Splinternet: The arrival of a fragmented and divided internet system

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  Quantumrun Foresight
• March 1, 2022

Insight summary

The internet, once seen as a tool for global unity, is now being fragmented into smaller, self-contained networks known as "splinternets" by countries seeking to control information flow within their borders. This shift towards digital sovereignty allows nations to regulate their own internet, influencing the operations of businesses within their borders and potentially limiting citizens' access to information. While this strategy may strengthen control for some governments, it also carries significant implications, including potential misunderstandings between nations, increased costs for businesses, and the emergence of new methods to bypass these restrictions.

Splinternet context

After the internet was invented in the 1980s, many hoped that it would lead to a worldwide connection of people and promote a shared consciousness that would promote an open exchange of ideas. However, the realities of geopolitics and the rise of tech-savvy authoritarian governments are promoting a splinternet where regions and nations can operate in their own, self-contained internet networks. 

Splinternet is sometimes called internet balkanization. It is a way to fragment the world wide web into smaller internets controlled and regulated differently by countries. Splinternets may allow countries to isolate the web domestically to better control their populations and the information/data and news they consume. 

The splinternet engages a country to create a different digital architecture based on its domestic government's ideologies and values. It works by separating the country's internet from other nations. Moreover, splinternets may force companies (especially foreign companies) to keep their data within the borders of splinternet countries, thereby influencing how and if these companies can operate within such countries.

Disruptive impact

Nation-states can use the splinternet to control how and what information flows into their states. Several governments are already advocating for an isolated internet while some have started to implement it via internet disruptions. For example, in 2019, Russia announced that it is planning a complete disconnection of the country from the global internet. In the same year, China issued new censorship rules and identified more than 90 categories of newly banned content for its existing censored internet. China also implemented a compulsory review of every piece of content on short-form video platforms. 

Aside from Russia and China, Turkish, Iranian, and Cuban politicians have started advocating for information sovereignty. The novel term is euphemistic for replacing the internet services provided by western companies with a country’s more restricted but easily controlled platforms. Conversely, several countries have made attempts to exercise digital control to prevent foreigners from assessing certain web properties. For example, the BBC's iPlayer digital content available to UK citizens is becoming increasingly unavailable to Germans. In South Korea, digital content from North Korean news agencies is filtered, censored, and blocked by South Koreans.

In the long term, the most significant impact of splinternet on citizens may be restricted information access. Businesses may have to adapt to new data strategies to remain operating in the different countries in which they do business. Similarly, large corporations will see increased costs associated with tracking and aligning with the different digital regulations of different splinternet jurisdictions. 

However, it is worthwhile to note that, in most cases, these national networks are easy to circumvent by determined members of a population. Operating and effectively censoring national splinternets is also a costly ongoing expense that few countries have the technical and financial capabilities to maintain. Even with sophisticated automated censorship innovations, maintaining these networks represents a massive tax on a nation that will weaken its economy over time.

Implications of splinternets

Wider implications of splinternet adoption globally may include:

• Preventing cybercrimes and dark web activities between countries due to stricter internet regulations.


• A potential loss of customers for businesses operating outside the online splintered regions they operate in.


• Growing long-term misconceptions, hostilities, and lack of awareness between populations of opposing nations who are cut off from each other’s online media.


• A strengthening of authoritarian governments worldwide by way of censoring information like never before. 


• A shift toward adopting space-based internet delivery services and a black market within authoritarian nations for phones and antennas that can receive space-based internet signals. 


• New geopolitical cold wars where nations try to infiltrate the splinternets of other nations to expose the populations to outside media that may ferment domestic unrest.

Questions to consider

• Do you think the splinternet may promote a new cold war?


• Do you think standards can be created to regulate the emerging splinternets?