Don't know about China, but Russian citizens already have almost unfiltered access to information. The only major western media outlet currently blocked in Russia is BBC. Anyone can read pretty much anything else - Reuters, Newsweek, CNN, whatever - right from their phones.
Access to information is not the problem (at least for now). It is trivial to get access to uncensored news for anyone with a modicum of desire to do so.
Not having to operate legally is the whole point here. The hope is that Russia / China will have no way of preventing Starling from existing (maybe except shooting down satellites and causing a major international diplomatic incident).
There's still the question of how to make this profitable, if Starling is illegal in Russia / China, it will be difficult for them to interface with their financial infrastructure to receive payments. This could be solved either with cryptocurrencies or support from other governments and human rights organizations. It's also possible that Starlink will allow certain activity free of charge, particularly during protests and internet blackouts.
This moves the global nature of the internet one step further. Until now, it was generally possible for law enforcement to force ISPs to censor content and give up activity logs, something that made catching criminals a lot easier. Satellite networks make that much harder, especially if your government isn't very friendly with the jurisdiction the ISP is incorporated in. It's not unimaginable to me that, in ten years, most black hat US hackers will use a Russian satellite network as an additional layer of protection. Even if all else fails, all their devices get compromised and their IP address leaks, the Russians won't give up the customer info for that address anyway.
They've got a much easier way of preventing it from operating: Ban sales of Teslas until Musk relents.
Nice factory producing 250k cars per year for the Chinese market you've got there. It'd be a real shame if some sort of party of workers were to seize the means of production.
So as much as it hurts me to say it, I don't think this or anything else will make a difference. Once freedom is lost somewhere, it may not even be possible to get it back.
I do think though that the CIA should at least take advantage of this new technology to undermine hostile foreign governments. Mass produce a few million cheap satellite phones and use balloons to scatter them all over China, North Korea, etc. Even if it doesn't have much practical effect, the overt disrespect will help to undermine our adversaries and force them to expend more resources on tightening internal security controls.
Btw, not everyone on Earth seems Western faux democracy as a suitable / wanted direction to move to.
I don't know why you left off America. We have a whole censorship industrial complex here as Greenwald, Taibbi, and Shelleberger have amply covered: https://twitter.com/search?q=censorship%20industrial%20compl...
[0] https://amwaj.media/media-monitor/will-starlink-comply-with-...
Dude, I don't know. "Despite the challenges posed by external pressure and earlier negative forecasts, Russia's GDP growth in 2023 is expected to be 3.5%,"
Most EU countries would be happy about such a growth. Russia has 100 times less debt than the US and an unemployment rate about 2.5% if I remember correctly.
I give you two more links, one by a US nobel Prize winner, another by a French guy who predicted the collapse of the UdSSR when he was a PhD student:
https://www.gulf-insider.com/robert-shiller-warns-of-catacly...
https://unherd.com/thepost/emmanuel-todd-world-war-iii-has-a...
I am not a Putin puppet. This guy may be a dog, but he has the luck of the devil. Russia may rise out of this mess as a power to be reckoned with.
I’d love to read an analysis about why sanctions were so effective at harming the economies of countries like Venezuela & North Korea but so much weaker against Russia.
Not any in depth analysis, but I'm guessing:
1. Size of the economy (Russian economy is 3x Venezuela)
2. Diversity of the economy (Venezuela is primarily oil, Russia has a diverse industrial base, defence, agriculture etc)
3. Ties and trade with countries not participating in the sanctions (Russia trades with China, India and ME countries).
"They essentially put the Russian economy into an artificial coma by raising the key rate to 20 percent. Additionally, they imposed temporary capital controls, compelled exporters to sell export revenues, and prohibited non-residents from leaving Russian markets....This combination of factors allowed the Russian economy to sustain itself in 2023 and gave time to Putin, the government, and Russian businesses to adjust their strategies, turning to new markets, mostly China and India."
However, it does look like Russia's strategy of supporting economy on strong oil sales will falter in 2024 and 2025.
"Indian purchases of Russian crude have fallen to an 11-month low as the price tag on the discounted oil rises...Sources at the Indian refineries told Reuters that the country is looking to Saudi oil partly because of problems with payments for Russian light sweet crude Sokol." https://www.newsweek.com/russia-oil-india-war-saudi-1860480
That said, I agree it's pretty unlikely. No individual person has enough resources to win a fight againt a world-power nation state like China, even if they wanted to badly enough to risk it all.
And even ignoring that: I doubt that Elon has any appetite for his satellites being targeted by nation states that have publicly demonstrated [1] [2] their capability of taking them out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...
[2] https://www.spacecom.mil/Newsroom/News/Article-Display/Artic...
You seem to ask a question to push a narrative rather than by curiosity
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/imf-upgrades-chinas-2023...
~5% growth when the west is contracting, specially Germany and the US is quite the feat, what's happening in the Red Sea didn't even hurt that forecast
Have you seen the forecast for most EU countries? it's quite dark in comparison
And have you read about EU farmers protesting? Dictators must be wearing blue, and censorship may rule, perhaps not just red ;)
In the meantime:
https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate...
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/China-s-own-GPS-Bei...
Economic depression? has any of the European countries attempted this?
I’m not saying China is “better.” But, like shit is pretty bad here in a lot of ways. I think it’s folly to look at them with much of a sense of superiority.
Now, Russia? Russia is real messed up… but that wasn’t the topic of conversation here. I don’t see much practical difference between BORTAC tear gassing grandmas and Hong Kong protesters getting tear gassed.
It would take far more than a bunch of cell phones to bring this about.
When people do end up on these platforms, they see a bunch of pro Russia and China stuff anyway.
Do you log into Facebook and feel the freedom right away?