Imagine waking up tomorrow and discovering the internet is gone.

No Instagram.
No YouTube.
No X.
No way to read global news or message people outside your country.

Now imagine your government did it on purpose. For millions of people living in Iran, that scenario isn’t hypothetical. It happens whenever the regime decides it’s necessary. During protests, political unrest, or international conflict, authorities can simply flip the switch and cut the country off from the global internet. The result is digital isolation — and total control over the flow of information.

But a small group of activists is working to change that. On a recent episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren spoke with Mark Pashmfouroush of Holistic Resilience, an organization working to smuggle Starlink satellite terminals into Iran so citizens can access uncensored internet when their government tries to shut them off. In today’s world, internet access isn’t just convenience.

It’s freedom.

How Iran Controls the Internet

In the United States and most Western democracies, internet access is largely open. People can visit nearly any legal website without government interference. But in Iran, the government sees the internet very differently. The Islamic Republic heavily restricts speech, particularly online where political conversations and activism often occur. Major platforms most Americans rely on daily — including Facebook, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter) — are blocked for the majority of Iranian citizens.

Instead, the government promotes domestic alternatives that are easier to monitor and control. To enforce these restrictions, Iran has spent years developing advanced censorship technology designed to filter and monitor online activity. Rather than allowing unrestricted access to the global web, internet traffic flows through centralized choke points, giving authorities the ability to inspect, block, or redirect connections. In effect, the government acts as the gatekeeper to the outside internet.

The “National Internet” That Can Shut Off the World

Iran’s most powerful censorship tool is something called the National Information Network (NIN). This system functions as a domestic version of the internet, allowing Iranian websites and services to operate even when the country disconnects from the global web. The design gives the government a powerful ability: they can cut off international internet access almost instantly.

Authorities have used this capability repeatedly — including during major protests and regional conflicts. When the shutdown happens, Iranians can still access domestic platforms, but many of those services are monitored by intelligence agencies. That means communication isn’t just restricted — it’s often surveilled. For citizens trying to organize protests, report government abuses, or communicate with the outside world, those blackouts can be devastating. And that’s exactly why they exist.

AI and the Next Generation of Censorship

New technology may make authoritarian censorship even more powerful. Artificial intelligence and large language models can allow governments to monitor vast amounts of digital communication at unprecedented speed. Conversations can be scanned, dissent identified, and narratives manipulated far more efficiently than ever before. But one detail from Iran’s most recent internet shutdown surprised many observers.

During the blackout, the regime allowed access to only a handful of websites. One of them was ChatGPT. The decision raises an obvious question: why allow an AI tool while blocking most of the global internet? According to Pashmfouroush, the answer may lie in information warfare. AI systems can generate messaging, craft propaganda, and support influence campaigns targeting foreign audiences.

In the wrong hands, powerful technology meant to expand knowledge could instead be used to shape narratives and spread disinformation.

Smuggling the Internet Back In

While governments build systems to control the internet, activists are developing ways to bypass those controls. One of the most promising tools is satellite internet. Unlike traditional connections that rely on domestic infrastructure, satellite networks like Starlink connect directly to orbiting satellites. That means they can continue functioning even if a government shuts down national networks.

For people inside Iran, a single Starlink terminal can provide uncensored access to the outside world. It allows activists to communicate securely, share information internationally, and document what’s happening inside the country when authorities try to silence them. That’s why organizations like Holistic Resilience are working to secretly distribute these devices throughout Iran. Each terminal becomes a small gateway to freedom of information.

How You Can Help

Efforts are underway to place Starlink terminals into the hands of people inside Iran who need them most, helping them stay connected even when the regime attempts to cut off communication.

If you’d like to support this effort, you can donate here:

https://www.holisticresilience.org/donation

Every contribution helps expand access to uncensored internet and supports the fight for open communication in places where governments are determined to control it.

The Global Fight for Digital Freedom

What’s happening in Iran is not just a regional issue. It’s a preview of a broader struggle happening around the world. As governments become more technologically sophisticated, the ability to control digital infrastructure — and therefore information — becomes an increasingly powerful tool.

