And no Tesla factories in Iran I suppose helps too :)
Not even Starlink has the balls to oppose the likes of Russia and China directly - they aren't operating there without a permit, sadly. But at least they don't kneel before every two-bit dictatorship and cave to every single "we want you to do censorship on our behalf" demand. Way better than what most tech companies do now.
And this makes sense for an organization thats so highly reliant on federal support, vs Apple and Google who only have to just stay somewhat in the states good graces.
Apple and Google have done more than just stay in good graces of governments by getting rid of apps governments don't like, they haven't enforced their terms against X, and given tens of millions to Trump's ballroom.
Could you expand on that? Are you saying that the US state wants destabilization in every place that Starlink is accessible? Like the UK, Australia, and USA itself? Which group are you considering the "US state" for that?
I keep seeing this fallacy come up, especially with Musk, where the person in question makes a million moves in an area where each individual move can be viewed in any philosophical light in a vacuum, but are obviously self centered in aggregate and yet someone will claim that we need to look at only the specific micro instances.
Is there a name for this or is it a relatively novel phenomenon?
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown...
> In 2022, Elon Musk denied a Ukrainian request to extend Starlink's coverage up to Russian-occupied Crimea during a counterattack on a Crimean port, from which Russia had been launching attacks against Ukrainian civilians; doing so would have violated US sanctions on Russia.[18] This event was widely reported in 2023, erroneously characterizing it as Musk "turning off" Starlink coverage in Crimea.[19][20] SpaceX executives repeatedly stated that Starlink needed to remain a civilian network;[21][22][12] in late 2022, as Starlink was being used as a tool in combat in Ukraine, SpaceX announced Starshield, a Starlink-like program designed for government customers.[23][21] Musk is reported to have said that Ukraine was "going too far" in threatening to inflict a “strategic defeat” on the Kremlin.[24]
I will walk back the last half after the word “or” in my claim here
> Musk manipulates those connections for whatever he perceives as his own benefit or he wouldn’t be turning off the connections in Ukraine[1]
The first half is still him manipulating those connections for whatever he perceives as his own benefit
> This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place
This is a kind of colonialist thinking that is, IMO, a problem in the western society. There are indeed drawbacks in a lack of freedom, but assuming that a government should not be able to filter the content diffused to the population is wrong in principle. You don't get to choose what is right or wrong in every part of the world: that is a very USA-centric way to view the society and easily leads to "export freedom and democracy" acts. It's a very USA-friendly way to frame things. Not necessarily the right way to frame things.
The Iranian state has not shown itself to be one that is very convenient for us to temporarily overlook its flaws, and the people it governs frequently show that they would prefer a different form of government (otherwise, why not let them vote in fair elections?). It should be a no brainer that Americans and their government should be on the side of the people, not the theocracy.
Also the US has massive protests aswell, would it be okay for china to liberate the USA, since china itself is lead by a "democratic party"? They could argue the USA isn't a real liberal democracy.
> why not let them vote in fair elections? Elections can be faked, people can be mislead, oppositions and media can be bought.
So to respond directly:
> Why should anybody trust them with another country?
They should not and should not need to trust them with another country
> would it be okay for china to liberate the USA
no, it wouldn't. But if China felt that the USA gov't was like, not cool, they could impose sanctions or not trade with USA.
I won't go down the path of "fair elections", since I don't think it applies to USA.
Edit just to clarify: presence of billionaires that are not hostile to the regime does not mean they are allies either.
My point is that, even in self-proclamed democracies, it's quite hard to actually give power to the people, precisely as in regimes. It's not a "it's all the same" position, of course: I mean to say that taking some values as absolute is not great if we don't clearly define what we are optimizing for. The USA model of democracy doesn't optimize for individual freedom nor for general population happiness.
Putin and Xi are billionaires. So are their cronies. They get richer faster than the rest of their population because they’re literally billionaires in control of the regime with no peaceful path to removing them.
The wealthiest entity in the USA is the government itself. It's not even close.
Further, if currency was not able to influence things then that eliminates the main purpose of fiat currency, there is obviously a place for it in any case. Just because you don't like the direction it's being used doesn't mean you have a reasonable position either. Fiat is a benefit to the government in all ways and its in it's best interest to uphold the strength of their currency, not just for the locals to the land in the borders, but if they want to influence the rest of the world.
You should go down the path of "fair elections" because you otherwise lose all points for being vague and imprecise that no one can contest you on because you don't think we are worth the argument.
Fair elections: in the US there are a bunch of practices related to vote that I don't consider fair. First and foremost, how votes are counted. Then, how money can be used to finance parties and campaigns. Gerrymandering is another one.
One logical conclusion to this would be to protect people from that via censorship.
Many recent examples of the US doing this as well (Covid, Russia, etc.). Of course, the US delegates this to its cooperations, so it can publicly say its hands are clean.
People do remember the Twitter files though, and the US government has massive spying and monitoring capabilities, so its hands are not actually all that clean.
With this in mind, no, I don't share the view that a strong government should trust the people: people can easily be steered by foreign parties that want to gain soft power (example: Russia and recent anti-EU propaganda in Poland, Romania and Georgia). It's very hard to draw a line between what is "right" and what is "too much", but I don't think that excessive freedom is an obvious route to an healthy society (that is, a society that has peace and people are happy).
Straw man.
Nobody is arguing for maximal freedoms for Iranians. This is literally whether some Iranians are able to get their hands on Starlink terminals if they want to.
Why?
Iran has commanded empires for millennia. Longer than continental Europe.
Iranians getting their hands on Starlink terminals is as “colonial” as revolutionary France helping the American colonists usurp the British.
It's a pattern by now: whenever a government wants to do something awful, it shuts down internet access - so that no one can hear it, see it or coordinate a response. And Starlink becomes a lifeline that the regime would rather people didn't have.
This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place. If you give a government a capability to restrict access to whatever it wants and enact a network blackout whenever it wants, it's a matter of time until it gets abused.