Venezuela’s Ultimas Noticias published a pointed reflection on national cybersecurity Friday, asserting that staying off the internet provides the strongest defense in today’s hyper-connected world. The author draws on the popular Latin American saying, ‘The sky is safe, the vulture doesn’t poop on it,’ to emphasize physical impossibility as the best safeguard against cyber risks.

Just 34 years since the internet’s widespread adoption—and even less from the 2004-2007 smartphone and social media boom—digital natives now view landline phones and transistor radios as relics, the piece states. An entire generation relies on internet-connected devices for all communication and entertainment, normalizing a borderless digital area.

The author likens the internet to a global highway system evolving into vast ‘cities and institutions’—a spatial architecture without governments or borders. Launched with ideals of liberty, neutrality and equality, it mirrors the French Revolution’s principles but rooted in technology. This ‘territory’ features standardized protocols, domains and nodes, conquered by multinational tech giants registered in just a few countries.

New social norms, values and a homogeneous global culture have emerged, much like mass culture during the Industrial Revolution. The commentary credits U.S. Vice President Al Gore with promoting the ‘global information superhighway’ in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton. Governments worldwide adopted internet infrastructure into national policies, backed by literacy campaigns and subsidies to ensure universal access, framing it as a human right.

This push created a new divide: information-rich versus information-poor, sidelining issues like income inequality. The author laments that only hindsight reveals the full scope of this ‘mass social engineering.’

Key questions arise about the internet’s origins. Who designed this global mega-project? The trail leads to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and its ARPANET initiative in the late 1970s. Psychologist-turned-computer-scientist Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider directed the effort. On November 21, 1969, the first link connected the University of California to Stanford Research Institute.

The piece probes whether a ‘national cyberspace’ is feasible. ‘Cyber’ stems from Greek, meaning to govern or control; cyberspace implies a governed digital space synonymous with the internet. The author describes it as a private, U.S.-controlled alternate reality, not truly public, with self-governed colonies.

Can countries in the Global South build sovereign digital spaces? The commentary asks if national cybersecurity requires partial or full disconnection from the global internet—and whether that makes sense geopolitically. It frames the internet’s evolution through phases: information revolution, knowledge revolution, digital era and now artificial intelligence, questioning if it truly began in 1969 or with the Cold War.

Officials and experts have long debated internet sovereignty. Russia’s RuNet isolated segments of its network in tests since 2019. China maintains the Great Firewall, blocking foreign sites while building domestic alternatives. Iran and North Korea operate restricted intranets. Yet full global disconnection remains rare, given economic ties and infrastructure realities.

The reflection urges readers to view cyberspace as a form of global urbanism, culture and governance—privately held but presented as free. For Global South nations, the author implies, reliance on this system invites vulnerability amid rising state-sponsored hacks and data exploitation.

No immediate policy responses have surfaced from Venezuelan or regional leaders to the piece. It arrives as cyber threats escalate, with groups like Venezuela’s Collective of Cyber Defense highlighting foreign incursions on national grids and elections.