What happens to the internet when the coronavirus pandemic is over?

The impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the daily lives of billions of people — including elites in nearly every country — has set the stage for many profound changes that will take place when the current pandemic is over. High on the list of things that will look different to almost everyone is the internet. For billions of people in dozens of countries, the internet will no longer be an exotic medium of interest to some people. It was their lifeline for weeks or months. Losing it to adversaries, terrorists, business interests, vandals, politicians, elites or anyone else will no longer be imaginable. How this translates to policies and programs is hard to predict, as is the timing and particulars for any single nation. But we already have the outlines, from before the pandemic, of a few internet policy areas in which governments have become increasingly active. The internet’s central role during the pandemic will accelerate these and start even more:

• Military and intelligence leaders from most large countries have gradually increased their attention to the internet as a principal domain for international conflict, culminating with the Pentagon’s “Defending Forward” internet doctrine. Just as governments everywhere protect national airspace and territorial seas, expect them to do ever more to define and protect their own, individual national cyberspace.
• The regulation of content on the internet has been raised with increased frequency as the medium has grown, starting with intellectual property issues, child predation, human trafficking, hate speech, political campaign interference and so on. Just as governments everywhere regulate content in broadcasting and print publishing, pressure will grow after the pandemic to do so on the now-far-more-important medium.
• The “digital divide” has for decades been a popular topic among a narrow segment of the media, civil society, politicians and scholars. But since the internet itself — unlike telephone or television or postal mail — was widely viewed as an optional tool, of value and interest only to some, but not all, the issue has never gained broad traction. As huge majorities in many countries come to accept that their jobs, banking, shopping, education, religion, families, healthcare and more were dependent on the internet, their views about whether internet access is optional will change. If one’s survival is dependent on one’s access to the internet, then access cannot logically be viewed as optional. The principle that people must have access to the internet to minimally participate in society applies as much among nations as it does within nations.
• Finally, the coronavirus has highlighted like nothing before the unique role that American institutions play in controlling the internet and the unique powers that the president has over those institutions. Few foreign leaders have missed the point that the American president has declared several states of emergencies during the pandemic and that these declarations give the president vast unilateral authorities over businesses and organizations located in the United States. FCC Commissioner Rosenworcel noted in a January speech, for example, that under 47 USC Section 606, following a presidential determination, the president has the authority to take control over significant aspects of the internet. The more widely-publicized Defense Production Act, according to a recent analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations, gives the president the unilateral authority to “…allocate materials, services and facilities for national defense purposes…”

[Cochetti provides consulting and advisory services in Washington, D.C.  He was a senior executive with Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) from 1981 through 1994. He also directed internet public policy for IBM from 1994 through 2000 and later served as Senior Vice-President & Chief Policy Officer for VeriSign and Group Policy Director for CompTIA. He served on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy during the Bush and Obama administrations.]