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    IGP Year in Review (2025)

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    The Internet Governance Project’s coverage in 2025 documents a troublesome ongoing global shift from “multistakeholder” governance and ICT liberalization norms toward an era characterized by aggressive techno-nationalism and state-centric control over networks, software applications, and expression. However, there were also important positive developments surrounding decentralized digital currency, a pragmatic transition to economically based realism concerning AI, and stronger access controls and individual rights over increasingly valuable data. All of this highlights a digital political economy landscape defined by the friction between a global internet and territorial states. Yet we remain optimistic, as non-state led governance has a long history of demonstrated success and unparalleled connectivity and economic growth. Below is a brief summary of our coverage. As we head into 2026 we’d like to thank our global audience, collaborators, and funders for their continued support.

    1. The Entrenchment of Techno-Nationalism

    The dominant theme of 2025 was the solidification of the “tech cold war.” While the US-China conflict remained central, IGP expanded analysis to show how techno-nationalism increasingly became a global norm, with (mostly) governments pursuing their own aggressive and destructive notions of “digital sovereignty”. We’ve consistently critiqued strategies of “containment” and “decoupling,” arguing that these policies often backfire or serve political theater rather than technical security. 

    • US-China Tech War: We argued that while the US successfully choked off China’s access to advanced hardware (chips), the two ecosystems remain deeply interdependent. Unpacking US-China “Decoupling” and Apple in China highlight that complete separation is economically destructive and often impossible. Meanwhile, Chinese firms adapted by innovating in software efficiency (e.g., DeepSeek-OCR) rather than brute-force computing.
    • The “India Stack”: Coverage of India highlighted a distinct form of protectionism. The blog critiqued the push for “indigenous” web browsers as mere skins designed to enforce government surveillance (root certificates) rather than genuine innovation. Similarly, India’s Satellite Communications Policy analyzed how the entry of Starlink was managed to balance geopolitical alignment with the U.S. against the protectionist demands of local telecom giants like Jio.
    • TikTok & Identity Politics: The “settlement” of the TikTok ban was framed not as a security win, but as the imposition of state-aligned control over media, driven by “identity politics” and anti-China sentiment rather than technical threat models.

    Referenced Articles:

    2. Institutional Challenges to Internet Governance

    The year 2025 marked a watershed moment for some global internet governance institutions, culminating in a significant shift toward state-centric influence within the United Nations system and potentially on the African continent.

    • The UN Swallows the IGF: Coverage throughout the year—including Has the IGF lost the Plot? and Should WSIS End?—warned that the forum had become a venue for bureaucratic process rather than helping to resolve real-world digital conflicts. A major development occurred in December with the conclusion of the WSIS+20 review. We critically analyzed the UN General Assembly’s decision to make the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) a “permanent forum of the UN.”  By absorbing a multistakeholder deliberative body into the multilateral bureaucracy, the UN has effectively “internalized” the conflict between sovereign control and the global internet. While the impact of this remains uncertain, the WSIS process will not face another existential challenge for at least a decade.
    • AfriNIC Crisis: IGP closely followed the governance crisis at AfriNIC (the African region IP address registry). It reported on the Supreme Court of Mauritius’s intervention to allow board elections to proceed despite legal sabotage by litigants. Our coverage was highly critical of ICANN’s intervention with SmartAfrica in the process, arguing that ICANN fostered “not-so-smart ideas” that threatened the autonomy of the regional registry system.
    • Defending Independence: In contrast to the above, our blog championed initiatives to create independent governance structures. It argued for the privatization of the .US domain to foster innovation and promoted the Declaring Independence in Cyberspace book to remind stakeholders that the IANA transition proved the viability of non-state governance. 

    Referenced Articles:

    3. Technological Governance: Realism over Rhetoric 

    The narrative shifted from existential dread over AI to economic skepticism and a critique of “safety” as a mask for industrial policy.

