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"Internet fragmentation has changed. It used to mean countries controlling their own slice of the internet," said Mailyn. "Now states are sabotaging satellites, cutting undersea cables, and weaponizing export controls to degrade the internet experience in rival countries. This paper documents that shift and what it means for international law and global conflict."

 

Internet fragmentation is one of the most central and contested tech policy issues of the 21st century. But it has undergone a significant and undertheorized change: Internet fragmentation has turned outward. Internet fragmentation is usually explained as inward-looking, a way for countries to exert sovereignty and control over a global network within their own borders. 

 

Viewed this way, Internet fragmentation has been criticized as antithetical to global openness and cooperation. But this framing is too simple. Internet fragmentation has shifted from being primarily a tool of domestic politics to a tool of power projection—a new way to weaponize interdependence. The means of Internet fragmentation have evolved from filtering, blocking, and banning, to satellite sabotage, undersea cable cutting, export controls, and contestation of international legal frameworks. Now, states use Internet fragmentation to deny or degrade the experience of the Internet in other states rather than merely regulate their own. 

 

This new form of Internet fragmentation shades from protectionism into subversion of state interests, a shift that reflects increased global tensions and in turn raises the risks of global conflict. This new fragmentation changes the applicability of international law to this problem, the role of private actors, and the types of participants using this tactic.  It also allows us to see how states deploy multiple forms of fragmentation—of infrastructure and law—as mutually reinforcing tools of geopolitical competition.

 

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