The Uncertain Future of Internet Freedom

Mike Daniels is a visiting fellow in the Center for Internet, Communications and Technology Policy at the American Enterprise Institute and has served in senior advisory positions at the White House and the National Security Council. 

Listen to the audio version here.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. This is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. In recent days, there has been a major fight in that war, in my view. At issue is the question of whether or not the United States will surrender what I think of, really, as our internet to some sort of global management scheme. And the predations, presumably, thereby of some rather bad actors operating on the international scene these days. If not immediately, certainly in due course. A man who knows an enormous amount about the internet, about its functions, about particularly what’s at issue at the moment with this transfer of the so-called naming and numbering authority to a multinational group called ICANN, is our first guest. He is Michael A. Daniels. Truly one of the pioneers in the internet. The former CEO and chairman of Network Solutions, also of Mobile 365. He’s been very active for decades in the public and private sectors’ involvement in the internet, currently serves on six boards and has been the co-author of an important book touching on so many of these issues. Names, Numbers, and Network Solutions: The Monetization of the Internet. Mike Daniels, welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. It is a great privilege to have you with us. Thanks for joining us.

MICHAEL A. DANIELS:

Frank, great to be with you and your listeners this morning. I appreciate being on.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, listen, I’ve wanted to talk with you for a while about what has been underway with respect to an initiative by president Obama, as I say, to transfer an important, well, I guess the last remaining function that the United States government oversees. Would you just describe what’s going on and give us a sense of the stakes as you see them?

MICHAEL A. DANIELS:

Sure, Frank. What we’re dealing with is the United States government, under a contractual agreement through the US Department of Commerce since 1998 has had final legal authority over what we call the domain name system, which is basically a function where if you type in, for instance, www Google.com, the technical part of that is it has to match with an underlying IP address that is in something called the Whois database. That was maintained by the company I acquired originally in 1995. Today that function is at Verisign. They bought us in 2000. So it’s not so simply how it works. But if this doesn’t work correctly, no one in the world can get on the internet. And the control of this is of vital importance to today’s economy where we’re running trillions of dollars of ecommerce all over the internet and from all parts of the world. And also from the US national security standpoint. So the United States government in the Obama administration made a decision several years ago to transition this final US control point to ICANN, which is an international organization which we actually helped establish with the US government in the late 1990s. So once – October 1 is the drop dead date and it appears that there are a number of people who want to see this go through in the administration. So once that happens, Frank, we don’t have any more certainty about what will go on in the future. And if anyone anywhere tells you that they know exactly that this function will continue without politics, without foreign governments attempting to do no telling what over time, won’t happen tomorrow, might happen a year or two years or three years from now, don’t believe them. Because I have seen from operating that system for five years, from 1995 to 2000, that politics can interfere and we even, in our book, Names, Numbers, and Network Solutions, that you mentioned, talk about an instance while we had control of that system under authority of the United States government, where someone redirected away from Network Solutions the A Server with controls the downloading of all internet names and numbers every day across the globe, redirected it and people in a large part of the globe for a short period were not able to use the internet. So there are a lot of people who don’t even know that history and that’s a fact that this happened. And the United States government, because it had the contractual agreement, sent federal marshals, Frank, sent federal marshals in the late 1990s to the University of Southern California to make sure that those servers around the world were redirected back to us in Herndon, Virginia. So, you know, this type of thing can happen and, again, we’ve had certainty all of these years because of this final legal point of control that the Obama administration is going to turn over to ICANN on October 1.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Mike Daniels, let me ask you, there’s so much there that I want to unpack, but in particular, there was a letter that I have the feeling provided political cover to members of congress who were asked to prohibit this transfer. It came from a group of your peers, really, in the technology business, technology CEO council was the umbrella under which they sent this letter. And I just want to read this one passage to you in light of what you’ve just said, Mike, and it’s, quote, placing stewardship of these technical but important functions beyond the control of any one government or group of governments will best secure the principles of internet freedom and de-politicization of technology, unquote. What would you say to the signers of this letter?

