From the moment they appeared, Edward Snowden’s revelations have been making life awkward for Barack Obama. Before his first summit with Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, the US president stressed he would be raising as a priority the issue of Beijing’s frenetic cyber espionage activities. The day before the meeting, however, the UK’s Guardian newspaper published the first slew of allegations leaked by the former contractor for the US National Security Agency, revealing the breathtaking extent of America’s espionage programme.
As the revelations emerge, each more embarrassing than the last, the US stands to lose much more than just face. Control of the internet is slipping from its hands, too.
Just months separate the meeting with Mr Xi from a low-key summit in Montevideo, Uruguay. Here, a few days ago, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers kicked out at the land of its birth: the US. The non-profit body joined other obscure groups responsible for the nuts and bolts of the internet in calling for “the globalisation of its functions in which all stakeholders, including governments, participate on an equal footing”.