USA Y Russia are vying for the leadership of one of the world’s largest technological organizations. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the organization of the United Nations in charge of the world regulation of the ‘telecos’, celebrates this Thursday in Romania a conference in which its new general secretary will be elected, a key decision for the future of Internet that arrives in full geopolitical and diplomatic tension between both powers.
On the one hand, the Washington candidate is Doreen Bogdan-Martin, one of the three presidents of this institution. Her victory would put a woman at the head of the ITU for the first time and it would be the first time that USA has assumed leadership since the 1960s. On the other, Moscow supports Rashid Isma’ilovformer Russian deputy minister of telecommunications and communications and former executive of Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson.
The vote is not trivial. Every four years, the 193 countries that make up the ITU meet together with companies in the sector to decide on the strategies and priorities that regulate the technologies that keep us all connected. Since its foundation in 1865, this international body has drawn up policies on the telegraph, radio waves, telephone networks and the Internet. Much of how we communicate today has been decided in these meetings.
digital repression
Russia’s candidacy raises suspicions. Since the birth of the Internet in the 1970s, network standards have been designed to allow the free flow of information. However, autocratic countries like ChinaIn recent decades, Saudi Arabia and Russia itself have built their own internet isolated from the world and under the control of the government in order to monitor and identify citizens, censor their opinions and extend their yoke in the digital space.
Would the Putin government use the leadership of the ITU to try to alter internet governance and make it more pliable to the interests of dictatorships? The ITU is a pragmatic body where decisions are made by consensus and the power of the secretary-general is limited, but the intentions of the Kremlin are reflected in your history. In 2012, Russia led a proposal that called for giving governments more powers to regulate cyberspace and be able to block websites, a request that was supported by China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates and that did not prosper.
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Although the candidate from Moscow assures that he is committed to guaranteeing universal access to the internet, the country has intensified in recent years the digital persecution of dissenting voices. Since the invasion of Ukraine It has banned platforms like Facebook and Instagram and has adopted a law that punishes anyone who contradicts the official version with a 15-year prison sentence.
In recent months, the US and Russia have quietly deployed all their diplomatic influence to garner support for their candidates. In March, for example, the president of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took advantage of her visit to the Mobile World Congress of Barcelona to strengthen its alliances with delegations from European, Asian and Latin American countries. Still, observers point to a tight election. The result is uncertain.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism