[immibis]

The current global Internet is an anomaly in space and time, and it's held together by spit, prayers, and the hope the reliability gains from multiple redundant paths outweigh the reliability losses from so many distinct actors being involved. It would be quite easy for any major government to cause major problems in global connectivity. So far, they mostly seem content to only cut themselves off, and the ones with the power to mess up the global net don't seem to want to. But the NSA was diverting a whole lot of intra-Europe traffic via the USA at one time so they could snoop it.