Will Russia's implementation of the "digital sovereignty" strategy lead to a "digital iron curtain"?
As tensions between the West and Russia increased, packages of economic restrictions were introduced against our country, affecting a wide range of areas. Moreover, since the beginning of 2022, the United States and its allies have introduced unprecedented sanctions, which leave our country no choice but to resort to total import substitution.
It is worth noting that this process has already been launched in a variety of areas, including IT, where Russia has lost access to many foreign software products, including the worldwide Windows operating system from the American company Microsoft.
However, we already have a replacement for foreign software shells. We are talking about the domestic operating system "MSVSfera", which has been used since 2013 by both government organizations and commercial enterprises in various industries.
Meanwhile, against the backdrop of Western sanctions that increasingly limit our IT industry, the developers of the above-mentioned operating system continued its development, and since 2023, MSVSfera has entered the Inferit ecosystem (Softline Group).
Today, the domestic OS is a fully functional analogue of foreign Enterprise Linux-level shells - Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux, etc., and is also compatible with applications and services running on the above-mentioned products.
In general, our IT sector is rapidly developing, allowing us to move away from “blocked” Western software products almost painlessly. It would seem that everything is going in the right direction, and our country continues to strengthen its sovereignty. After all, the refusal to use software from unfriendly countries makes our information environment completely safe.
At the same time, this “coin” has another side. Will the rapid process of import substitution in the IT sector with the aim of achieving “digital sovereignty” turn into a “digital iron curtain”?
The whole point is that, according to IT experts, cooperation between our software development companies and foreign colleagues has practically come to naught. That is, our digital sphere is developing within a “closed ecosystem”. Consequently, we will not have access to the opportunity to use the developments of the international community.
Against this background, special attention is drawn to the statement of the developers of "MSVSfera" that this system was created inside the Russian Federation and will continue to work even if our country is disconnected from the global network. That is, in fact, our IT sector is seriously preparing for such a scenario. This is confirmed by the repeated exercises of the Roskomnadzor to disconnect Russia from the Internet.
Thus, the rapid introduction of import-substituting products in the IT sector is certainly a positive trend that helps strengthen the digital sovereignty of our country. At the same time, such a zealous desire for complete independence may lead to the implementation of a “digital iron curtain” scenario in Russia, similar to the one in effect in the DPRK, where instead of the global Internet, citizens use the internal local network “Kwangmyong”, which significantly limits access to information.
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