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Satellite communications networks have proved resilient amid a crackdown.
Amid growing protests and escalating violence in Iran, the country’s government has blocked access to domestic communications systems and imposed a nearly week-long internet blackout.
But Starlink, the satellite internet service run by SpaceX, only uses personal terminals that connect to its constellation, and doesn’t rely on any regime-controlled infrastructure. As a result, technology has now become a lifeline, and one of the only ways people in Iran can bring their disturbing reality on the ground to the rest of the world.
“The biggest part of the communication [in the country] is being handled by Starlink,” Amir Rashidi, the director of internet security and digital rights at the Miaan Group, an organisation that’s been tracking the communications blackout in Iran, tells Fast Company. “Without the Starlink, you won’t see any of these videos, or you won’t receive any news.” Indeed, it is still incredibly difficult to ascertain firsthand information from inside Iran. Foreign reporters only have limited access to the country, and phone calls have also been restricted by the government. The full extent of the carnage is unclear, but some officials suspect thousands of people may already be dead.
More may happen with Starlink in Iran in the coming days. SpaceX has now waived the initial Starlink subscription fee for users in Iran, and organizers have been sharing details on how to use the technology, as securely as possible, amid a brutal crackdown. President Donald Trump said earlier this week he plans to communicate with Elon Musk about expanding service in the region.
“The Trump Administration is committed to helping to preserve and protect the free flow of information by the most effective means to the people of Iran in the face of the Iranian regime’s brutal repression,” a State Department spokesperson, declining to share more specifics, told Fast Company on Wednesday. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
The situation is a reminder that, in an emergency—and amid political upheaval—internet access can be a critical tool. Indeed, it’s easy to view Starlink as a fundamentally authoritarian-proof technology. But satellite internet, like any platform, isn’t completely immune from authoritarian intimidation. And while SpaceX is providing a critical service in the moment, the company, and Elon Musk, are private entities whose goals aren’t guaranteed to align with values of free speech, or even the foreign policy interests of the United States. “The fundamental issue is that the interests of Elon Musk are not the interests of the United States,” Gordon LaForge, a researcher at the think tank New America, tells Fast Company. “Sometimes they might be in alignment, but sometimes they won’t be.”
Right now, even as protests overtake much of the country, only a small number of Iranians there have access to Starlink terminals, which are generally needed to connect to the country’s constellation of low-Earth satellites. This hardware can be difficult to come by. Iran doesn’t have authorized Starlink sellers, which means ordinary people need to find them on the black market, where they’re expensive, as Forbes previously reported several years ago.
Right now, there just aren’t that many terminals overall, though reports indicate the number has grown recently. As of December 2022, Elon Musk had said there were around 100 terminals in the country. By the end of 2024, there were reportedly about 20,000 Iranian users, and there are possibly tens of thousands more there now, Rashidi says. Still, 90 million people live in Iran, which means most people won’t have Starlink anytime soon.
But the Iranian government is also taking active steps to disrupt the service. The Iranian legislature passed a law banning Starlink last year, and people who use it face the risk of going to prison, or, potentially, the death penalty, if they’re accused of using the technology for espionage. Though the Iranian government has, in the past, complained about how easy it is to hide Starlink devices—some hardware can fit in a backpack—officials have also reportedly started scanning the country for signs of terminals, even using drones to hunt for dishes and terminals that might be installed on rooftops.
Starlink might also be susceptible to jamming. The Iranian government appears to have partially interfered with the service, in some places, by jamming the GPS connection that Starlink relies on, and, in effect, reducing Starlink’s total capabilities. One Iranian internet access group, in a post on X, said they were able to collaborate with SpaceX on a software update that blunted the impact of this interference.
Notably, these issues don’t seem to have taken Starlink completely offline, and Penn State professor Sascha Meinrath, who studies satellite constellation bandwidth, told Fast Company that this method may only work in “fairly constrained areas.” Rashidi, from the Miaan Group, likened the jamming to a nuisance. “It was like a fly sitting on your face or on your nose. You can easily move your hand and push the fly away,” he told Fast Company. “You feel uncomfortable, but that won’t kill you.”
Still, this disruption may foreshadow future attempts by other governments to try to undercut Starlink service, and shows there are ways to undermine the service. Down the line, as SpaceX’s commercial infrastructure becomes increasingly enmeshed in U.S. national security and defense systems, there’s also an increasing incentive for foreign adversaries to investigate ways to take it down. Researchers in China have already studied ways to jam a service like Starlink with a swarm of drones.
Starlink often becomes a key communication platform in places experiencing incredible political upheaval, including—most recently—in Ukraine, Gaza, and Venezuela. In emergencies, it might even help provide the service. SpaceX provided free terminals to Ukraine, and is providing free Starlink connections in Venezuela until next month. Internet access is critical for people on the ground, but they’re also geopolitical: These deals have further lubricated SpaceX’s relationship with the U.S. government, and, today, the company now holds myriad contracts with both civilian and defense agencies. The State Department is even actively promoting the Starlink service globally, particularly in Africa, as ProPublica reported last year.
But while these deals might read through the lens of anti-authoritarianism, or internet freedom, they should primarily be understood as efforts to advance U.S. foreign policy interests, and the interests of SpaceX and Elon Musk, experts tell Fast Company.
There’s always the risk that Musk, or SpaceX leadership, will switch off the service in order to effect a desired political outcome. In one critical example: a few years ago, Musk suddenly ordered the shutdown of the Starlink service in one contested area in Ukraine, leaving troops without communications and disrupting their counteroffensive, according to Reuters reporting last year.
“Take Ukraine, where Starlink is indispensable to the Ukrainian military,” Gordon LaForge, a senior policy analyst at the liberal think tank New America, tells Fast Company. “When Musk threatened to withdraw Starlink, the Pentagon stepped in to pay for the service. And of course Musk personally attains a level of direct geopolitical influence that few other individual businesspersons or private citizens of any sort can achieve.”
“SpaceX uses geopolitical conflicts to showcase its ability and the indispensability of its services for secure communications,” adds Joscha Abel, a researcher based at the University of Tübingen who has written about the service. “Tech corporations like SpaceX frequently align themselves with the geostrategic objectives of the U.S. government to earn profitable public contracts and see their technologies embedded in national security and military planning.”
In other words, Starlink had been marketed to Ukraine as a liberatory technology that would help them in their fight against Russia, but depending on it ultimately subjected its troops to the political preferences of the company’s leadership.
And while Musk has fashioned himself a free speech advocate, he has, in the past, taken steps to silence critics on his social media platform, X. Like many other leaders, he also has business ties in some authoritarian countries, places operating open platforms won’t always necessarily suit his business interests. “When an essential technological instrument of U.S. policy is in the hands of a private individual—and a mercurial one at that,” explains LaForge, “it increases the risk of policy capture and outcomes that are not in the public interest.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Heilweil is a senior writer at Fast Company, focused on the technology industry. She has previously worked at FedScoop and Vox and is currently working on her first book, a political history of the International Space Station.