Re:90M people. 118 hours of silence. One nation erased from ...
by ceejayoz on Thursday January 15, 2026 @03:29PM
(#46638783)
> If the government has already been disrupted, then who is taking down the Internet?
A disrupted regime can still be a dangerous regime. The Islamic State largely couldn't govern, but they could certainly get organized enough to wreck shit.
> It only works if the government has a separate sufficient infrastructure, or completely controls routing on shared infrastructure. Neither of those are true in the U.S.
Maybe it's hopelessly optimistic of me, but I like to think the giant organization that includes FEMA has some plans for what to do if the internet isn't available.
> To pick just one recent newsworthy example, the federal government does not have a way to deny Signal messaging to their opponents, while preserving their own use of it.
But could they survive without it? Probably. The protocol is open source.
A disrupted regime can still be a dangerous regime. The Islamic State largely couldn't govern, but they could certainly get organized enough to wreck shit.
> It only works if the government has a separate sufficient infrastructure, or completely controls routing on shared infrastructure. Neither of those are true in the U.S.
Maybe it's hopelessly optimistic of me, but I like to think the giant organization that includes FEMA has some plans for what to do if the internet isn't available.
> To pick just one recent newsworthy example, the federal government does not have a way to deny Signal messaging to their opponents, while preserving their own use of it.
But could they survive without it? Probably. The protocol is open source.