let’s having discussions on climate change without having China at the table, ‘cause it’s meaningless. You know, you – it’s – you can’t just say, “Well, we don’t like what you do with it, so you – you know, we’ll just forget about you.” It doesn’t work. We have to somehow agree what we agree on and then, agree what we disagree on. It’s like what’s cultural and what’s – what different rules and regulations do you have in the country?

And I’m not saying that doesn’t mean we try and – we pull back from trying to support human rights in those countries. I’m just saying we have to have a starting point, which we can have discussions and, you know, in the – there is no – I mean, the UN doesn’t have the teeth to do this. The Internet – the ITU would like to, but you know – my – it doesn’t have this buy-in for all the countries to do that and anyway, it’s a potentially dangerous place to start.

But the – my worry is that when – this is an awful thing to say, but when the pioneers leave us, like Vin – people like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee for the web, then, you know, it was – as Jeremy said, you know, when these things – when it started, when Vint and Bob were doing the standards for the internet, and all the other people that were involved in that, it was like a league of gentlemen, right? You know, it was largely gentlemen. There were many women involved in the development of the internet, but it was largely – it was people who are all like each other and were all nice people and wanted to do good things, and you, sort of – if you did something wrong, like you said something that upset people, then someone like Vint would say, “No, that’s not the right way to play here.” And once it got a – once so – you know, lots of people got involved, then that disappeared and, you know, you see how it’s grown today.

And in terms of – there’s the whole issue about so much of the world is our data and what we do, the social media, is controlled by the big companies, whether they’re in Silicon Valley or in Beijing, or whatever, and – or Shenzhen, or wherever, and – but we don’t want them to be our censors, do we? I mean, it’s – you know, we’ve got – you know, the government’s got to say, “Well, you, Facebook, you take off the images we don’t want and you” – you know, actually, as a company, that would – if they had to do all that – I mean, the Chinese Government do it for China. So, they decide what is and doesn’t appear. But are we going to say – we, in the UK, for example, say to Facebook, “Well, you decide what pictures come off, it’s up to you”? Is that really – we don’t – you know, we have no control over them, at all. Do we want them to be our censors?

And there has to be a sense of a morals in this, too. You know, it’s like there’s a huge education piece in here. We do things – people do things on the internet they would never dream of doing face-to-face. You know, I was brought up with a code that said, “You don’t lie, you don’t bully, you don’t hurt people,” but normal people do all that on the internet, and it’s too easy to hide behind anonymity. So, there’s all sort – and there’s the – as we came up with in the Internet Commission Report, it’s governments, it’s industry and it’s people us – like us that have to agree these things.

Joyce Hakmeh

So, you talk – when you talked about this, sort of – there isn’t a model for governance, I just wanted to, kind of, follow-up a little bit on that. And you said there are very important initiatives where, you know, some main players are not on the table, such as China. But if we look, for example, at some of the standard development organisations, ITU, in particular, China is very much there.

Dame Wendy Hall

Oh, yes, yeah.

Joyce Hakmeh

And it is, you know, bringing to the table its own vision of how things should be. And of course, the new IP, I think, was a wakeup call for a lot of governments to think about, oh, hang on a minute, standards matter, and they have an implication that should be…

Dame Wendy Hall

Hmmm hmm.

Joyce Hakmeh

…looked at in-depth. How do you see that? Because I just want to see, like, you know, in terms of we have to come together, we have to build those norms, etc., how do we do that? Is that even an option, or are we just kidding ourselves and, you know, the…?

Dame Wendy Hall

Oh, is what an option, sorry?

Joyce Hakmeh

Is it an option to come together and, like, you know, following from what Sir Tim…

Dame Wendy Hall

Well…

Joyce Hakmeh

…Berners-Lee mentioned…?

