Law

ICANN’s New gTLD Round Draws 16 African Applications, 10 Controlled by a Chinese Business Network

A Seychelles company controlled by Lu Heng accounts for 10 of Africa's 16 new gTLD applications, linking ICANN's domain expansion to commercial interests and an ongoing dispute over AFRINIC's governance and IPv4 resources.

Submarine Cable Resilience Faces Growing Threats From Aging Fleets and Concentrated Ownership

Submarine cables underpin global communications, yet shipping accidents, sabotage risks and aging repair fleets threaten their resilience. Growing private ownership and fragmented international oversight raise difficult questions about infrastructure security, maintenance and accountability.

The Fight for a String: Understanding ICANN’s Objection Process in the 2026 New gTLD Application Round

ICANN's 2026 new gTLD objection process presents applicants and rights holders with four distinct mechanisms for challenging proposed strings, each carrying different legal standards, evidentiary requirements and consequences for delegation.

Who Checks the Models? The Case for UN Oversight of Frontier AI

As AI agents demonstrate increasingly autonomous behavior, Gabriel Accascina proposes a UN-led evaluation system modeled on WHO prequalification, using independent testing and government procurement incentives to strengthen international oversight of frontier AI.

US AI Policy Applies Two Scales at Home and Abroad

The danger the White House dismisses at home has justified restricting frontier models abroad. Now, as Trump meets Xi Jinping, competing forces within his administration could determine who writes global AI rules and in what register.

Governance Theater: Why the gTLD Expansion Program Is a Lose-Lose Proposition

ICANN's gTLD expansion program is structured to collect fees regardless of outcomes, leaving brand, portfolio and single-string applicants bearing financial risk while accountability mechanisms offer little meaningful remedy when the process fails.

Two Years After His Arrest, Pavel Durov Wants to Run His Own Registry

Telegram says it has applied for .gram, potentially giving a billion users DNS addresses while putting its governance, abuse controls, legal exposure and infrastructure under scrutiny as ICANN prepares to reveal applications.

Thirty-Five Years Later, Moscow Comes Looking for the Soviet Union’s Domain

Russia is imposing state identity verification on .su, the Soviet Union's surviving domain, as researchers uncover criminal infrastructure across the namespace and ICANN pursues a retirement process that could eventually remove it from the global root.

Beyond Protocol and Policy: Why Project Jake is Reshaping the Architecture of Internet Trust

Project Jake aims to bridge the divide between internet protocols and policy, offering registries, law enforcement and rights holders a decentralised framework for accessing domain-registration data securely while navigating privacy laws and institutional gridlock.

What Reagan-Era Cyber Strategists Can Teach America Today

Reagan-era cyber strategists anticipated today's transnational threats, proposing international treaties, public-private cooperation and infrastructure protections. As America again considers aggressive action against cybercriminals, their largely forgotten blueprint offers both lessons and warnings.