critical infrastructure lab

The Internet Infrastructure Has Never Been Open, by Niels ten Oever

This chapter argues that openness is not a neutral design principle but an expression of infrastructural power. Openness is never evenly distributed, but rather catering to a particular group capable of configuring and leveraging the underpinning material infrastructure. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies and infrastructure studies scholarship, particularly the concept of inscription (Akrich 1992), I demonstrate how the internet’s openness has been selectively available to different actors: the US military, industry, intelligence services, states, and closed to others, such as civil society. Through analysis of internet protocol development, including the QUIC transport protocol and domain name verification proposals, I show how participation in ostensibly open governance processes does not equate to the capacity to inscribe values or structural changes into technical systems. Civil society actors may speak to legitimize, but cannot configure; their openness remains conditional and revocable. The chapter traces how military origins, commercial reconfiguration, and surveillance infrastructures have shaped an internet that is simultaneously open for extraction and closed to meaningful public control. Against contemporary policy initiatives such as the European “EuroStack” and digital public infrastructure frameworks that uncritically equate openness with publicness, I argue that genuine infrastructural openness may paradoxically require deliberate limitation and direction. If infrastructures cannot be equally accessible to all groups simultaneously, then sustainable civilian infrastructures must be understood not as universally open systems but as deliberately limited commons that protect against domination, extraction, and capture.

Rusland en China vieren 25 jaar vriendschap met een brede waaier aan samenwerkingen. Dat kan niet verhullen dat de relatie tussen beide landen niet gelijkwaardig is.

“Eric Zhang, die promotieonderzoek doet aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam en verbonden is aan het Leiden Asia Centre, denkt dat Poetin en Xi het bezoek van Trump zeker besproken hebben. „Als ik Poetin was, zou ik me zorgen maken over de positie van Rusland ten opzichte van China nu de Chinese relatie met de VS onder Trump er minder een van confrontatie lijkt te zijn.””

Het bezoek van Poetin aan Xi toont de innige en ongelijke band tussen Rusland en China, Wieland van Dijk, NRC (in Dutch)

Digitale autonomie with Rudi Bekkers, Olia Kanevskaia, and Niels ten Oever (Dutch)

Nederlandse providers houden zich niet aan sancties tegen Rusland by Roel van Niekerk and Fleur Damen featuring niels ten oever (Dutch)

European ambitions captured by American clouds: digital sovereignty through Gaia-X? Information, Communication & Society, 1–18, Andreas Baur

Clouds Over the Netherlands: Preserving Public Interest Internet Governance in the Era of Hyperscaler Clouds by Corinne Cath https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15230913

Wartime Transformation of Novaya Gazeta by Dmitry Kuznetsov

Sanctions and infrastructural ideologies: Assessing the material shaping of EU digital sovereignty in response to the war in Ukraine Policy & Internet, Niels ten Oever, Clement Perarnaud, John Kristoff, Moritz Müller, Max Resing, Arturo Filasto, Chris Kanich

Internet Sanctions on Russian Media: Actions and Effects. Free and Open Communications on the Internet 2024, 1:1–12, Kristoff, John, Moritz Müller, Arturo Filastò, Max Resing, Chris Kanich, and Niels ten Oever

radio interview at dutch public national broadcaster radio 1 on internet shutdowns

ten oever, niels. towards the multistakeholder imposition of internet sanctions