Russia Explores AI to Block VPNs as Censorship Push Expands

The proposal surfaced in a draft national plan for implementing AI technologies through 2030. It envisioned AI models analyzing the characteristics of 70% of VPN services targeted for censorship. Russia’s Digital Development Ministry claims this AI measure is absent from the plan’s current iteration, but the report says Moscow is already investing heavily in permanent censorship infrastructure and has recently outlined plans to double its internet censorship budget.

Russia currently relies on “intelligent algorithms” rather than true AI to analyze internet traffic, according to the report. The government still intends to increase the capacity of its traffic-filtering infrastructure 2.5-fold to 954 terabits per second by 2030.

An AI-powered system would sit atop Russia’s existing technical systems for countering threats, known as TSPU, the dedicated filtering hardware already installed on telecom operators’ networks. A source in the Russian networking industry told Kommersant that “AI automates and accelerates the analysis of connection patterns.” The technology would evaluate data points such as packet size and timing, session duration, traffic ratios and neighboring IP addresses to indirectly root out VPN infrastructure.

Industry sources cautioned that an AI layer could lead to a surge in false positives, trapping legitimate business and corporate traffic in the dragnet. One source estimated that the algorithmic error rate is already 5% to 6%, and early-stage AI models would likely produce a significant number of incorrect blocks.

As noted by United24 Media, rolling out such a system requires immense resources. A fully operational AI detection net requires large-scale telemetry storage, massive computing clusters for model training and a complex infrastructure to distribute updated models directly to filtering nodes.

Separately, a draft order from the Digital Development Ministry mandates that smartphones operating on Russia’s future 5G networks support Kuznyechik, an encryption algorithm developed with participation from the FSB’s information-security centre and InfoTeKS. Scheduled to take effect on March 1, 2032, the algorithm is not part of the standard 3GPP encryption suite. Because it must be built into modem chipsets, it could effectively force global manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung to build Russia-specific hardware just to operate in the country.

The draft measures form part of a broader effort by Moscow to control mobile communications, escalate VPN blocks and push the technology industry toward strictly domestic security standards.