If there's technical capability, there's no doubt they will do it, with or without an "attack" (a fake orchestrated attack can always be used as pretext). It's obvious to everyone this will be another Great Firewall.
Yeah any talk of a "drawbridge" or "emergency shutdown button" has always been either sheer ignorance or a pretext for censorship. Since if you want security you don't shut it down for everyone but either disconnect everything of infastructural importance.
If your power plants are at risk of hacking you don't prepare by planning to shutdown the internet - you prepare by making sure it can work when unplugged them from insecure networks. Because if loss of said connectivity would cause problems shutting it down is no help and if it doesn't there is no need to boost collateral damage - unleas that is the /real/ goal.
Its much easier to disconnect the international connections than to simultaneously disconnect every piece of critical infrastructure at once during an attack. While I believe this is probably a pretext for further censorship, the underlying rationale does have merit.
International disconnects also have the benefit of your internal communications mostly keep working.
The rationale has more merit for a regime that considers facts illegitimate tools of western degeneracy and aggression while waging its own cyber war than for one that wants to work for cyber peace.
Sure, but more importantly, in the event of war it would grant them a strategic advantage to be able to use the Internet exclusively within their own territory. The Internet as this wild west style free-for-all was never going to survive nation-state conflicts. All countries will eventually do what Russia is doing now, then link together based on treaties and economic agreements. Any country that opts to remain on an open, global Internet is asking for extreme levels of instability and risk.
Wouldn't that be like saying any nation-state who engages in foreign trade is at a massive disadvantage in conflict? Sure there may be some vulnerabilities but what they get from it likely outweigh it massively. Not to mention implicit allies of interlinked relationships - mess with them and their trading partners won't be happy.
Nation-states also fight with their economies - especially in conflicts protracted enough that production capacity becomes significant.
Yes, the Internet is part of foreign trade, that is my point. The same way that we restrict foreign trade in certain instances in order to protect our own interests will be reflected in restrictions on Internet connectivity in general. That starts with being able to control the connectivity, so eventually every industrialized country will have a system like what Russia is building.
If your power plants are at risk of hacking you don't prepare by planning to shutdown the internet - you prepare by making sure it can work when unplugged them from insecure networks. Because if loss of said connectivity would cause problems shutting it down is no help and if it doesn't there is no need to boost collateral damage - unleas that is the /real/ goal.