Current Events:  Would a free internet help flip the switch from Autocracy to Democracy?  Let’s find out.

 

I’ve often wondered if the free flow of information, discourse, and opinion might be the “silver bullet” for incenting people in autocracies to demand a better life in a free-market democracy.

 

A Time magazine, Feb13/20, 2023 article … “Shadow Network – Inside the clandestine effort to smuggle a free internet into Iran, one dish at a time” … got me thinking.

 

Russia, China, Iran, North Korea … who wish us no good … have state-controlled internets.

 

But a real-world work-around is underway in Iran using Starlink, a subsidiary of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

 

Iran thinks they need 5,000 Starlink satellite dishes to set up an alternative internet not controlled by the autocrats.  They have 100 dishes.  Getting to 5,000 requires a $3.5M investment for the dishes, $6.6M annually for the subscriptions, plus whatever smugglers cost. 

 

That’s a piddling amount to possibly free a nation of people and neutralize a strategic threat to our national security.

 

We do need to figure out ways to “hide” the dishes … and de-risk users and dish operators from the Autocracy’s likely efforts to squelch it.

 

Would a free internet flip the autocracy / democracy switch?  Who knows.  Iran sure does seem like an attractive low-cost way to find out.

 

(A Starlink dish costs $700 plus an annual subscription cost of $1,320.  The idea of using Starlink to provide a new national internet seems practical.  Ukraine is using 20,000 Starlink dishes to replace their internet lost to the Russian invasion.  Most are funded by the US and the remainder donated by Starlink.)