1. The commercial web was not inevitable — it emerged from a specific geopolitical configuration.
2. US dominance in naval security, technological standards, and open access ideology made a global Internet viable.
3. The AI era breaks this equilibrium — it operates under multipolar, infrastructure-heavy, and fragmented geopolitical conditions.

The Unipolar Moment: 80 Years of US Dominance

From 1945 to 2020, the United States maintained a unique combination of military power, technological superiority, and cultural export dominance.
This allowed it to guarantee both the security and neutrality of global Internet infrastructure.

The Internet flourished because one nation guaranteed both freedom of access and physical security — a rare historical alignment.

Three Pillars: How the US Made the Global Internet Possible

1. Security Guarantee

The Internet’s open, global character depended on the US Navy’s maritime supremacy and its ability to protect undersea cable routes — the real arteries of the digital world.

Critical Insight:
Submarine cables are both the Internet’s nervous system and its Achilles’ heel — they work only in a world with a credible global guarantor.

2. Open Access Model

The US framed the Internet not as a closed military system but as a public good and cultural export, promoting it as a tool of freedom, commerce, and innovation.

Result:
The Internet became the infrastructure of globalization — connecting economies and amplifying US influence in trade, culture, and innovation.

3. Technical Control

Behind the rhetoric of openness was a deep layer of technical sovereignty.
The core protocols, standards, and hosting infrastructure remained under US oversight.

The web’s “neutral” architecture was, in practice, an American design for global influence.

The Strategic Geography of the Internet

The Internet’s physical geography mirrors US geopolitical reach.

• Virginia Data Centers became the world’s digital heart — housing the majority of Internet traffic by the 2000s.
• US Navy routes ensured cable security from the Atlantic to Asia.
• Allied network extensions in Europe, Australia, and Japan created an integrated ecosystem under American oversight.

Map Logic:

• ARPANET → US regional dominance
• Expansion through fiber optic cables → Global coverage under military protection
• Commercial web → Concentration of servers and DNS control in US territory

Core Dependency:
No global Internet could exist without a single power ensuring both physical continuity and political neutrality.

The Internet as Geopolitical Project

The open Internet was not simply a technological evolution — it was a geostrategic artifact of US hegemony.
It reflected a worldview where economic freedom, open access, and global markets aligned with American security interests.

The Internet was the soft infrastructure of globalization — powered by silicon, secured by steel.

Critical Insight: The End of the Configuration

The “Internet configuration” — one hegemon + open access + secure cables — no longer exists.

Conclusion:
AI operates under fundamentally different geopolitical rules:

• Compute is concentrated, not distributed.
• Data sovereignty replaces open access.
• Energy, not bandwidth, is the new constraint.

The Internet was a product of unipolarity.
The AI economy will be a product of fragmentation.