Quora Answer: Why Can the UN Not Wipe ISIS Off the Internet Permanently?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why can the UN not wipe ISIS off the internet permanently?”

ISIS is not a formal organisation, in the sense that it has a unified chain of command, and a hierarchy of leadership that can be attacked.  It is an amalgamation of groups and sub-organisations, of varying levels of organised sophistication. It is akin to an infection.  You cannot simply kill the leadership, and expect it to disintegrate.  It is fueled by an ideology, and as long as that underlying ideology of Wahhabism is not addressed, another iteration of ISIS will arise.

ISIS is not even original.  It is the latest evolution of a series of Salafist militant organisations such as Al-Qaeda, and either poached fighters and operatives from them, or outright absorbed them into its framework.  As such, even if we succeed in wiping their presence from the internet, we have not wiped the ideology from it.  The underlying ideology has not been addressed at all.

On the other hand, we have to understand that the internet, including the dark web, is a huge place.  It is impossible to police.  The amount of resources that is needed to be deployed to root them out, in the way Vision rooted out Ultron, would be better deployed elsewhere.  And even then, it would be of dubious success.

And then there is the ethical consideration, and its consequences.  If the UN were given that level of authority, it would become a threat to national sovereignty, and that would spell the end of the UN as a semi-cohesive organisation.  The internet would also fragment, and separate internets would be developed, that cannot be censored by a supranational body, or any group of countries to the detriment of the national interest of others.  If they can purge ISIS today, who is there to say that they cannot purge an inconvenient political opinion tomorrow?