Dame Wendy Hall

You see, I believe – and I, again, I said this very firmly. I can remember the meeting in Jordan, where we talked about standards, on the Commission. And it’s – the standards bodies, like the ITF and the W3C, that Vint and Tim set up for the internet and the web, I think we – that’s where I would go. And I would make sure they are more resilient, because my worry is that when the Founders disappear, they will just – they’ll die, or they’ll be absorbed. I mean, thank heavens no-one owns the internet, actually, but – I mean, Facebook would love to. That’d, you know, be – they would absolutely love to be the whole internet. But I think we should put our muscle behind the standards bodies and build them up. That’s what – that’s the way I – because the Chinese come to those, right, they’re really interested. And when you’re talking at that level, you can talk quite impassionately, is that right, yeah? You can actually take the emotions and the values and the geopolitics out of it and just talk techy, which is fantastic. I love a meeting where you just talk techy, and they…

Joyce Hakmeh

You do, but…

Dame Wendy Hall

Yeah.

Joyce Hakmeh

…most decisionmakers…

Dame Wendy Hall

Yes, but it doesn’t matter.

Joyce Hakmeh

…they were like, “Oh.”

Dame Wendy Hall

Yeah, but you can – if we – if the Politicians back that, right, then I – then I think we – that’s where we would agree. And then, of course, you’ve still – and that doesn’t mean the other stuff goes away, but…

Joyce Hakmeh

So, there’s that, sort of, importance of bridging that, sort of, conversation between the techies and the policymakers, and which brings me to you, Jeremy, about, you know, the role that organisations like GCHQ can play on this, right? We talked about the importance of building alliances, the importance of, you know, go – having these sort of values, imbedding the visions and the future of the internet. So, what role do you see for organisations like yours that goes beyond just your traditional security?

Sir Jeremy Fleming

Well, let me pick up a bit from Wendy’s challenge at the end there about, you know, just talking techy, because I mean, there’s clearly a place and believe you me, I’ve come to love talky techy. But the problem is we’re in a world where that isn’t enough on its own and I think that’s what you’re saying here, and…

Dame Wendy Hall

It’s not on its own, yeah.

Sir Jeremy Fleming

…we have to place that technical conversation within the realities of what’s driving our societies and the harms we’re seeing in our societies and the sorts of spaces we want technology and the internet to be in the future and so, I am very pessimistic about a masterplan for governance. I think you’re saying the same thing.

Dame Wendy Hall

Hmmm.

Sir Jeremy Fleming

You know, the thought that you would have a single treaty or a series of treaties that would govern all this, I think that we’re a long, long – away from that sort of reality. So, we…

Dame Wendy Hall

And it might not be what we want, actually.

Sir Jeremy Fleming

Exactly. So, I think we have to be focusing, as with so many things around technology and data, we have to be focusing on the things that we most care about and making sure that we are aligned, not just inside the UK, but with likeminded allies around the world in the approach to that, and that we’ve thought really seriously about the partnerships that we need to make that happen. And those are public and private, they’re third sector and they’re academia, they’re think tanks and they’re the citizen, and we have to have a different sort of debate, a more informed debate about where we want to go, given our values.

So, coming back to an organisation like mine, and in some ways, I still feel it’s quite odd that, you know, Director of GCHQ, a spy organisation for 102 years now of its history, is getting involved in these debates. But it reflects, I think, the way in which technology has morphed in its centrality to our societies, but it also reflects the reality of the sorts of things that we’re interested in and where our skills lie. So, in GCHQ we see, fundamentally, three roles for us around all of this.

Our first one, and we always start from this perspective is – and it’s a defensive perspective, and as you said in your introduction, GCHQ is now home to the National Cybersecurity Centre, and it has a citizen and business facing responsibility to make the UK the safest place to live and do business online. And so, it’s our responsibility to help citizens, businesses and big business, government, our allies, actually, navigate this new technology world, including the internet, and much of this is about the internet. And so, we are fundamentally interested in how to do that, how best to do that and of course, one of the mediums we do that is via the internet. It’s the way we get the leverage for understanding and influence.

And those are my two next themes, if you like. We, as a centre of technology in government, increasingly have a responsibility to help government and policymakers and big business understand these technology trends. And I’ve got literally thousands of Technologists in GCHQ and there’s no point hiding them away, just doing covert stuff. You know, they are, some of them, world leading experts in their field. Lots of them are extremely competent and thoughtful about these sorts of things and we’ve seen during the pandemic that that sort of technical expertise, allied with government policymaking, is really powerful and it’s why we’ve been in, right from the start, in the conversation the government is having here about the Online Safety Bill. And no point making legislation if it’s not technology relevant and that’s the – I think that’s an important role for us now.

