Information is power. It’s why autocratic regimes in China, Russia, and Iran have invested extensive resources to build architectures of censorship, surveillance, and control over the internet within their own borders.
By constructing their own firewalls and internal control systems, digital authoritarian regimes also restrict access to the free, global internet as a means of limiting sources of information and platforms for communication that might enable citizens to inform, express, and organize themselves.
The United States has historically been a leader on global internet freedom, defending the exercise of fundamental human rights such as freedom of expression and association online through policy and practical support. But Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and other authoritarian governments are constantly evolving and adapting their own tools for controlling who can freely access and communicate through the open internet. As crackdowns on internet access accelerate, the United States should scale up current levels of support for the development of platforms, tools, and technologies that empower citizens living in closed societies to escape the confines of these digital censorship and surveillance regimes.
And U.S. investments are most effective when they are made consistently: Freedom advocates, independent media, human rights defenders, and other civic organizations need ongoing support to adopt technological infrastructure and security protocols that will enable them to be flexible when any new restrictions on digital communications are imposed.
Autocrats are cracking down on circumvention technologies
Russia intensified efforts to control information flows over the internet in March and April by targeting commercial VPN usage. Virtual private networks (VPNs) are the most important tools for circumventing restrictive, censorship, and surveillance technologies. They allow internet users to create an anonymized, encrypted network portal that tunnels through or leaps over firewalls to access the open global internet from anywhere in the world.
But Roskomnadzor, the Russian state media and telecommunications regulator, directed major Russian websites to block visitors using VPNs from accessing their content while directing companies that operate apps to store data about VPN users. The agency also pressured Apple to remove premium VPN providers from its App Store in Russia before then blocking Apple Pay entirely to prevent Russia-based users from paying for many private VPN services.
Pressure to restrict VPN usage in China is also mounting. China Digital Times, an independent media outlet that tracks and translates uncensored news about China, identified several memos, documents, and news articles in April revealing that Chinese Communist Party officials are instructing companies and government employees to target VPN connections.
Satellite internet connections also provide an alternative access point to citizens in countries like Iran who are struggling to communicate with each other and the outside world amid a wholesale internet shutdown. Yet autocrats – including the Iranian regime – are learning to jam satellite internet signals and detect and identify satellite internet users.
Russia and China are also making it difficult for people within their borders to access or even learn about the existence of encrypted messaging channels that enable citizens, journalists, human rights defenders, and freedom advocates in countries to freely share information with one another and the outside world. Russia intensified its crackdown on the popular encrypted messaging app Telegram in March and April. Both countries are pushing their populations to adopt state-built apps that limit, control, and monitor digital media user behavior.
How the United States can advance global internet freedom
Circumventing censorship and surveillance technologies has always been a game of cat-and-mouse. To maintain its edge as an innovator in digital technologies, the United States should scale up support for global internet freedom to help citizens living under authoritarian regimes stay a step ahead of efforts to restrict access to the free and open internet.
Citizens living under these regimes need to draw from multiple strategies and layers of tools to continue to access alternative sources of information, communicate, and maintain their own security.
U.S. internet freedom policy and funding should focus on catalyzing a rich and diverse ecosystem of technology providers, platforms, and censorship circumvention methods. These initiatives must consider the needs of internet users in different restrictive environments if they are to successfully enable connectivity amid shifting restrictions and repressive authoritarian tactics.
The Open Technology Fund, a private foundation that receives most of its funding from a U.S. congressional appropriation through the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has been a key avenue for fostering the development of innovative circumvention, connectivity, and communication technologies that are also user friendly. OTF funding was integral to the creation of Signal, a popular secure encrypted messaging platform used within the United States and around the world.
OTF has also played a critical role supporting the creation of VPNs that are uniquely designed and adaptive for circumventing evolving authoritarian censorship and surveillance technologies. No commercial market for this exists.
Such VPN technologies are significantly more cost-effective and secure than satellite internet and remain the primary method of circumventing internet censorship regimes. Congress should continue to fund and consider expanding budgetary support to sustain OTF investments in cutting-edge solutions that support global internet freedom.
The State Department’s bureaus of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) have also directly supported the adoption of technological innovations and digital security tools for freedom advocates, independent media, and human rights defenders operating within restrictive authoritarian internet environments.
The State Department should resume grantmaking that was paused in 2025 and expand the number of staff focused on its internet freedom program.
Multilateral cooperation can also be a force multiplier for advancing global internet freedom. The United States should revisit its decision to withdraw from the Freedom Online Coalition – an initiative the U.S. State Department helped create – to meaningfully engage with democratic partners around the world to ensure that human rights and fundamental freedoms are protected online as well as offline.
Digital authoritarianism must be confronted
These issues are increasingly urgent amid efforts by China and Russia to commercialize and export their own censorship and internet controls to other countries. Earlier this month, China pressured Zambia’s government to withdraw its support as the host country of RightsCon, leading to the cancellation of the preeminent international conference focused on advancing human rights in the digital arena.
It is to the United States’ advantage to ensure that citizens around the world can continue to access information and communicate freely through the open global internet. No other actor has been able to match the impact that the United States has had in leading the fight for global internet freedom.
The United States needs to recommit to strategic policies and investments in technologies that can stop digital authoritarianism from silencing citizens around the world who share our democratic values.