MICHAEL A. DANIELS:

Well, what I’d say is that phrase is open to enormous debate and has been debated inside the technical and business community for many years, Frank. This is a debate that goes back twenty years to the late 90s. When the internet started to become commercialised and millions and millions of people started to use it. So that’s completely open to debate. That statement does not ring true to me, having forty years of experience in the tech business and actually having run the company where I saw the day to day workings of how this has to function. What I would say is that phrase has nothing centrally to do with the problem. It’s a subterfuge. The problem is the internet has functioned perfectly well, bringing on billions of people and running trillions of dollars’ worth of commerce to help everybody in the world, as a US invention since the 19 – late 1990s. The issue is a technical issue. It’s not a political issue so much in my mind. The internet relies on two things, Frank, for its daily operation, for all the people of the world and the United States. One is, we have to have a methodical, technical system of stability and there has to be a final point of legal control. And once you remove this, which is what is going to happen the first of October, you have removed the one thing every corporate businessperson depends on using the internet, which is certainty and stability. If anyone tells you they can assure you that certainty and stability, once this provision is removed with the backing of the United States government, don’t believe them. Because they do not know that.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

You were among the signatories of a very important letter on the sort of security aspects of this. And you – the Secretary of Defence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were the people to whom that letter was sent. They have not seemingly responded, but would you just share with us why you are concerned as a professional about what the implications might be for our national, homeland, and cyber-security?

MICHAEL A. DANIELS:

My concern, Frank, as one of the signatories of the letter, which I felt it was very important for us to send to the Secretary of Defence and the Joint – Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, is that more and more of the United States national security apparatus not only uses the internet for communication, but the internet is being hooked up, as we all know, where we’re trying to connect every type of car, TV set, refrigerator, everything in the world to the internet. And we’ve got an enormous number of Department of Defence and national security assets now connected to the internet that’s in daily use.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Including the electric grid. And Mike, we have to pause for just a moment. When we come back, I want to drill down on that particular issue with you and the dangers that might be associated with the internet, really, coming under the influence of malign forces. More, right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

We’re back, visiting with Michael A. Daniels. He was the chairman and CEO of Network Solutions. He is also the author of an important book about the internet, Names, Numbers and Network Solutions: The Monetization of the Internet. And names, of course, and numbers are precisely what we’re talking about. The transfer of the authority to oversee and maintain quality control of those functions is now perilously close to being given away. And Michael, you were talking about the implications of the internet of things now involving things like our electric grid, the most critical of critical infrastructures. Should we find the internet becoming less stable, less reliable than it’s been, what might the repercussions be for, well, things that power everything we rely upon for life, in fact?

MICHAEL A. DANIELS:

It’s a critical problem for the country, Frank, to start with. And over the last two years, in our American Enterprise Institute project on global internet strategy, we’ve interviewed several hundred of the leading experts, former government officials, current government officials, private sector technology people. One of the areas we focused on is the electric grid and the electric industry. And we’ve talked with key people in that industry who have been considerably concerned about the constant probing of the electric grid in the United States of America by foreign nations. And all kinds of organisations who ping not only every corporation’s system and your own individual systems if you’re a user of the internet, but the problem of potential cyber-attack on our electric grid. And the potential to shut parts of that down or to disrupt commerce as a result of that. So this is a real problem, just like the probing of our financial infrastructure, just like the probing of our water systems. In a time of national crisis or some type of major cyber-attack on this country, Frank, if people who tend to pooh-pooh that idea, they’re just not realistic in my mind. Because this is a form of warfare that people are just now starting to understand. And we’ve seen it exhibited by the Russians in Eastern Europe.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let me turn to one other piece of this. We have been, as I say, assured by others in the internet business that – notably, this technology CEO council, that, you know, this is actually a necessary step. I haven’t actually heard a good explanation for why we should do this. Have you? Is there really any compelling reason that the proponents are offering, Mike Daniels?

