The Russian military is building a giant cloud as a backup internet that in wartime will let the country go into Internet exile — and in peace, keep it operating in case of a global internet connection loss or hack, Defense One reported.
"Russian Armed Forces will receive a . . . closed 'cloud' storage for proprietary and confidential information," Izvestia reported, according to the news outlet. The cloud will rely on data centers slated for completion by 2020, Izvestia reported.
According to Defense One, the first center has already been established in a Russian military district that includes the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula and parts of eastern Ukraine.
Defense One reported the cloud will connect to the Russian military's massive internal network, and Russian President Vladimir Putin's top IT adviser has said in wartime, the country could disconnect entirely from the global internet and run commercial traffic on the military's internal network.
Sam Bendett, a fellow in Russia studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, told Defense One the Russian military has determined Big Data will be a "significant part in its ongoing modernization drive, with various digital technologies and approaches getting incorporated and used by the Russian forces."
Russia is also making moves to bring its trading partners along with it on the Internet exile path, Defense One reported — including Brazil, India, South Africa and China. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently said Russia was pursuing an information security agreement with those countries for adoption at a July summit in Johannesburg, Defense One reported.
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