Tsargrad: Igor Stanislavovich, it has recently become fashionable in Russia to criticize the new law on the 'sovereign Internet'. People say that we are building the new 'Iron curtain', and the law itself is needed to establish totalitarian control and infringe upon the freedom of expression. How would you describe the situation?
Igor Ashmanov, "There are several myths listed at once." The 'Iron Curtain' was invented by Winston Churchill. And the 'Iron Curtain' was dropped from that side, not from ours. This should also be understood. The sovereign internet is also a myth in a sense, because when the so-called law on the sovereign internet was passed, a frantic campaign was launched over the fact that the 'bloodthirsty regime' was willing to cut off the internet, create its 'Cheburashka' ('cheburnet') network and so on.
The fact is that the law on the sovereign internet is designed solely to prevent us from being able to externally cut off the internet, which we have become very dependent on. Here's an example of such a model. For example, we live in a townhouse village and have a supply cable coming in from a neighbouring town; the mayor of the town has gone mad, cutting everyone's supply off left and right, and they are fighting amongst themselves. In addition, the mayor directly says that he also hates our townhouse village and he will sooner or later turn us off. What thought can we have? Buying a diesel generator so that one can be independent. So, this law on sovereign internet is just about getting our own internet generator. Get our own root servers, top level encryption certificates, our own routing and so on.
- If we take, for example, China, is there digital sovereignty there?
- They are more or less steadily, rapidly moving towards digital sovereignty. That is, to a state, where neither external attacks, nor disconnections, nor technological 'strangulation' can bring their digital space down, and in addition, their infosphere is not contaminated by constant external information attacks.