The Seven People Who Can Turn Off the Internet

And NASA's upcoming 'internet apocalypse'

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Congratulations, you've been chosen to temporarily disconnect humanity from the abyss known as the internet—finally, some peace and quiet for the Zoomers. Your options are to either go for a graceful approach by shutting down the 13 root internet servers, or launch nuclear armageddon on Amazon, Google, and the Cloudflare data centers.

Will any of this actually work?

Ha! Fat chance.

But hey, at least it's got the makings of a decent Roland Emmerich film.

Shutting down the internet has two easier options: one of which is looming around the corner due to Mother Nature's whims.

Here’s what’s going on.

NASA warns of an "Internet apocalypse"

NASA is warning of an "Internet apocalypse" that will shut down the internet for several months due to solar wind.

Offline, for months.

Could you imagine how wonderful, peaceful, and calm that could be?

Until you realize every single bank, business, economic transaction, educational system, and communications network relies heavily on the internet.

I mean fuck, there are a few farm tractors out there that will refuse to move at all without an internet connection. The consequences of no internet are far-reaching, and we have but so much history to draw from. Back in 1859, we experienced a similar solar storm that went by the name of "The Carrington Event," and it caused a massive uproar on Earth.

Telegraph systems were fried across the globe, leaving us all in the dark.

Another Carrington Event would mainly affect things with long antennas, and anything plugged into power lines. Your hard drives should be fine.

That said, Carrington Events are rare but they do occasionally take place—and the predicted flare is at least a decade away.

Still, it's probably a good idea to keep this information handy, just in case it sneaks up on us a little earlier than planned (or we can’t stop it).

ICANN: The Guardians of the Internet

While there’s no single owner of the internet, each step of the way is owned by someone. And in the bowels of Los Angeles, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is one of the top players that operates the Internet from the shadows.

ICANN is responsible for handling our top-level domain names (.com, .org, .net, and most two-letter country codes) and in the early 2000s, they gave seven people the power to shut down DNS with a set of special keys.

Domain names don't shut down servers. Domain names are entries (i.e. substack.com) that are stored on various lists that connect to an IP address. One does not "shut down" a website by scrubbing an entry from a list.

That said ICANN might not be able to shut down the server, but who's going to remember 92.124.12.29 when going to their favorite site? This is dangerous as only a handful of outcast weirdos will go through the hassle.

As for the process of shutting down these sites…

…each member holds one metal key that unlocks a safety deposit box. Inside the box is a smartcard used to activate a machine that generates a new master key capable of resetting the internet.

Thankfully, the keyholders aren't world leaders. They're just ICANN's hired guns. Here they are:

Paul Kane (Great Britain)

Dan Kaminsky (USA)

Jiakang Yao (China)

Moussa Guebre (Burkina Faso)

Bevil Wooding (Trinidad and Tobago)

Ondrez Suri (Czech Republic)

Norm Ritchie (Canada)

How does one become a key holder? Easy. Apply online.

Existential Threats to the Web

In theory, ICANN can censor websites, and they do.

Namecheap partnered with ICANN in 2017 to censor an alt-right website, with Namecheap’s CEO justifying it as the "right thing to do." But he also considered it an "existential threat" to their company.

we support free speech
...but hate speech isn't free speech!

This is the world we've come to. Finding out what constitutes hate speech. If you cross the proverbial line you’ll lose your Twitter and Facebook. You’ll lose your YouTube account and your Gmail. Paypal, Patreon? Gone. And even if you set up your own websites, they’ll use fucking ICANN and the domain registrar rackets to no-platform you from the entire web itself, and force you onto the dark web.

Final Thought

One of the viable solutions to ICANN is the Ethereum Naming System (ENS).

ENS thinks it can be the king of all digital domains with its decentralized domain naming system. With it, you can claim a single digital address (like yardcouch.eth) and use it for just about everything, including receiving your paycheck, paying for goods & services, and accepting crypto transfers.

ENS is the future evolution of ICANN.

After two decades of widespread internet activity, the question remains: if we ever lose partial or total access to the internet, how will we react?

Who knows? Envision it. Could the Gen Z and Millennial generations engage in a violent showdown? Will content creators resort to cannibalism?

The internet is becoming an essential part of our lives, but we're creating a fragile existence for those who depend on it excessively.

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