L'Espace Politique (Oct 2020)
Le rôle de la topologie d’Internet dans les territoires en conflit en Ukraine, une approche géopolitique du routage des données
Abstract
Autonomous systems (AS) are the basic units of Internet global routing. They are group of routers interconnected by the same administrative control (Internet Service Providers, Content Providers, companies, public services etc.) that interconnect to each other to form the Internet as a whole. By establishing connection agreements between themselves via the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), ASes allow data to flow from one point to another around the globe. In this article, we aim to understand how the aspect of the routing of data can be decisive in how we consider both the relationship between Internet and territory, and the impact of the structure of the Internet on territorial conflicts. Much literature has addressed the relationship between space and the Internet, both in geography and geopolitics. The increasing digitization of various aspects of society (Bakis, 2013 ; Cattaruzza, 2019) was first accompanied by comments about a paradigm shift of the concepts of geography (Virilio, 1997) or sovereignty (Camilleri, Falk, 1992). The relationship between space and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has also been considered under the angle of infrastructures and their territorial integration (Lasserre, 2000) More recently, Beaude (2012) and Loveluck (2015) have shown how the complex interactions between Internet and society, produced alternative forms of space. Increasingly, the many dimensions of the Internet and of digitization are considered a salient feature of the social construction of territories, and therefore of geopolitical conflicts (Douzet, 2014). We draw from this literature to illustrate how the network of Autonomous Systems is linked to territorial conflicts. The behavior of autonomous systems, and in particular their integration within the rest of the network, responds to geopolitical constraints. The choice of an AS’s administrators to connect to some ASes and not others, or the way they design and implement routing policies are subject to commercial, political, geographical and legal decisions. The construction of this topology then alters territories, especially disputed ones, and the power rivalries that apply to it. We show that this network is emblematic of the duality of the Internet between topography and topology. This study aims at understanding the role AS topology can play in the traditional power struggle. By selecting the paths through which data flows, administrators of AS bring out territories and new forms of « power-topology » (Allen, 2011). Our methodology combines elements of geopolitics and technical sciences (Internet measurements, network theory) and is based on quantitative approaches. We use data of interdomain connectivity gathered through BGP monitors that allow us to create graphs showing the interconnections between autonomous systems. We use an empirical approach to read the output graphs on a specific case study: disputed territories in Ukraine. The territories of Donbass and Crimea are ideal case studies in that the dispute over them is rather new, which allow us to observe with detail the changes in the topology of their networks over time. They also represent two different types of disputed territories. While Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation in March 2014, the Donbass region is home to the two self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and is actively fighting against the central government of Ukraine with the help of Russia. By looking at the stakeholders of connectivity in these territories and their evolution, we show how the Internet is embedded into dynamics of changing sovereignty. In fact, the technical infrastructures of the Internet highlight a new vector of Russian power. The evolution of the routing topology indicates that Crimea is now fully dependent on Russia to connect to the Internet, and Donbass is following the same path.
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