MICHAEL A. DANIELS:

Frank, this has, again, been discussed for many years. It’s been an evolutionary process with ICANN and endless internet groups and bodies. And I personally remain to be convinced of why you would ever transfer this final control where we’ve had stability and everything has worked for – now, for at least twenty-five years at the commercialisation of the internet. The internet started back in 1962, as you know, with funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency. No one’s been able to give me – right, Defence Department, no one’s been able to give me a realistic assurance of why we would have any certainty in turning this over. And I think an important historical note is, when I was running Network Solutions, Frank, from 1995 until 2000, when we sold it to Verisign at the height of the .com boom, the Chinese came to see me a number of times. They were sent to me by the United States government. I met with officials from the United Nations and the ITU going back now twenty years, Frank. And even in those days, the early days of the commercialisation of the internet, the Chinese were asking the question, well, why does the United States control .cn? Which is the domain name for China, the country code. UN officials were saying, why does the US control this? It should be shifted to us or the ITU. This has been a constant drumbeat and I’m convinced that once the Snowden episode happened, Edward Snowden, the infamous traitor who turned over our NSA secrets to the Russians and a large part of the world, that the current administration simply made the decision that there was too much heat politically, internationally, and they caved on this issue. Now why you would do that I still have no understanding, no rational or logical reason you would do that. Remember that Bill Clinton’s administration, who I negotiated the original agreement with in the late 1990s, was totally opposed to turning over this ultimate control.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let me ask you about two quick things, if I could, Mike. One is the appearance that a lot of people in esteemed positions such as you’ve held regard themselves not so much as American citizens or, certainly, running American companies, but as citizens of the world or multinational corporations. I wonder whether that’s having a bearing upon this. And secondly, whether there’s a possibility that we might at some point have to have a new US internet, kind of like what the Chinese have built.

MICHAEL A. DANIELS:

Well, I think the answer to your question, Frank, is I think people in American business – and I’ve been a global business leader for many years and run global companies, you always are very sensitive, you have to be as flexible as possible dealing in the international global world. So we all realise that. That’s just part of what we do in business. On the other hand, I think it’s very important that American business leaders need to understand we’ve moved into a digital world. And many people still don’t understand that, Frank. They don’t understand the implications of that. I see that in the United States government in many places today. They still are lagging years behind the problems we’ve got with things like we’re talking about here with the internet. Business leaders need to understand that the central core of the United States – and they wouldn’t have a business unless we have national security here, so I’m a strong believer in United States national security, the protection of our country, and, you know, first and foremost, I think you can be a global business person, but global business people come from every country and, you know, you have to be concerned about your particular country and trying to help the country secure itself and secure its digital networks. So that would be number one. And I’d say, number two, I just think that we need to come to a realisation that is slowly dawning on lots of people in corporate America that this is the biggest problem we face. And if you don’t get on board with trying to cooperate with the things that need to be done, and you certainly have to be careful about that legally, regulatorily, etcetera, but you need to understand we’re living in a different age. And when you think of the hundreds of billions of dollars of intellectual property, Frank, that have been stolen out of our major US corporations, you need to get your head on right. Because we are being picked apart, piece by piece, by our adversaries.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

So might this translate into, ultimately, a different kind of internet in which there are safeguards built in that don’t exist at the moment?

MICHAEL A. DANIELS:

I think it does, Frank. I think a lot of us believe, that have been in this internet business and the tech industry for a long time, we’re already seeing people take enormous amounts of valuable information offline, Frank. We are seeing country after country close down the internet, China, Russia, Iran, this is growing by the day. Freedom House has a great report for your listeners that talks about, basically, more and more countries are cutting off access because they don’t want this flow of information. So I think we will see a different type of internet. I think you will see things change dramatically as people have to come to the point where they protect themselves and their sensitive information.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, you will be at the leading edge of all of that, I’m quite sure, and we can’t tell you how much we appreciate your leadership in the evolution of the internet to date. And particularly, in this important battle over the future of our internet. Mike Daniels, thank you so much for your time today and your important work, Names, Numbers and Network Solutions: The Monetization of the Internet. Keep it up. Come back to us, I hope, very soon. Next up, we’ll talk with Representative Mike Kelly about all of this. He is an opponent of this transfer and we’ll ask him about where things stand, straight ahead.