CYBERWAR: Russia’s second-largest internet provider cuts off Russian websites.

For better or worse, Russia’s internet just got kneecapped.

Cogent Communications is cutting off internet service to its Russian clients, the Washington Post reported on Friday. This puts it in league with companies like Meta, which has blocked Russian state-affiliated news agencies on Facebook in Europe; Twitter, which slaps a warning label on tweets from state-run Russian media outlets; and others.

Cogent is an internet infrastructure provider that serves international clients, including many companies in Russia. In fact, it is the country’s second largest internet service provider, according to Reuters.

In addition to the traditional war it has waged on the ground since invading Ukraine, Russia has staged cyberwar offensives against the neighboring nation’s military and banking websites. It is also using its state-affiliated media outlets and bot propaganda networks to put out a version of the country’s invasion of Ukraine that is favorable to Russia.

However: Social media turn on Putin, the past master.

In Russia on Friday, Vladimir Putin, a man who is now scared of his own shadow, took the extraordinary step of attempting to outlaw information. He banned Facebook. He shut down Twitter. He passed a new law that declares journalism a criminal offence: any journalist found to have published “fake news” on the war in Ukraine now faces up to 15 years in prison.

It is, like so many things in the last week, incredible, unprecedented, horrifying – but more importantly it’s also desperate and absurd. Because in 2022 you can’t ban information. It’s like trying to ban oxygen. It’s the kind of move that one of his grey-faced Soviet predecessors might have made. It’s as modern and up-to-date as a typewriter. Only a fool would make predictions right now, but here’s one anyway: it proves that Putin, the founding father of what’s come to be known as “information war”, just lost the information war.

Trying to wage war using tools and technology you don’t control is even more of a fool’s errand than war usually is.

Something we might want to keep in mind as Xi Jinping gets friskier.