Schneier: nationalism on the Internet is getting worse

Internet security expert Bruce Schneier is worried about the increase in Internet nationalism:

For technology that was supposed to ignore borders, bring the world closer together, and sidestep the influence of national governments, the Internet is fostering an awful lot of nationalism right now. We’ve started to see increased concern about the country of origin of IT products and services; U.S. companies are worried about hardware from China; European companies are worried about cloud services in the U.S; no one is sure whether to trust hardware and software from Israel; Russia and China might each be building their own operating systems out of concern about using foreign ones.

A smart piece. I tend to be an outlier in that I have a hard time even with patriotism – but this is the Internet, where we’re all supposed to be coming together and learning from each other. There’s nothing positive to be gained from this kind of bone-headed national competition.