All, the recent discussion about moving the NCC and the relative political stability of countries in the service region has caused me to think about the RIPE NCC in the current political context. THere appears to be an incipient issue here: 1) Problem statement the current geopolitical situation in the RIPE service region has, unfortunately, greatly degraded in the recent past. There are territorial conflicts (Ukraine/Russia), there are outright civil wars (Syria, Afghanistan) and, perhaps closest to "home", the cold war is back between "The West" and Russia as well as Iran (both in the RIPE service region). The rhetoric in both the EU and NATO (both of which NL is a member of) is becoming increasingly belligerent and there is an increasing likelihood of this stance leading to unilateral sanctions against those seen as "enemies". Since "internet propaganda", "Russian Trolls", etc are now often taking the blame for every ill in Europe, I should be surprised if those didn't also include internet resources. I would not see it without the realm of the possible, that increasing political/legal pressure would be brought on the RIPE NCC to deny service and perhaps revoke resources allocated to these enemies-du-jour. 2) Possible outcomes - Sanctioned countries might take their ball and go elsewhere (another RIR?) - Sanctioned countries might take their resources and set up their own RIR, approved by IANA or, more likely, not. - They might refuse (or be prohibited from) cooperation with the original IANA/RIR/LIR system. - In a worst-case scenario this could lead to the same resources used by "opposing" RIRs and a fracturing of the internet. - In such a case, it is hard to imagine the ITU (as an UN body) *not* taking control of resource management to prevent such a fracture. 3) Mitigations - The only one I can think of is relocating the NCC to a country - if that exists- which is neutral and does not participate in these block fights (Switzerland?, Sweden?). As a question to the board: does the RIPE NCC have any contingency plans to mitigate this situation when it occurs? Kind Regards, Sascha Luck - resources