Eric Schmidt says the internet will split in two by 2028

Alphabet
executive chairman Eric Schmidt speaks at the 2017 SALT
conference in Las Vegas.
Richard
Brian/Reuters

• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that he believes
  the internet will split in two within a decade.
• He told an audience at a private event in San Francisco
  that he foresees a break between the Chinese-led internet and
  the non-Chinese led internet.
• Google has recently come under fire over plans to
  expand into China with “Project Dragonfly.”

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Wednesday predicted that the
internet will split in two in the next decade,
CNBC reports.

Speaking at a private event in San Francisco, Schmidt said that
he believes China will effectively split away and create its own
internet.

“I think the most likely scenario now is not a splintering, but
rather a bifurcation into a Chinese-led internet and a
non-Chinese internet led by America,” he said.

“If you look at China, and I was just there, the scale of the
companies that are being built, the services being built, the
wealth that is being created is phenomenal. Chinese Internet is a
greater percentage of the GDP of China, which is a big number,
than the same percentage of the US, which is also a big number.

If you think of China as like ‘Oh yeah, they’re good with the
Internet,’ you’re missing the point. Globalization means that
they get to play too. I think you’re going to see fantastic
leadership in products and services from China. There’s a real
danger that along with those products and services comes a
different leadership regime from government, with censorship,
controls, etc.”

Schmidt has flagged up Chinese technological advancement before.
In November of last year he warned the US that it would have to
step up its game if it didn’t want to be outgunned by China on
AI,
predicting that it would be a world leader in the industry by
2030.

He also said on Wednesday that other countries could end up
adopting a Chinese model of the internet. “Look at the way BRI
works — their Belt and Road Initiative, which involves 60-ish
countries — it’s perfectly possible those countries will begin to
take on the infrastructure that China has with some loss of
freedom.”

The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s infrastructure
project to link itself to 70 countries across Asia, Africa,
Europe, and Oceania with railways and shipping lanes.

Google has recently come under fire for its dealings with China
over reports that current CEO Sundar Pichai held government talks
about launching
a censored version of Google search there. The reports
sparked outrage both within and without, with some
employees resigning in protest and
human rights groups calling on Pichai to reverse the
decision.

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