    • Policy & Politics: The blog analyzed the collapse of global AI coordination (So Much for Global Governance of AI…), noting that nations retreated to “AI nationalism” at the Paris Summit. It also predicted that a Trump 2.0 administration would pivot away from “safety” obsessions toward deregulation and rapid innovation to compete with China
    • AI Investment Corrections By October, IGP predicted an inevitable economic correction for the AI sector. We argued that the massive capital expenditure on chips and data centers is a bubble driven by “FOMO” (Fear Of Missing Out) and government subsidies rather than sustainable business models, predicting a crash similar to the dot-com bust.
    • Governance & Safety: Early in the year, we critiqued “safety” reports from California and OpenAI’s call for bans on Chinese models as “neo-mercantilist” protectionism disguised as safety. Countering “Terminator” narratives, Rethinking AI in Warfare argued for viewing AI as an “augmentation” tool for decision support rather than a substitution for human agency. We highlighted research showing that Chinese models (DeepSeek) are not monolithic propaganda tools; they can be “jailbroken” to criticize the CCP, suggesting that the “threat” of foreign AI is exaggerated to justify domestic control. It wasn’t all AI, we pushed back on exaggerated national-security fears over Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), providing a sober, fact-driven analysis that risks are manageable if properly engineered. 

    Referenced Articles:

    4. The Digital Economy: Money, Data, and Industrial Policy

    IGP explored how digital monetary networks and data access control and rights are being reshaped, proposing strategic alignments for the U.S. dollar and exploring emerging governance mechanisms in response to technological change.

    • Dollar Dominance: IGP proposes a strategy where the U.S. leverages stablecoins (digitized dollars) to interconnect with the Bitcoin network. Analyzed in the context of the GENIUS Act, which legalized and regulated the stablecoin market in mid-2025, the authors argue this would extend U.S. monetary hegemony against BRICS alternatives by making the dollar the on-ramp for the crypto economy.
    • Data Enclosure: Cloudflare’s move to block AI crawlers by default is analyzed as a pivotal moment of “data enclosure.” A new paper argues this potentially transforms the “open web,” shifting it further toward market-based and other mechanisms for exchanging increasingly valuable data, and raises important questions about competition and innovation.
    • Bits vs. Atoms: Industrial Policy vs. Digital Reality critiqued the political obsession with bringing back factory jobs, using Palantir as an example to show that modern “reindustrialization” is driven by data and software, not labor-intensive assembly lines.

    Referenced Articles:

    5. Censorship, Compliance, and Information Flow

    Analysis of free speech moved beyond simple binaries, examining how platforms navigate conflicting legal regimes, how “safety” can lead to suppression, and noting a realignment where recent defenders of expression have become proponents of control.

    • Power Corrupts: IGP criticized U.S. Republicans for hypocrisy. After years of decrying jawboning and censorship by Democrats (which we similarly took issue with), they began using state power (visa restrictions, FCC threats) to target political opponents and university protesters once they regained influence. Our coverage of the Kirk Assassination highlighted how political violence is used to justify crackdowns on speech.
    • Global Censorship: We also critiqued human rights group Article 19 for labeling an AWS cloud outage a “democratic failure,” arguing this conflates technical resilience with political censorship and ideological arguments against private infrastructure. Is Musk a Hypocrite? offered a nuanced take on X’s (Twitter) actions in Turkey and India. It distinguished between compliance with valid court orders (Turkey) and resistance to extra-legal state coercion (India), arguing that platforms are often caught between local law and global principles.
    • Amplification vs. Detection: Reporting on an IAEA Technical Meeting, we argued that trying to “detect and delete” disinformation is a failed strategy. Instead, we encouraged building networks to “amplify” factual information during crises, shifting the focus from suppression to resilience. This expert input was grounded in IGP research resulting in a new paper, which demonstrated how classical propaganda models and evolved digital implementation continue to explain how state actors disseminate, legitimize, and deflect disinformation during high-stakes national crises.

    Referenced Articles:

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