SAN FRANCISCO, California: After 25 years of keeping the internet strong and stable, the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) — responsible for its technical infrastructure — is warning that increasingly polarized geopolitics could start cracking the foundations of the online world.

'It's super important to differentiate between what countries decide to do with controlling content, as opposed to the technical infrastructure,' interim Icann Chief Executive Officer Sally Costerton told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in a recent interview.