Well, Trump doesn't have the authority to do anything of the sort!
Could the U.S. shut down the Internet? - CNN.com
Could the United States do the same?
Technically, the United States could do the same thing Egypt did to block Internet access, Faris said.
The government would have to call four or five top internet providers and order them to disrupt Border Gateway Protocols in a way that shut down the majority of American internet traffic, he said. Others said the government would have to deal with the country's thousands of internet providers in order to fully clamp down on internet access, which would be logistically difficult.
But that's unlikely to happen here, experts said.
For one thing, the internet in the U.S. is bigger. There are more companies involved, more data at play and more locations where the internet comes in and out of the country.
Moreover, U.S. law would prevent such an authoritarian shutdown.
"The internet is a network of networks," said Andrew Blum, a correspondent for CNN content partner Wired magazine and author of an upcoming book on internet infrastructure, "and they're all commercially operated.
"They're all businesses. Their autonomy is sort of their bread and butter. And they're mostly unregulated. So the idea of having to comply fully with any government order to shut them off is pretty extreme. It's as if there were a government order to close every McDonald's -- all at once."
A country's legal framework, not its technical infrastructure, determines whether it is able to shut down its citizens' access to the internet, said Cowie.
