Trump, owner and lord of the Internet: Can the president “unplug” the network of networks?

The Internet is not a boat soon something that someone can turn on or off at will. This did not prevent, however, that Donald Trump, before he concluded his first term at the head of the White House, flirts openly with the idea of ​​”disconnecting parts of the network of networks” to give thus where the Islamic State terrorist group hurts the most. Since then there is a question (in no way trivial) that flies over the technology industry (and the general world): To what extent does the United States president control?

In April of this year, this question was pertinated on the head of many technology experts. For a few days Internet security at global scale was about to collapse like a card castle And the culprit of the hecatombe would have been the Almighty Department of Government Efficiency of the United States, the one that Elon Musk leads with an iron fist for a few months after the seas.

At stake was the survival of the safety vulnerabilities database in the network of networks commonly known as Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE). IT experts of all corners of the globe use this directory to map and identify possible security gaps with the last goal of preventing “hackers” from exploiting them for their own benefit.

Does the internet in excess of the United States depend?

There is the circumstance that this vulnerable database houses in its entrails a vulnerability in itself, since Their operations are at the mercy of annual contracts paid religiously for years by the United States governmentthe same that now tries to cut large -scale expenses through the government efficiency department led by Elon Musk. Only a public call for help from those who operate the CVE achieved that the US cybersecurity agency CISA was going to pay at the last minute the necessary 20 million dollars necessary for this directory to continue working properly. The CVE operations are currently guaranteed, but only until March 2026, which is when the current contract expires.

The battle for the survival of the CVE has only highlighted a problem with which the Internet is almost from the beginning of time: Although it is a technology used throughout the world, we are facing a technology clearly dominated by the United States. And this generates dependency relationships that only become more dangerous with Trump at the head of the White House.

The current president of the United States could use, after all, the domain of the country that leads on the Internet as a pressure tool when negotiating with other countryS, more reason in Europe is already being done to reduce the dependence on technological matters of the North American country.

It should be remembered that Silicon Valley sinks its roots not only apps and extraordinarily popular platforms such as WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams and Google Maps. There are equally gigantic data centers that store in the cloud the huge amount of data sprouting from the entrails of the AI. Amazon, Microsoft and Google swallow 60% of the global cloud computing market. Perhaps for this reason, when the European Commission announced at the end of April millionaire fines against Apple and Meta, the reaction by Washington was everything but friendly. “This new form of economic extortion will not be tolerated in any way by the United States,” said Brian Hughes, spokesman for the National Security Council of the North American country.

Is a blackout (interested) of US suppliers of “cloud” in Europe possible?

How the United States will respond to what from the White House clearly consider an unforgivable offense is still an unknown. What is clear is that Companies that today have their headquarters outside the United States and depend on “cloud” suppliers based on the seas they fear an eventual and angry revenge by Trump.

In the eyes of the consumer on foot, the strong dependence of the US suppliers of “cloud” is not too evident, but this does not prevent it from being absolutely crucial. Without access to the cloud (to ICloud in this particular case), iPhone users would remain, for example, access to their contact lists.

Trump is more than aware of that dependence and, according to experts, he could use the sovereignty of the United States in digital matters to exert political pressure on other countries. “It is perfectly conceivable that certain technological functions are deliberately slowed, retained or totally suspended not in the entire territory of the European Union, but in certain countries,” explains Jan Penfrat, digital expert of the European Digital Right Civil Rights Organization (EDRI), in statements to Spiegel.

In more extreme cases the United States government could order companies such as Microsoft and Apple to enter restrictions on their respective operating systems in some countries. «Preventing safety updates from reaching such operating systems would be a painful pressure measure by Trump. And on the technical plane this scenario is actually perfectly possible, ”says Penfrat.

Thus, at the end of April Brad Smith, Vice President of Microsoft, tried to placate the concern of the European customers of the US multinational ensuring that in the unlikely case that the company was forced by some government to suspend the operations of its “cloud” division in the old continent, the software giant would challenge this measure with all legal means at its disposal.

And although Microsoft endorses this eventual scenario the improbable label, Trump has already proven to be absolutely unpredictable (and almost irrational) with his controversial tariff policy, so that It is perfectly feasible for the president to use the immeasurable technological power of the United States as a pressure tool to negotiate with other countries.

Europe has already got to work to reduce its United States technological dependence

It is not, on the other hand, an inconsequential fact that the proper functioning of the network of networks is largely at the mercy of Icannan organization based in California that manages the nomenclature system of Internet domains. As a regulatory entity of a global nature, ICANN guarantees that users who use extensions such as. Since the headquarters of this organism is in Los Angeles, the United States government has always had a lot of influence on ICANN.

The North American country dominated, in fact, at will this body until 2016when three months before the arrival at Trump’s White House, Icann somehow achieved his letter of freedom with respect to Washington.

Thanks to the independence achieved by this agency now nine years ago, Icann has been able to defend itself successfully (at least so far) of external interference. And in 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, this organization refused to proceed with the .ru domain block, as required from kyiv, and also suspended numerous websites of Russian origin.

But, What happens to the physical nature cables on which the network of networks depends on? Do you have Power Trump to use such cables as a pressure tool? Experts contemplate this possibility as unlikely, at least in Europe, which thanks to Nokia does not depend excessively on US operators in this area of ​​activity.

Nevertheless, The eventual attacks from the United States to connection networks could take a different route. In February of this year the North American country threatened, in fact, to deprive Ukraine of access to Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite communication service.

Meanwhile, and a view of the absolute unpredictability (and also the lack of scruples) of Trump, Europe does not take an eye on the movements of the United States and Ursula von der LeyenPresident of the European Commission, ya ha encomendado a Henna VirkkunenExecutive Vice President of the Community Executive for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, The mission of creating the conditions and infrastructure necessary to reduce the dependence of the old continent of the technology companies based on the other side of the puddle.