Or even afford it?

People earning an equivalent of a couple USD a day, or nothing at all, aren't going to be able to afford to pay some US corporation for fast internet.

Fast internet probably isn't even a concern in wartorn countries, honestly.

Let's be honest - Starlink is almost exclusively going to be used by people living in rural areas within developed nations.

Implying the US government won't pay for the cost of an open internet where people can search for 'bad people square'

I'm not sure I understand your comment.

Why would the US Government (aka. Taxpayers) pay for internet use in other nations?

We already have expensive problems domestically that people would rather spend that coin on.

Winning 'hearts and minds'.

You drop access to the internet as whole in places where the internet is suppressed or non-existent and the populace learns just how bad they have things then they might revolt on their own.

I wouldn't say I 100% advocate for the idea but thats the thought process behind it.

That would generally be considered a violation of another country's airspace, and some countries would even treat that as an act of war.

You would also have to deal with the real possibility that those countries would simply shoot down any planes observed dropping Starlink base stations.

nonprofits air drop usbs full of news in north korea, violations happen all the time

US government airdrops?

There are a bunch or articles that talk about people using balloons to send material to North Korea.

The Human Rights Foundation even collects flash drives to load them up with content to smuggle into North Korea: https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org

For private groups, or individuals, sure you can get away with this.

For a government to do this? How could that not lead to an armed conflict?

Because if the government is the USA, who is really going to go to war with them over this?

You're not wrong, information/propaganda warfare is aggressive. Sometimes it makes more strategic sense then open warfare, and sometimes states can get away with it when they can't get away with open warfare.

How do governments airdrop supplies into war-torn countries today? I’ll admit I’m no expert but I see headlines all the time of neutral nations sending supplies to other countries who are fighting a war and that neutral nation isn’t getting dragged into the fight.

Governments don't airdrop supplies into war-torn countries today, excepting designated UN or MSF refugee camps, and they do so with the knowledge of one or both sides of the conflict so that the supply planes don't get shot down.

I would very much like to see a headline of a neutral nation airdropping supplies into a country engaged in war without getting dragged into the conflict. I'm not aware of that having occurred in the past 4 decades.

Do people not understand that satellite internet already exists today?

We don't drop satellite modems into war torn countries now, and we're not going to start doing that just because Elon Musk needs to check off one of his PR claims.

They're really expensive and big. Also, we actually do sometimes drop satellite internet into places.

Unless the pictures on Google are wrong, a Starlink base station is significantly larger than a satellite phone and is at least as large as a field base station.

And at $2000/pop, they're at least as expensive as the equipment we're currently not randomly dropping around the globe because of the expense.