Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
In the past year, as we have witnessed the upending of the political order, the internet has been the theatre where many of the battles have been fought: from the hacking and leaking of Democratic party emails, to the proliferation of fake news and alternative facts, and yes, the outpourings of @realDonaldTrump. With domestic and geopolitical tensions rising, governments are finding it increasingly hard to function amid a constant barrage of uncontrollable information and potential cyber-attacks, making them grow more wary both of the internet's influence and their ability to control it. The fallout from this means we are facing the prospect of countries around the world pulling the plug on the open, global internet and creating their own independent networks. We might be about to see the end of the world wide internet as we know it. With globalisation under attack, the ultimate bastion of borderlessness – the global internet – might very well be one the biggest scalps taken by the newly emerging world order heralded in by Brexit and Trump. If a global orthodoxy of free trade, soft power and international organisations is overpowered by belligerent nations and isolationism, the net will inevitably be swept away with it. Weaponisation of the internet Since we've become dependent on the internet for almost everything we do, dangers to the network's integrity threaten devastating effects. Governments may be tempted to turn inwards in an attempt to shield themselves and their citizens from cyber-attacks. Last October, unknown hackers used an array of badly secured 'internet of things' (IoT) devices to bring down most of the internet on the east coast of America in one of the largest DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks to date. While depriving Americans of Amazon and Facebook for several hours was surely an inconvenience, the potential of the weaponised internet to do harm is infinitely greater. As more of the components of a country's critical infrastructure move online, the number of possible targets grows too. Hackers shut down a significant part of Ukraine's electricity grid in 2015, and crippled several important Estonian industries, including its banks, in 2007. Many cyber-security experts warn about the lacklustre defence of everything from air traffic control towers and voting machines to nuclear plants. One well-placed attack could do more damage than the most aggressive of traditional military campaigns, at a fraction of the cost. Because of the high degree of uncertainty surrounding cyber-capabilities – 'know your enemy' is a hard adage to follow if potential culprits and their capabilities are so tough to track – it has become impossible for governments to completely shield their countries from cyber-attacks. The growing urge to control the internet has also become apparent over the influence of so-called fake news. Distorting public opinion and fact as a manipulation technique is nothing new: it's been used since Roman times. But the relentless pace and scope with which the internet allows information to disseminate is quite unprecedented. Governments and the media (who have themselves often swapped truth for clicks) are having an increasingly hard time stemming the flow of biased or misleading news stories. So the democratic process suffers. The solutions offered by the reluctant tech giants providing a platform for fake news won't be sufficient to stop it altogether. This will prompt more countries to follow Russia and China in building their own platforms like VKontakte and Baidu, thus reducing foreign influence and allowing for extensive censorship and monitoring. The desire of developing countries to establish their own social networks will see them retreat into their own national bubbles. Fragile infrastructure While cyber attacks and false information campaigns use the internet to attack the infrastructure by which our societies function, the internet's own infrastructure is also at risk. Despite the internet's ephemeral, lawless appeal, its underlying network of cables, tubes and wires is very much rooted in the physical world. Over 99 per cent of all global internet communications are facilitated by an impressive web of undersea cables, connecting all corners of the world. A submarine deliberately destroying one of these cables in a hard-to-reach place could bring down access to parts of the internet for weeks and so, by extension, all the systems that rely upon it. The fallibility of this shared infrastructure also makes it impossible to keep foreign or hostile actors out of domestic affairs. Though governments that heavily restrict internet access might find it easier to prevent information from flowing in and out of the country, they are still reliant on the same co-owned systems, with some parts inevitably falling under other countries' jurisdictions. With various nations eyeing each other suspiciously and traditional alliances crumbling, building alternative structures to make foreign interference more difficult seems a logical consequence. Who rules the internet? It won't just be the actual infrastructure and 'hard' elements of the internet where governments will seek more independence. Internet governance, the catch-all term to describe the processes and decisions that determine how the internet is managed, and how its technical norms and standards are set, is increasingly complex. Foreign governments, which in the current political climate cannot rely on Google abiding by its mantra, 'Don't be evil', will aggressively start to pursue the construction of domestic alternatives. It is something we are already seeing happening worldwide. The splinternet Though the dream of the web internet pioneers was one of a completely open, non-hierarchical internet, over the years barriers have been springing up that restrict this freedom. Bit by bit, the internet is becoming more cordoned off. However, the fragmentation of the internet need not be bad news. As the limitations of its original incarnation are becoming increasingly clear, starting from scratch provides us with an important opportunity to right our initial wrongs. We can build a network or networks that are more ethical, inclusive and resilient to outside threats. While this is a moment of disharmony and uncertainty for the European project, the EU has much it agrees upon when it comes to policy and regulating the internet's mostly American corporate giants: from its ambitious data protection policies and the right to be forgotten, to Apple tax case. But it could do more. The global internet as we know it today began as a public space where everyone had an equal opportunity to use it as we liked. But it has quickly privatised, locking us into platforms that 'harvest' our data. As European citizens grow increasingly concerned about the negative impacts of the internet, the EU has a great opportunity. The EU should take a different approach to the internet and, rather than making it an unregulated free-for-all, consider it a 'commons': a public good open to all, excluding none. The EU could create and fund the infrastructure for this and help ensure safety for all. Meanwhile, small businesses and individuals would do their bit by creating a variety of tools to add to this commons, which would become fully interoperable through shared standards and underpinning technologies. One necessary component of such an internet commons is that it should be decentralised. Decentralising the internet and rethinking its structure would allow users to take back control over the network of networks, letting them manage their own personal data rather than giving it away to large companies, as well as offering them more choice over the tools they use. It is also often said that distributed internets would also inherently be much safer: largescale cyber-attacks are easier to prevent if we reduce the number of central nodes that traffic can travel through. But a European internet would above all need to be radically ambitious – especially with the EU in a fractured state. The rules for the decentralised, new internet are still wide open, and we have the opportunity to set them. The emergence of a new world order is forcing Europe to rethink itself, come closer together and defend its values in the world. Creating a completely new internet built around these values – and open to any like-minded country to join – might be one extraordinarily effective way of achieving it. This is an extended version of a piece originally published in Nesta's 10 predictions for 2017 series

<question>:
The author is afraid

<options>:
A that the dark web is going to cause long-lasting issues.
B government is going to cause a revolt through their internet sanctions.
C people have lost sight of what the internet is for.
D that huge problems can come from not having proper defenses in place on the internet.

<answer>:

D