Cyber Cold War and why the Great Firewall of China will Fail

Good article in the NYT prompted me to write this post. The NYT notes that:

Just as Mongol invaders could not be stopped by the Great Wall, Chinese citizens have found ways to circumvent the sophisticated Internet censorship systems designed to restrict them.

This is spot on - from the Great Wall through to Constantinople. on to the Maginot Line and then to the Berlin Wall, trying to erect walls to keep enemies out has failed historically, and will do again. This is as true of ideological walls as well, the barbarians at the gates will - given enough time and will - find a way to outflank or undermine them

I am also of the opinion - call this melodramatic if you like - that Google pulling out of China is as near to a declaration of a "Cyber-Cold War" as one can imagine. The balloon has gone up, its been officially admitted what is going on, and the resources of the West will probably now be co-ordinated and focussed on it in a way they have not been till now.

And history also shows success is even more likely if the people inside the walls are keen on letting the barbarians in! This is the case in China - the NYT article goes on to describe how the Chinese themselves are busy undermining the walls:

They are using a variety of tools to evade government filters and to reach the wide-open Web that the Chinese government deems dangerous — sites like YouTube, Facebook and, if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from China, Google.cn.

It’s difficult to say precisely how many people in China engage in acts of digital disobedience. But college students in China and activists around the world say the number has been growing ever since the government stepped up efforts to “cleanse” the Web during the Beijing Olympics and the Communist regime’s 60th anniversary last year.

This is no doubt worrying the Chinese authorities hugely. And this is especially hard with the Internet, which was architected to be as hard as possible to stop.

But as the East Germans found, the economics of a Stasi state - where nearly 2% of the population were employed on spying on the rest - just doesn't work. That's just too many smart productive people creating zero value themselves and stopping other smart productive people from creating value.

Unfortunately, East Germany had to suffer a generation of misery before the Wall came down. Walls slow things down, but they don't stop things.