The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace

Alexander Klimburg — senior adviser at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and one of Europe's leading experts on cyber conflict — examines the geopolitical struggle over the future of the internet itself. His central argument is that the open, globally interconnected internet that emerged from its American origins is under sustained challenge from states — primarily Russia and China — that seek to replace it with a model of cyber sovereignty: national internets under state control, with borders, checkpoints, and censorship infrastructure built into the architecture.

The Darkening Web is essential for understanding the information environment at its most structural level. The battles being fought over internet governance at the ITU, the construction of Russia's RuNet and China's Great Firewall, and the proliferation of data localisation laws are not merely technical policy debates — they are conflicts over whether the information environment will remain a global commons or fragment into state-controlled national spaces. For practitioners advising clients on the long-term trajectory of the information environment, Klimburg provides the most comprehensive available account of the forces shaping that trajectory and what is at stake in the outcome.