And then, the third area is back into, you know, how do we help shape the debates around all of it? And that’s not a covert thing. That’s me sitting here and having this sort of conversation. It’s experts from the National Cybersecurity Centre travelling and taking part in those standard setting conversations. It’s the partnerships that we can bring with – it’s the weight of the brand, you like – if you like, into research and development and the work of think tanks. And just this year we published some work on artificial intelligence and ethics and where national security fits amongst all of that, and I want those conversations to happen out in public. Want to be helping to shape and influencing them, but equally, of course, I want to bring that back into GCHQ, so the work we do keeping the country safe is more effective.

So, a fundamental role for an institution like mine. It doesn’t work in every country for institutions like mine, for reasons that you can well understand. But in the Western liberal democratic framework and with the controls and the checks and balances you have around my agency’s operation, then it seems to me completely logical that we should be leaning more into this debate.

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you. I’ll just ask one more question to Sheetal and then, I’ll turn to you for your questions and to our audience that is joining us remotely. So, Sheetal, Jeremy talked about – you know, he said, like, there’s no ‘masterplan’ for governance and Wendy talked about the importance of, you know, focusing on the standard development organisations and just, you know, putting some efforts there. From your point of view, as a human rights organisation, where do you think are the avenues that should be pursued to reinforce the values of the internet as open, free and secure for all?

Sheetal Kumar

Well, I think there are – luckily, there are many avenues, and I would agree with Jeremy about the need to reinforce those values that we share, continue to vocalise them, really, and to reinforce them in different spaces. There are the multilateral forums that we’re all aware of, including at the UN and the UN Secretary-General has just launched his Common Agenda at the most recent session of the General Assembly, and looking forward to a future – a summit of the future, with a global digital compact. And it’s important that processes like that bring together all the relevant stakeholders and again, they’re spaces where we keep saying and keep reinforcing the importance of these values, including human rights.

And then, I think at the national level, as these regulatory frameworks are developed, it’s absolutely key that they’re developed in an inclusive way. So, as you said, Jeremy, in countries like this, at least there are democratic checks and balances, but also processes and avenues for citizens to get involved in, in the development and a consultation on policies. It’s not the case everywhere, but it’s also not done perfectly everywhere. So, we need to learn the lessons and make sure that we are actually doing this policy development in an inclusive way, so that it’s – where policymakers may not be aware of, for example, the impact of a certain measure on either the technology or on stakeholders, that they are made aware because they bring together the people who are going to be affected by it. And so, as they said, unfortunately, we’re not always seeing that, so we definitely need to keep pushing for that.

And there are new forums, as well, that continue to – initiatives that continue to be created. There’s the Summit for Democracy, so President Biden’s latest, or new initiative, which could also be a space to reinforce these values and messages and to make commitments or pledges that build on the existing ones that we have, including in the human rights framework. And I would also encourage people here, and elsewhere, to get involved in the multistakeholder forums that exist for the discussion, like the Internet Governance Forum. The UK IGF, the version of the IGF that’s here is coming up. I mean, it’s an important space to continue these discussions, but also, you know, to build the relationships and to build common understandings of the challenges we’re facing so that we can build those solutions together. So, there’s lots of spaces and actually, they keep mushrooming and proliferating as more and more policy spaces become relevant to internet governance. So, it’s quite tricky to keep on top of, I can tell you that.

Dame Wendy Hall

Can I just follow you up now? I think the key thing here, and most people under – most people have some understanding that when they turn the switch and a light comes on, so there’s electricity being generated somewhere that – they won’t understand the physics of that, but they’ll know. And similarly, with the telephone, even the smartphones, they’re sort of – although they’re more complicated, there’s even – there is an idea of how this, sort of, works. Very, very few people have any idea how the internet works, they really, really don’t. The three of us sitting here do, but an average, nobody has any idea how it works. We try and explain it in the book. There’s 350 pages of trying to explain it in the book. It is not a simple thing to understand. So, we have to have simple messages for the Politicians and we also – I’m – you know, I’ll come back again to education, it’s so important. Even if they don’t understand the detail of it, we need children to understand what they’re doing when they use Instagram, you know, and that story’s not going away with what happened yesterday and Facebook’s had an interesting week.

