Communications of the ACM
Comment: Internet New Shot in the Arm For S Hegemony
Over the past 40 years, the US has been dominating the world Internet as the core technique holder with an inherent advantage of being the cradle of the Internet.
There are 13 terminal servers in the world to keep the Internet running, with a master server and nine of the 12 secondary servers stationed in the US. In terms of technique, the network of a country will disappear from the world Internet if its domain name registry is blocked or deleted from the terminal server.
Concerns about the US monopoly of the domain name server (DNS) system grew among other nations as much as their reliance on the Internet for issues ranging from politics and the economy to defense and the general society.
Years ago, there was a proposal that the Internet be administered by the United Nations or under international cooperation. The European Union insisted that the World Wide Web is an international resource that should be jointly managed by all nations. Some developing countries pointed out that at the early stage of Internet development, developed countries seized large amounts of domain names, leaving a limited few for them, and demanded a share with the US over Internet administration. American officials opposed the suggestion.
The US Defense Strategy Review in March 2005 stated that Internet space should have the same priority as continental, marine, aerial and outer space jurisdictions for the US to maintain a decisive superiority. A statement from Washington on June 30, 2005, made it clear that the US government would maintain its control over the DNS indefinitely; stating that a transfer of its management to UN or international cooperative models would impede the free flow of information, lead to easy manipulation of the Internet and make global supervision more difficult.
The control of the Internet plays a strategic role for US. Using the internet, the US can intercept information via the net, export US values and opinions, support a "Color Revolution," feed the opposition powers and rebels against anti-US governments, interfere with other countries' internal affairs and make proactive attacks on enemy's communication and directing networks. James-Adams, a famous military forecaster, wrote in his book, The Next World War, these words: "The computer is the weapon for the future war and there is no virtual front line, as the traditional battle and the byte will take the bullet's role to grab control of the air."
According to the estimation of defense expert Joel Harker, who has been studying the hacker program of the US military for 13 years, the US now has about 80,000 personnel engaging in cyber warfare. In terms of the "weapons" for cyber warfare, they have developed more than 2,000 computer viruses which could be used in cyber attacks such as Worms, Trojans, Logic Bombs and trap door viruses.
From China Daily
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