2025 is not a banner year for the status quo. A fashion for deregulation, ignoring processes and questioning whatever was long-established is finding enough adherents that even things which work well are being upended. That’s why those looking for leverage to use in hurried dealmaking, or countries with plans to rebalance where digital power lies, may find a handy tool in ICANN. The Community is on notice that in the coming months it will have to help that institution both solve its thorny policy challenges and foresee (and forfend) alternatives to today’s Internet governance. Here’s how we know.

AccuWeather

It’d be nice to believe that ICANN might avoid this compound risk by keeping up the good work: on DNS abuse, stabilising the IGF, improving relations with emerging hegemons. Nice to believe that with so much up in the air (trade, security, climate, objective truth), few will want to add instability by reconceiving the multistakeholder model. But ICANN is about to attract inconvenient scrutiny with an application round for new gTLDs, and while this could enhance every country’s digital sector, it will also involve making choices, choices in favor of something, and against something. Even if all applicants were to be satisfied, the process will not (cannot) deliver the same outcome for everyone. Disappointed parties will then be able to blame the process, the criteria, and ultimately ICANN’s governance too. With the grassroots now disgruntled and sovereigns looking for leverage, powers that have long wanted to change the model will take another shot.

Language of Seduction

What’s more, “reconfiguring” Internet governance can be framed in persuasive terms that adapt an already familiar lexicon: cyber-sovereignty becomes just plain sovereignty, cybersecurity always was about national security first, and digital rights have to be more than available: they must now be equitable. These concepts are back in use, as national authorities assess just how protected their economies and citizen data truly are from behaviors unbecoming an ally¹. But we also know disharmony is coming because it always comes where there’s generalized disorder, smuggled in by those for whom change means the chance at a bigger share, and because the same balkanizing language gaining currency today was used in the past, to re-size railroad gauges, structure communications networks, influence cloud regulation, and drive data and AI policy; it’s a well-known trope.

Not a passing Fadi

Two mitigations can help ICANN: more engagement, and faster action. Fifteen years ago, ICANN embarked on a rigorous course of internationalization, of making itself into more than a California corporation. It was dealing with attention-getting challenges then too (the IANA transition) but its leadership saw that engagement and community alignment could put ICANN on the front foot, the better to see challenges coming and to meet them on the open field rather than waiting for a knock at the door. That was good politics and good business. ICANN has the muscle memory to do that again, and will find willing support if it communicates to our famously self-doubting Community what it needs, and why.

This includes support for faster action through streamlined decision making, starting with shorter, more ambitious deadlines. Ambition must be paired with practical measures, including (transparently) enabling secondments from community organisations that can dedicate time and effort to expedite Policy Development Processes, or passing the funding hat to cover the one-off costs of resourcing them. And it means getting comfortable using ICANN’s convening power in ways that generate revenue, like so many technical or standards bodies such as IEEE, ASTM, or GSMA have learned to do before it.

Builder’s Arms

Change adds to an institution’s risk even where its structure is robust and as near to perfect as can be. ICANN’s status quo may approach perfection, but the current trend of tearing down to build back up is an unmissable chance for ICANN and the Community to become the carpenter of its own renovation, the better to stand confidently for the next thirty years.