The internet was once seen as a force that would automatically spread freedom. But today’s reality is more complicated. The same technology that connects the world can also be used to isolate it. Which is why efforts to keep the internet open — even in the most restrictive environments — matter more than ever.

Transcript

Sam Stone: Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our next guest up, Mark Pashmfouroush, works with Holistic Resilience. They have been working to smuggle Starlink terminals into Iran since the protests of 2022, a critical issue right now with global communications being highly restricted by a lot of regimes around the globe, including Iran’s. Mark,thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the program.

**Mark Pashmfouroush: **Thank you for having me.

**Sam Stone: **Now, tell us a little bit about the global censorship regime, how some of these countries are using, I think there was a piece you had that is saying it’s getting a lot easier for countries that engage in censorship to limit the internet, limit people’s access to information. What’s going on there? Because I don’t think most Americans understand that at all.

Mark Pashmfouroush: Right. So unlike the United States, a lot of other countries don’t really appreciate or even have freedom of speech as part of their fundamental way of life. Or maybe it’s imposed on them that they cannot have that right. So in countries like Iran, where the current regime is an Islamic theocracy, most forms of speech are not permitted.

It’s heavily restricted and specifically online as well. Because now that most dialogue and discourse happens online, they do their best to try and restrict that as much as possible. Within the past, say, decade or so, these countries, specifically the Islamic Republic of Iran, have made significant technological improvements and breakthroughs to be able to restrict access to the free and open internet.

Now, in the United States or perhaps in the UK where I am, we can generally access most websites if not any website because there’s very few restrictions on that. We appreciate the idea of freedom of speech and the freedom to access practically anything that we want to access given if it’s legal content. But in the Islamic Republic regime, social media sites such as X or formerly Twitter, Facebook, or even YouTube cannot be accessed.

And the way that they do this is through advanced censorship technologies. They basically create a choke point in the Internet access and they act as the guardian to every single connection made to the outside Internet and they promote domestic services.

**Sam Stone: **Now is that... so I think this seems so foreign to us because in terms of the US or the UK, as you mentioned, would our governments even have the ability to do the same thing here? I mean, are these technologies that people should be looking at and saying, hey, they’re being used in these censorious countries right now, but this is actually something the whole globe needs to be concerned about because information is power.

Mark Pashmfouroush: Absolutely. What the Islamic Republic did was they re-architected the entire infrastructure of their domestic internet to facilitate the ability to just shut it down at any moment’s notice. They could do it immediately, like they have done during the 12-day war with Israel and during the recent protests over the past two months. So what they did was they prepared themselves by building something called the National Information Network, the NIN.

Basically the domestic internet, so that they could easily cut off the external access and maintain only Iranian websites and platforms. Now all of those Iranian websites and platforms are controlled and spied on by intelligence agencies within the country. So you know, most people don’t really trust it. Now every other country needs to be concerned about these kinds of things. Luckily in the States and the UK, the way that we have built our infrastructure is quite diverse and quite decentralized, meaning that they cannot just shut it down with one fell swoop. But we still need to be concerned about censorship.

Sam Stone: Is AI, or specifically I should say, large language models, is that giving, that seems like it is a very dangerous tool in the hands of a sensor because now your ability to process that information on your national internet becomes vastly more efficient.

Mark Pashmfouroush: Absolutely. In fact, these regimes tend to use AI and they even try and use our AI. So they try to use open AI, they try to use anthropic AI, they try to use all these LLM AI platforms of course, these platforms try their best to kick them off the service. But something quite novel and interesting that might be quite surprising to your listeners. During this most recent shutdown inside the Islamic Republic, one of the first services that they allowed access to when they created this whitelisting system where only a handful of websites were accessible was ChatGPT.

Sam Stone: Whoa.

Chuck Warren: Wow.

Mark Pashmfouroush: And it just makes you think, what were you using ChatGPT for? I can tell you, it’s most likely for campaigns against the West, for information warfare, and for propaganda.

Listen to the full episode of Breaking Battlegrounds anywhere you stream your podcasts!