IT seems that the US has the power to switch of the Internet if it ever comes under serious cyber attack.

A little-noticed Senate bill allows the federal government to shut down the Internet in times of declared emergency, and enables unprecedented federal oversight of private network administration. The bill's draft states that "the president may order a cybersecurity emergency and order the shutdown of Internet traffic" and would give the government ongoing access to "all relevant data concerning networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access."

The White House has not officially endorsed the draft law, but it apparently helped write it, according to The Washington Post. According to the draft's author it will protect the cybersecurity of the private sector in a time of crisis. The US is worried about America's vulnerability to massive cyber-crime, global cyber-espionage and cyber-attacks has emerged as one of the most urgent national security problems facing our country today. It thinks that making the entire Internet go down is the best way to make sure that important infrastructure is not threatened.

While that might be good news for people in the US, it shows the amount of control that that country has over the internet and the fact it is prepared to use it.  One of the fears of letting the US have the total control over ICCAN was precisely because the rest of the world feared that it had too much say over the Internet.  If it can order the net turned off to protect its infrastructure then it could clearly use that power as a weapon to bring states it disagreed with into line.