The Global War for Internet Governance

DeNardis maps the institutions that actually govern the internet — ICANN, IETF, regional internet registries, root server operators, national regulators — and the conflicts among them. Her central argument is that internet governance is not primarily a matter of treaties and summits but of technical architecture: decisions about protocols, addressing, naming, and routing are inherently political acts with distributive consequences. The book covers disputes over domain names, IP address allocation, surveillance-enabling standards, and the role of private companies as de facto regulators. DeNardis calls this the "deep stack" of governance, the layer beneath policy where real power operates. For product leaders, the book explains why your product's reachability, performance, and legal exposure depend on governance decisions made in rooms you have never entered. Understanding who controls the stack beneath your stack is not optional knowledge.