And centuries before a return Centuries before Aristotle, Cleopatra or Jesus Christ worked the earth, the Chinese were

building walls. In ancient times, there were defenses between warring ethnically Chinese tribes.

A thousand years later, walls were erected to keep out war-mongering Mongols. Today the Great Wall of China remains a standing

relic of those times. But walls are about more than just military defense.

They are a means of enforcing separation between peoples.

We say communities are gated when they isolate group of common tradition or wealth.

Artificial borders such as the Berlin Wall create teams on either side,

separating the good from the bad. For China, walls have always been about not just kinetic but ideological

war. The Mongols were violent conquerors sure but they were also seen as

barbaric brutish.

Their mere presence threatened to taint the more pure Chinese way of life.

In this sense, the Great Wall kept out not just foreign armies, but foreign cultures.

The Great Wall of our era was built with very much the same purpose in mind.

This wall, however, is perhaps even more imposing, more threatening

than the real Great Wall of China is. And it's not an earthen wall, it's not a stone wall, it's a firewall. You probably have a firewall

installed on your computer or your router at home.

It functions perhaps less like a wall than a gate or a door.

Filtering incoming data to allow legitimate network packets through and keeping unwanted malicious packets from making

chaos on your machine. Just as your front door or front gate allows you to discern who can

come into your home and when, so too do firewalls, try the best to give you full

control of what information is allowed entry onto your computer.

For two decades now, China has viewed their entire national internet in much the same way

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