For more than four decades, the Internet has demonstrated remarkable resilience through open standards, interoperability, distributed architectures and voluntary cooperation among technical, operational and policy communities. As societies become increasingly dependent on digital services, the Marconi Society Internet Resilience Institute has shown that Internet resilience is the foundation for creating justifiable trust in the digital society. Its Phase 1 work—the Life of a Packet Mapping Framework and the Business Resilience Guide—demonstrates that resilient digital services depend on understanding hidden technical, operational and organizational interdependencies and translating that understanding into practical implementation.
The Internet is now entering a new phase of evolution. Originally designed to connect people, it is increasingly becoming an environment in which autonomous AI agents discover services, exchange information and make operational decisions on behalf of people and organizations. This fundamentally changes the requirements for Internet resilience and governance. Building on the outcomes of the WSIS Forum 2026 session Operationalizing Digital Resilience, this workshop explores how resilience principles can enable justifiable trust for both humans and AI through dependency mapping, operational best practices, trusted operational Internet intelligence and continuous verification.
Holding this discussion at IGF 2026 in Nairobi is particularly important. Africa’s rapidly growing digital economy, mobile-first infrastructure and expanding AI ecosystem offer unique perspectives on resilience. Ensuring that diverse regional experiences and real-world failure scenarios inform future resilience frameworks is essential for creating globally relevant Internet governance and building justifiable trust in an Internet increasingly shared by humans and autonomous AI agents. The 21st annual IGF meeting will be hosted in a hybrid format from 14 to 18 December 2026 in Nairobi, Kenya. Learn more about our session, “IGF 2026 WS #414 Internet Resilience for the Age of AI.”
Registration for IGF 2026 is currently open.