Joyce Hakmeh

Great. So, I will now start with taking few rounds of questions. Okay, great, we have a lot. So, I’ll start with this side and then, what I’ll do is I’ll take maybe three at a time, ask a question from the online audience, then come back to you. Please stay seated, keep – I think you can remove your mask if you want to ask a question, but please stay in you seat. I’ll start with Emily, Patricia and the gentleman on the front, please.

Emily Taylor

Hello, thank you very much for such an interesting debate. I’m really pleased to hear so much talk about standards. I wanted to try and just probe that a little bit, and you’ve all talked about the importance of values and this retiring generation of volunteers. We know what needs to be done in standards and how important it is. I’m still not sure how you do that, how you get an inclusive conversation, involving all of the civil society people who don’t maybe – and all the people who understand – don’t understand how it all works, and put them into an expert forum of Engineers, who are just going to have half of them out of their room. So, how do you do it?

Joyce Hakmeh

Brilliant, thank you very much. Patricia?

Patricia Lewis

Oh, excuse me. Thanks; Patricia Lewis from Chatham House. So, in the international system, I think that Western countries are often just on the backfoot all the time. If I look at, recently, in the United Nations, we’ve had two initiatives from the Russian Federation, one the Open-Ended Working Group on Cybersecurity, the other is, of course, the Cybercrime Convention idea. And the Western countries just seem to want to hold the line, hold another group of governmental experts, etc. Now, we’ve got opportunities coming up, like WSIS 2025, for example. What are we doing? What’s the vision? What’s the big idea that can be put forward to actually start to transform the situation from one of this, sort of, slow, or perhaps, fast decline into what is clearly now the splinternet?

Joyce Hakmeh

Thanks. Thank you. Can you please quickly introduce yourself and your question, yeah?

James Del Favero

James Del Favero. My question is do you think that in Western democracies it is possible to govern with the internet there? I’m – as Dame Wendy Hall said, in China, they fix that problem their own way, but can we govern by majority when the balance between vociferous minorities and the silent majority has changed, and when there is no guarantee, if that’s too kind, that the factual arguments in the internet have any basis for them.

Joyce Hakmeh

Great. So, what I could do is start with you and then just – and you pick up the question that you’d like to answer. So, we have one from Emily on standards, how can we have an inclusive conversation? One, what is the big idea that the West is putting forward? And a question around, sort of, governance by majority. So, over to you, Wendy.

Dame Wendy Hall

Well, I’m going to take the last one, actually. Emily, I don’t know how to answer. I don’t know how to answer you, Emily. I’m thinking about that. Maybe by 2 o’clock I’ll have thought of something, and I don’t know what WSIS is, but I think I can come back to the vision later, maybe. But in terms of, you know, how do we do it in Western democracies? I actually would point to what Tim’s doing. So, one of the big issues – Tim Berners-Lee. The big issue for me is that what started as totally decentralised and, you know, the internet and then Tim built the web on top of the internet, as a completely decentralised system, has become very centralised in the monopolies of the big companies, oligopolies with – and they have all our data, right? They have much more data than any of our governments have. I mean, the safety – sorry, our sane – what keeps us sane is they have – you know, Facebook has his data – its data, Google has its data, Twitter has its data and they don’t all join up anywhere. That would be the – imagine the James Bond villain that bought all those companies up and had everything, right? So – in fact, they nearly got to that plot in Spectre, didn’t they?

So – and so, this is Tim’s passion now, where he’s putting all his energy, is in Solid, social linked data, and his company, Inrupt, is doing it through a not for profit and profit company to re-decentralise the World Wide Web and make us the owners and com – managers of our own data. Now, that is in – I won’t even begin to talk about how it works or – its conceptually quite difficult. How do you do it? I call it the Tim flip, right? And I think, you know, he’s done it once, he could do it again and I really believe we should seriously consider how we could achieve that, given all we’ve done of late on data trusts and, you know, there’s a lot – with – the UK’s really got some leadership in this area. And I think without doing something like that, then we can’t achieve what you’re talking about. China, you see, has done it its own way. It has all the data and manage its – it for its people, but we don’t. Our data’s all over the place, managed by these big companies and – anyway, so that’s – I’ll just finish there.

