Century Report arc
Internet Fragmentation & Information Control
The open internet's architecture of borderless flow is being systematically partitioned as states, authoritarian and democratic alike, acquire and deploy increasingly affordable tools that convert connectivity itself into a lever of territorial and political control.
- Status
- Active
- Developments
- 4
- Last 30 days
- 0
- Last covered
Current synthesis
Where it stands
States hold the initiative as shutdown and censorship tools commoditize and cheapen for global export (02-22), making the splinternet the default trajectory. Iran's 88-day blackout returned (05-28) with heavier filtering than before, proving disconnection now works as a regulatory reset tool, not just crisis response, and it severed researchers from data for weeks (05-05). The pattern is crossing into democracies - Utah's VPN-circumvention penalties (05-01) are the first U.S. state-level test of policing access-control evasion at the network layer.
Complete record
Development timeline
4 qualifying developments, newest first
May 2026
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Iran's national internet returned after 88 days of near-total disconnection with users reporting heavier filtering than before the February cutoff: blackout-and-return cycle used to reset filtering architecture, documenting extended disconnection as a regulatory tool rather than only a crisis response.
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Bombing damaged ~30 Iranian universities/research institutes while national internet blackouts cut CERN-linked physicists off data for weeks and Sharif University lost 1,000+ books.
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Utah’s VPN-circumvention penalties for age-verification systems create the first U.S. state-level legal test of policing access-control evasion at the network layer.
February 2026
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Guardian: censorship and internet shutdown technologies becoming cheaper and easier to export globally; Iran blackout documented as case study. "Splinternet" dynamic accelerating as authoritarian tools commoditize.