Iran’s Internet Blackout and the Authoritarian Playbook

In announcing the start of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump urged the people of Iran to “seize control of your destiny” and “take over your government.” 

But is anyone inside Iran hearing that message? As military strikes began, Iranian authorities shut down the internet. Reports from inside Iran have been limited. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has expanded its already extensive propaganda apparatus aimed at its own citizens—the same playbook Vladimir Putin deployed inside Russia to quiet opposition to his war in Ukraine. 

The free and open internet, which played a key role in the protests of the Arab Spring 15 years ago, was once thought to be a democratizing force. Yet Iran’s government, like most authoritarian regimes, long ago mastered the ability to use the internet to its advantage, throttling or closing off the country from the global internet at will. 

During World War II and the Cold War, the United States and its partners leveraged the most advanced technology at the time to ensure that truthful, independent information reached captive audiences and countered authoritarian propaganda. 

From US government radio transmitters stationed around the globe, American-funded broadcasting was able to reach into the homes of average citizens from our own hemisphere to the Soviet far east. As president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in the early 2020s, I heard countless stories from members of the public to even heads of state across Eurasia who recalled the power of those broadcasts when they were living under repression. 

Lech Wałęsa, Polish opposition leader and eventually president of a free Poland, once said when asked of the role that Radio Free Europe played in bringing freedom to Poland, “Would there be Earth without the sun?” 

Yet, as the reach of radio began to fade and it was supplanted by satellite television and eventually the modern internet, authoritarians realized that if they controlled the means of internet distribution in their countries they could impose their own restrictions on what their citizens could see and hear.

China led the way with its so-called Great Firewall, and the trend in recent years has been for authoritarian regimes to tighten internet controls. Russia’s early controls on the internet were somewhat ineffective, but new censorship technology has enabled Putin to create a more sanitized domestic internet after his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

In contrast, the US government has fallen behind the curve. Congress has funded virtual private networks (VPNs) to enable people in the world’s most authoritarian countries to circumvent internet controls and access the free and open internet. Unfortunately, many of those programs were terminated under the Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts, and censors have stepped up their efforts to cut off access to these tools. 

Meanwhile, commercial satellite technology has evolved, with private companies now providing broadband internet to subscribers from low-earth orbit. In recent months, the Trump administration reportedly smuggled thousands of Starlink terminals into Iran. Yet Starlink’s system currently requires receivers that security services can track and disrupt. Even prior to the current conflict, the Iranian regime was attempting to make use of satellite-based internet a crime punishable by prison time. Reports from inside Iran since the conflict began indicate that the regime is targeting Iranians using Starlink terminals.

Some satellite internet companies are now able to provide broadband access direct to personal cell phones, without a bulky terminal, but the technology has yet to be deployed on a broad scale due to regulatory and business reasons. As commercial enterprises, these services are intended to be subscriber-based, limiting the population that will be able to benefit. 

Private companies are unlikely to invest significantly in markets where the regime will potentially target their technology and their subscribers. Instead, the US government should deploy its own satellites to “force” open internet access into environments where governments are trying to block information to sustain their grip on power.

The United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is decommissioning many of its legacy radio transmitters. To replace these transmitters, Congress should appropriate funds to research and test a dedicated satellite broadband capability that can be deployed in crises by the US government to broadcast US policy and the content already produced by the congressionally funded international broadcast networks to countries of concern. 

Bipartisan legislation has already been introduced in the House and the Senate that would require the administration to develop a strategy incorporating satellite-to-cell technology. The Trump administration should work with Congress to implement these recommendations immediately, even as it restores funding to the VPN programs that it unnecessarily cut.

Just as US government transmitters once broadcast truthful information and US policy to audiences around the globe, US government satellites could ensure truthful information reaches those beyond the authoritarians’ internet censorship. 

If citizens living under authoritarianism were able to access independent information, it would put the dictators on the defensive and allow appeals to the people of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and even China by President Trump to actually be heard and further their transition to stable, free societies that no longer pose a threat to the United States. 

America remains the world’s preeminent technology power. It’s time to finally deploy our national capabilities to take back information dominance from the authoritarians.