Cloudflare’s David Belson discusses internet resilience, outages, AI traffic, and the challenge of turning real-time data into true understanding.
For more than two decades, David Belson has watched the Internet mature from an academic curiosity into the essential nervous system of modern society. He has seen it expand, fracture, and occasionally falter. Today, as Head of Data Insight at Cloudflare, Belson occupies a vantage point few others possess: a near-real-time view of global connectivity through Cloudflare Radar — a platform that has quietly become the world’s go-to resource for understanding digital disruptions, cyberattacks, and connectivity patterns as they unfold.
For governments tracking outages, journalists covering cyber incidents, and enterprises assessing threats, Belson’s data has become indispensable infrastructure for understanding our digital moment.
But with that visibility comes an uncomfortable question: When a private company becomes the primary lens through which the world understands the Internet, how does it ensure it is observing the story rather than shaping it?
Belson is acutely aware of the tension.
“We focus on fact- and data-based reporting,” he explains. “Neutral language, corroboration with other sources—those are critical. It would be very easy to use opinionated wording to assign blame or take sides when an event occurs. We deliberately avoid doing that.”
That discipline has become increasingly important as Cloudflare Radar grows in influence. What began as a tool for internal insight has evolved into something resembling a public utility—a barometer of digital life itself.
A Stronger Internet—With New Weak Points
Belson’s long career in Internet infrastructure gives him a historical perspective rare in today’s fast-moving tech industry. Asked whether the Internet is becoming more resilient or more fragile, he answers without hesitation: both.
“New protocols are designed with resilience in mind,” he says. “It’s easier than ever to connect to multiple providers, both for individual users and for networks.”
Yet that technical progress exists alongside forces pulling in the opposite direction. Over the past quarter-century, national political agendas have increasingly tried to impose local laws on a fundamentally global system. At the same time, critical online services have become concentrated among a handful of large providers.
“That concentration adds fragility to what users perceive to be ‘the Internet,’” Belson notes, “even if the underlying infrastructure is functioning just fine.”
Paradoxically, the Internet may not be failing more often than it used to—it’s simply being measured more carefully.
“Tools like Cloudflare Radar have focused attention on problems that might have otherwise been invisible a quarter century ago,” he says.
Visibility Is Not the Same as Understanding
In the modern Internet era, every disruption now arrives accompanied by charts, graphs, and heat maps. But Belson resists the idea that the industry is drowning in data without context.
“The visibility helps enable the understanding,” he argues.
Real-time measurement, he explains, allows analysts to examine outages across protocols and metrics, to see not just that something is broken but how it is breaking. Those details make it possible to answer deeper questions: who is affected, what the financial impact might be, and how problems could be bypassed.
Importantly, Belson points out, Cloudflare’s data rarely exists in isolation. Civil society organizations, academics, and governance groups routinely use Radar’s numbers to build broader narratives.
“The dashboards are a starting point,” he says, “not the full story.”
He points to coverage of prolonged connectivity disruptions in Iran as an example: journalists and researchers cite measurement data, but use it to illuminate the human and political realities underneath.
Navigating Politics With Neutrality
Cloudflare’s vantage point often places it at the intersection of geopolitics and technology—whether during state-sponsored cyberattacks or contentious debates about online speech.
Belson insists that, on the data side, neutrality is non-negotiable.
“We take a strictly fact-based approach,” he says. “But we also work closely with Cloudflare’s Public Policy team when covering sensitive regions. Their guidance helps us avoid unintended political implications.”
Sometimes the issues are surprisingly subtle. A flag icon on a chart, the way a border is drawn on a map—small design choices can carry significant diplomatic weight.
“Those details matter more than people realize,” Belson says.
Can We Still Recognize Human Behavior Online?
Perhaps the most profound change confronting the Internet today is the explosion of automated activity. Bots and AI-generated content now fill the web, raising doubts about whether analysts can still separate authentic human behavior from machine noise.
Belson remains confident.
“Bot authors try hard to make their traffic look human, but they usually fail to capture the subtle signals of real behavior,” he explains.
By analyzing trillions of web requests every day, Cloudflare can observe those patterns at scale. Combined with techniques to verify automated requests, he believes the company can continue to maintain a clear picture of genuine user activity.
The Power and Limits of Private Insight
As reliance on Cloudflare’s analysis grows, so does concern about the concentration of informational power.
Belson rejects the notion that Cloudflare should be seen as an exclusive authority.
“We don’t expect to be the sole source,” he says. “We collaborate widely, share data and insights, and aim to be transparent about how we gather our information.”
Much of that data is made freely available, precisely so that others can incorporate it into their own reporting and decision-making.
“Trust comes from openness,” he adds.
The Uncomfortable Truth Ahead
Looking forward, Belson has a blunt message for business leaders: most organizations remain dangerously underprepared for the security challenges to come.
“You’re not doing enough to secure your applications, your users’ data, and your networks,” he says flatly.
Daily headlines about breaches and attacks reinforce the point. Proper security, he argues, is harder than many companies admit—and the problem is only going to worsen.
“Attack surfaces will continue to grow,” Belson warns, noting that AI-enabled tools are already helping adversaries find and exploit vulnerabilities more quickly.
In five years, he predicts, the uncomfortable truth will remain the same: organizations will still be underinvesting in protection, and the consequences will continue to mount.
The Internet has never been more central to daily life, nor more complicated to understand. Through platforms like Cloudflare Radar, the world has gained unprecedented visibility into its inner workings.
But as David Belson reminds us, seeing clearly is only the beginning. The harder task is turning that vision into wisdom—and ensuring that in the rush to measure everything, we never lose sight of what truly matters.