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you.

Sir Jeremy Fleming

So, I’m going to cheat here and answer the same question, but…

Joyce Hakmeh

Differently.

Sir Jeremy Fleming

Well, slightly differently, and that is I think it’s absolutely essential that Western democracies govern with the future version of the internet, and I can’t imagine a sense of governing that doesn’t have a thing like this underpinning what we do. Everything from the services we deliver to keep our citizens and – safe, through to the way in which we have trade and prosperity and global influence. And so, it doesn’t seem to me as though it’s one of those questions we can, you know, think about answering in the negative.

But my – if I was to pick up some of the other questions, then the big idea, Patricia, I think, obviously, we are all struggling around all of that and what Wendy has just said around Tim’s future vision is really, really interesting. But it seems to me that the way to do this is to start biting off chunks of things between likeminded countries and, unfortunately, for – that probably means starting at the harm end of the spectrum. And that – you know, what are the things that we really can’t abide by in the World Wide Web, given our Western democratic – our positioning? What are the behaviours that we would never countenance in the real world and shouldn’t countenance in the online world, and what are the responsibilities of those who are marshalling all of this data and who are so prevalent in our lives, to help us do that? And yes, it’s not fair to put all of the onus on Facebook or Google, but it’s certainly fair to expect more from them in the debate about how it is technologically possible to regulate them in different ways, to hold them to account in different ways. And that’s the way in which the debate on the Online Safety Bill has to go. Other countries are not trying this. We are quite out there on this, actually, and – but there’s a, you know, there’s a way to go to make that happen. Wendy, you want to…

Dame Wendy Hall

I just want to say…

Sir Jeremy Fleming

…come in?

Dame Wendy Hall

…‘cause I’ve – the – yes, but you know, Twitter has banned the democratically elected President of the US from using its platform, but you – yeah, tritely, you can look at what the Taliban are doing. Yet, what – how far does that power go? Well, he – you know, it – who decides whether Trump was a danger to the US or actually was still the democratically – you know, so should be heard? Who decides?

Joyce Hakmeh

Sheetal.

Sheetal Kumar

Well, I think that, you know, on the vision point, or question, it’s really important to build that out of, yeah, well, shared values, which I think it’s becoming clearer and clearer that it’s not something that naturally – and I know that, and maybe I’ve been trying to say this in a diplomatic way, but it’s not just because a country is democratic by label that it will behave in a way that is that. And so, we really have to be…

Dame Wendy Hall

So right.

Sheetal Kumar

And we – so, we have to, I think we have to be more critical and the, oh, you know, the Secretary-General of the UN thinks it’s a global digital compact that will get us there. There’s the new WSIS coming up, the World Summit on the Information Society, but a lot has changed since the first World Summit and that is very clear, in terms of the fact that, you know, people don’t really – people aren’t talking about it anymore. But there are – there is something in the – in what – at the World Summit on the Information Society 20 odd years ago was said, which is that “We need to build an information society,” that’s what they were calling it then, “that is people centred.” And that still hasn’t happened, right? It’s corporate centred, perhaps, it’s other things, but it’s not people centred, and so, that’s still a vision that we can drive and work towards. And some of the values that we need to keep reinforcing are around the rule of law and accountability and transparency in bottom-up decision-making. It’s – these are ideals, but they need to – we need to keep working towards them.

And I think on the question of – what was I going to say? Well, I was going to – just going to mention that in terms of, you know, what do we need to do about the splintering, etc.? Getting together, which is something we – I’ve heard quite a lot here, with the likeminded, those who share values and ideas. One thing that we’ve done at GPD, with a range of other civil society groups and big industry, including Facebook, Amazon and the others, is author a text, which we’ve called the “principles for an open, interoperable and interconnected internet,” that lays out what we see as the problems with fragmentation and what we see as the principles that should underpin any attempts to address that. And so, we are trying to make sure that the word is out about that, but also in the high impactful, you know, policy spaces, where policymakers are, so that they’re aware of these trends and aware of our understanding of what’s going wrong and what could be done. I think more work like that is helpful, as well, because you know, we need to talk in more specific terms about what the issues are.

