OREANDA-NEWS. A free internet is under threat from censorship by China and Russia. This is according to the UK's new cyber strategy, the Financial Times reports.

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the defence arm of the Defence Intelligence Agency (GCHQ), which helped develop the strategy, said the new approach would provide a framework for countering the growing number of cyber threats from the UK's opponents.

"The debate on the rules governing cyberspace will increasingly become an arena of systemic competition between great powers with a clash of values between countries that want to maintain a system based on open societies and systemic rivals such as China and Russia that promote greater state control as the only way to secure cyberspace,"- it said.

Britain also warned that the clash "will put pressure on a free and open internet as states, major technology companies and others promote competing approaches to its technical standards and governance".

According to the human rights organisation Freedom House, Russia scored 34 on the list of countries with the most unfree internet in 2021 (the higher the score, the more freedoms on the internet). China has a score of 10 out of 100 on Freedom House's list.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken about the growing threat from the internet. According to him, the internet can destroy society from within if it is not subject to moral laws. Among the negative phenomena on the Internet, the president named the spread of child pornography, the propagation of suicides and the involvement of minors in illegal protests.