It's not really fear mongering. I am just trying to analyze the current trends. Whatsapp is banned in China. So are other apps or networks (Google, Facebook). Wechat isn't banned outside of China (except for I believe in India), but very few people use it. I only installed it when I visited China. And even without outright bans, Chinese apps have a hard time penetrating Western markets (TikTok is one of the few that succeeded), and vice versa.
As for isolation vs. usage patterns. Different processes can often result in similar outcomes. Let’s use an analogy from biology. Species can diverge in different ways. One is physical isolation. For example, a certain population gets stuck on one island, and another one on a different one. Physically they don’t meet, and over time diverge enough to form different species.
Another way is when individuals of a certain population diverge in certain habits (within the same geographic area). For example, they start hunting for certain types of food. Over time, this leads to less and less interactions between the two populations, and at some point they diverge enough to form different species. The first case is called allopatric speciation, the second case is called sympatric speciation.
And yes, tunneling protocols will evolve. For example, as I mention in the article, the EU's DMA mandates cross-platform messaging interoperability. However, how much that will reduce the barriers between the Android and iPhone worlds is hard to tell.
As for TCP/IP vs. OSI. Here is the history of the protocols war.