Joyce Hakmeh

Great. So, we still have seven minutes and a million questions. So, I want to take as many as I can. So, what I’ll do, I’ll pick a couple of questions from the online audience and then I’ll come back to you. Maybe I’ll take four more. So, I’ll start with the online audience first and then back to you, and then you take your notes and you answer the questions that you’d like, okay, and we’ll end like that. So, I’ve got a question from Charlie Parker from The Times, asking, “Which is the greater threat to society, Big Tech or hostile states?” That’s the first question, and then we have a question, sort of, from Peter, “Do you see the internet as a threat to democratic institutions and societies at large?” And “To what extent, if at all,” from Kieron O’Meara, “does the panel think that the internet allows for revolutionary actors to effect the global international order?” So, these are the questions from our online audience. There are more, if we have time, we’ll get to them, but I’ll take four more. So, the gentleman over there, here, and questions from this side, Jamie and Esther. Okay, can you start, please?

Mughal Cullis

I’m [Mughal Cullis – 59:34], I’m a member and UX Designer. My question is about what is the role of the cloud services, you know, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and when you – and Google Cloud? When they turn off, we have nothing. The thing I was asking, and what is their role in the internet?

Joyce Hakmeh

Hami, please, would you like to ask your question?

Hami

Yes, so my question is, we talk about the internet is actually owned “by the people.” So, how do you envision – I know we said through education, how do you envision actually getting GQ public, if you will, excuse the pun, to really understand this issue that is so critical?

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you very much. Sir? Yeah, go ahead. No, sorry, it’s here, it’s just behind you, here, this side. Yes, go ahead.

John Wilson

I would…

Joyce Hakmeh

Yes.

John Wilson

I didn’t really see it. John Wilson, I’m a member of Chatham House and I’ve been a Guide at Bletchley Park Codebreaking Centre for a number of years. My question leads on from the others. As Western law is no longer accepted universally, does the panel agree that it is no longer possible to impose an internationally agreed creed of conduct or control and that, as always, it is the most powerful who rule the world and, of course, the internet?

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you. Jamie, please.

Jamie Shea

Yeah, it ties to that and Patricia’s point about what’s the big idea? And the question is, what’s the deal, what are we offering the role for in India and Africa and LATAM? Why should they use our internet as opposed to the Chinese one?

Joyce Hakmeh

Great question. Esther, please?

Esther Naylor

And we haven’t really talked about the physical infrastructure, so undersea cables, satellites and, you know, the – all of the in-between, and a number of, kind of, the Big Tech companies are starting to, you know, invest even more into their physical infrastructure. Who controls that and who should control the development of that, especially with regards to space and the undersea cables?

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you very much. I’m conscious that I’ve thrown it to you, like, you know, a lot of questions, but I’m very confident of your ability to answer concisely and in a very informed way. So, I’ll start with you, Wendy, please.

Dame Wendy Hall

Is this my last comment?

Joyce Hakmeh

It is your…

Dame Wendy Hall

Yes, okay.

Joyce Hakmeh

…last point, yes.

Dame Wendy Hall

So, in ter – oh, there’s so many things. UK has a big role to play in this, although obviously, the superpowers are the US and China, because we have a lot of expertise and we can play a soft power role in this, and I think it’s – we – it’s beholden on us to do that.

I don’t know about Big Tech or hostile states. I’m not sure about that, Charlie, sorry. It’s too – I’m not sure what the answer to that is. I think it all boils down – a lot of it – oh, I’ll just do the cloud services thing. I believe strongly that we should not be reliant on commercial companies based in other countries for our cloud services. So, overall, and I think that’s an issue the UK has got to deal with, because of what you said.

I think that, you know, this internet threat to democracy, which is – actually comes back to the Big Tech versus hostile states. You know, when the – when it all started with the web, we talked about, you know, democratising access to knowledge and it, sort of, seems to have turned on us, in a way. But I think we can make it good, I really do, if we back the people that understand it, back what Tim’s saying and things like that.

I’m going to finish – I have – come to your point in a minute. Emily, the answer, I realised is web science, to your question. It’s what we, you know, Tim and Nigel and I came up with in mid-two – you know, you’ve got to educate people on the sociotechnical im – you know and have people who are polymaths in this area. So, that’s my easy answer to you. I don’t know if it’s right or not.

