The US government is preparing to activate an “internet kill switch” according to cyber security experts, and the groundwork has been laid to blame the unprecedented act on Russia.

Obama effectively declared “cyber-war” on Russia this week, promising “retaliatory hacks” and suggesting the US would covertly release “embarrassing” information about Putin as tensions between Washington and Moscow continue to escalate.

However analysts, including WikiLeaks, are questioning the seriousness of Obama’s claims of a “covert” and “clandestine” campaign. Considering the quotes were given to the New York Times, many believe Obama’s declaration of a secret cyberwar is mere propaganda and a smokescreen for a darker operation.

If the US "clandestine" pending cyberwar on Russia was serious: 1) it would not have been announced

2) it would be the NSA and not the CIA — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 15, 2016

Strange recent events, swept under the carpet by mainstream media, lend credence to claims the US government are preparing the ground for an unprecedented Internet shutdown.

Earlier this year the Supreme Court declined to hear a petition from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that was seeking to force the Department of Homeland Security to release details of a top-secret “internet killswitch” protocol to shut down cellphone and Internet service during “emergencies.”

EPIC has been campaigning since 2011 to force the release of details of the program, which is known by the incredibly misleading name Standard Operating Procedure 303.

EPIC writes, “On March 9, 2006, the National Communications System (‘NCS’) approved SOP 303, however it was never released to the public. This secret document codifies a ‘shutdown and restoration process for use by commercial and private wireless networks during national crisis.’”

The Internet was designed to be robust and fault-tolerant, but its technology is still in its infancy. The fact that the web has not stopped functioning in its first few decades encourages us to assume that it never will. But like any man-made system, the internet has the potential to fail.

Bruce Schneier, a security expert, says that some “unknown entity” has been testing methods of “bringing down the whole Internet”. Schneier, in an essay last month, revealed that companies responsible for the basic infrastructure of the Internet are experiencing an escalating series of coordinated attacks that appear designed to test the defenses of its most critical elements.

Based on his studies, Schneier, CTO of IBM’s Resilient, says that these escalated attacks are just a primer for a full-fledged attack that could take down the entire Internet backbone and hurl the world into chaos. Though he has identified a pattern in the ongoing attacks, he has not been able to identify the unknown entity behind the attacks.

But he says that based on the enormous scale of the attacks, the most likely culprit is a single large state cyber warfare unit.

Excuses, excuses

If you were paying attention to anything outside the Clinton/Trump mainstream media circus this week you may have noticed the White House issued a bizarre sounding Executive Order – Coordinating Efforts To Prepare The Nation For Space Weather Events.

Space weather? The White House are claiming that solar flares, and geomagnetic disturbances are likely to have a huge impact on electrical equipment on Earth in the next 120 days. Preparing for a complete electrical grid collapse, the Executive Order states: “Extreme space weather events — those that could significantly degrade critical infrastructure — could disable large portions of the electrical power grid, resulting in cascading failures that would affect key services such as water supply, healthcare, and transportation.”

Is the Obama administration readying excuses for activating the secret Internet killswitch when it suits them, halting the spread of information, and temporarily plunging the majority of the world into Dark Ages ignorance?

Space weather sounds like an unlikely excuse, but the administration would point to the fact solar flares have long been known to cause technological problems on Earth, and experts have been warning for years that a geomagnetic storm 92 million miles away could destabilize our communication systems, including the internet.

Mainstream media may be under government control, but damaging leaks, disseminated via the Internet, continue to hamper Hillary Clinton’s election campaign. As insider rumors continue to spread that devastating leaks, serious enough to ruin the ruling party’s chances of re-election are still to be released, the idea of an “emergency” justifying an Obama administration employing their top-secret Internet killswitch and declaring martial law are not far fetched.

The groundwork – including excuses and convenient scapegoats – has been prepared.