In terms of the vision, I’m going to go – you talked about – we talk all about undersea cables and all that and how it’s emerged as markets and that – some of that has to be market force-led, clearly. But my vision is actually up here, because I think space, the real cyberspace is where the battles are going to be fought and I think that’s what we should bring up in 2025, because the internet is moving into space. We’ve got the satellites, Vint Cerf’s ideas about how you communicate between planets, and I think we’ve really got to tackle how it works out there. And I’m – I have a sort of, hunch that if we can get it right there, then we could bring that back into how we work on a planet, but yeah.

Joyce Hakmeh

Thank you.

Sir Jeremy Fleming

And almost got single word answers, haven’t we, now? So, that last point about what – how Vint is thinking and leading work on the space protocols and standards, it’s really, actually really interesting, really important and you’re right, Wendy, I think that could shape a lot of things. And Charlie, your question, I mean, if you mean Big Tech, US tech and hostile states, the ones we’ve been talking about, then I’m going to duck the question. But if you mean Big Tech, big technology across the world and you think about the way in which China is producing its technology stacks and putting that alongside debt diplomacy, basing requirements and value driven relationships, then I have to say that it’s the hostile state end of it that worries me more.

If you are talking about cloud services, the question there for me is about what resilience is nowadays, and resilience is different now than it was five years ago, and the pandemic has shown us that resilience is very, very different now. Who’d have thought we’d be so dependent on the things that we’re showing up just at the moment, whether it’s CO2 or HGV Drivers or masks or, you know, loo roll. It’s – we’re in a very different space around resilience and we have to understand the resilience on the big cloud services. I don’t think we do particularly.

And then, finally, you know, as we – if this is the moment for us to reinvent the internet, then it’s also the time for us to reinvent and rethink our approach to skills. And you know, Wendy’s come back to that a couple of times. Sheetal, you’ve talked about it, too, and we have a skills deficit in Western nations, in the UK, and we’ve really got to go after that. It’s more than educating how the internet works. It’s about artificial intelligence, it’s about quantum next thing around the corner. We’ve got to get our heads round where we need to be as a nation on skills.

Joyce Hakmeh

Okay, thank you. Sheetal.

Sheetal Kumar

Right, I’ll do my best. On Big Tech and hostile states, I would say two words, Cambridge Analytica. I don’t think it’s one or the other. It’s – obviously, there is a much bigger issue here, which is about that – a timed nexus of power and control and in – that’s where we really need corporate accountability. We need transparency and we need – when there are violations of the law, that needs to be dealt with and so, we’re now seeing that yet and we need to see that.

On – and it – I mean, one example is what’s just happened with Facebook this week, right? Because they don’t have a decentralised, you know, approach, and they manage so many services that are used by so many people, when they go down and they can’t fix it quickly, because they’re not decentralised, everything goes, and a lot – and millions of people were affected by that in a way that wasn’t funny. It was actually about their lives and their livelihoods and the – and very serious repercussions. So, we need to deal with that, and it – saying that, however, back to my original point, is I don’t think we should be looking for this – or decentralisation is not going to be the only, you know, solution, in the sense that if we do manage that, it’ll certainly be helpful, but these are much bigger and broader, oftentimes societal, very entrenched issues that we’re dealing with. And any kind of technical solution will only be part of the solution, because it’s only really part of the problem, really.

So, in terms of what we do, I mean, in terms of the general population, I mean, I thought it was interesting with what happened with Facebook. I had a – started having conversations with my family about these things and they were really, just, super interested in it. Unfortunately, it took a crisis for them to be like, “Oh,” but, you know, that is what happens, and I think we need to take advantage of those points and make sure the conversation is being had. And when we are having it, we are cognisant of the fact that these are complex problems and that they require education and really strong functioning democracies in just, in general. The structures need to exist and be supported and protected to be able to find solutions.

Joyce Hakmeh

Fine, on that positive note, I’d like to close the session. I’d like to apologise for people if I couldn’t ask their questions, and to some of you, as well. This has been a fantastic panel. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it and I wished we had more time. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you for you and for our panel [applause]. Thank you [applause].

Sheetal Kumar

Thank you [applause].