Space Carrot and Stick: How Satellite Internet Became a Political Weapon

As communication technologies have evolved, wars over access to information have intensified around the globe, and the emergence of high-speed satellite Internet has brought this struggle to a new height in every sense. The constellation of low-orbit Starlink satellites created by Elon Musk's SpaceX company has suddenly become not just a convenient service, but a tool of geopolitics. The richest man on the planet is not shy about using it.

One of the biggest battles of its kind unfolded in the radio airwaves when relations between the USSR and its Western allies rapidly soured after World War II.

Since all media in the Soviet Union were heavily censored by the state, Western countries decided to broadcast their views on Soviet and world news through radio programs in Russian. In 1946, the Air Force began regular broadcasting to the USSR, in 1947 - "Voice of America", in 1948 - "Vatican Radio". They were later joined by Radio Liberty, Free Europe, Deutsche Welle and others, all of which were dubbed "enemy voices" in the USSR.

In 1949, "jammers" - radio transmitters that drowned out "enemy voices" by broadcasting interference, loud howls or, more rarely, music on the same frequencies - began to be built throughout the Union. By 1958, there were already 1,660 jammers.

According to the BBC Russian Service, the permanent audience of "enemy voices" in the West was estimated at 30 million people, or 15% of the adult population of the USSR. It is impossible to make precise estimates, but in my opinion, it was about everyone who was interested in alternative sources of information - mainly intellectuals from large cities.

I think I can already confess: as a teenager myself, I used to listen to these "voices" in Moscow with an ordinary shortwave radio receiver. The howling of the jammers was disturbing, but with careful tuning it did not completely block the transmission. I was not a dissident, but the forbidden fruit is always sweet. And besides, in addition to political news, the "voices" broadcast interesting programs neutral in ideological terms about the life and culture of Western countries. For example, the famous "Rock Sessions", which were hosted by the BBC radio host Seva Novgorodtsev from 1977.

That is, even then Western countries were already using what was later called "soft power".

The idea of soft power was formulated in 1990 by Joseph Nye, a political scientist from Harvard University. In his opinion, the concept of power, which included the "stick" (coercion) and the "carrot" (bribery), lacked a third dimension - the ability to influence others through appeal and persuasion.

That said, he was not a beautiful-hearted idealist. "Sometimes people influence others through ideas and appeal, setting an agenda for others or making them want what you want. Then the 'carrot and stick' becomes less necessary or can be used more cheaply because others perceive them as legitimate means. Because of its universalist values, openness, and the vast resources of popular culture - from Hollywood to foundations to universities - the United States seemed uniquely capable of influencing how others see the world and ourselves," he wrote rather cynically in 2017.

At first the concept was received with skepticism, especially by the military, but gradually it won minds, and not only in the United States. In 2007, Chinese President Hu Jintao told the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of China to invest more in its soft power. This course was continued by current President Xi Jinping. Nai began to be persistently invited to China to lecture on soft power.

The multi-year policy, in which Nai said China has "invested billions of dollars," has borne fruit. In 2025, Brand Finance estimates, based on a survey of 170,000 respondents worldwide, that China has risen to No. 2 in the "Global Soft Power Index" for the first time, behind only the U.S. and pushing the U.K. to No. 3.

Traditionally, soft power has been considered an instrument of political struggle between states, but recently new actors have started to appear in this field.

It all started, of course, with the Internet and social networks. The global dissemination of diverse information was not to everyone's liking, and the result was regular clashes between national governments and the owners of major social networks. Suffice it to recall the arrest of Telegram creator Pavel Durov in France, the banning of social network X in Brazil after a quarrel between its owner Elon Musk and an influential federal judge, or the forced sale of the American segment of the Chinese social network TikTok to US companies.

China solved the problem radically by creating the Great Firewall of China, a unique system of controlling and filtering Internet traffic that is so effective that the Internet Society considers the Chinese system to be an isolated "national domestic network" rather than part of a global network.

But advances in satellite technology are presenting governments with a new challenge. When SpaceX sent the first 60 Starlink satellites into space in 2019, few imagined what would come of it.

By now, Starlink has grown into a global telecommunications company providing high-speed internet access anywhere on the planet. According to its own data as of July 2025, it had more than 7,800 satellites in orbit, and about 6 million customers worldwide. The year-over-year increase was 2.7 million, or more than 80%. SpaceX conducted more than 100 rocket launches with Starlink satellites - they took off more often than once every four days and put 2,300 satellites into orbit.

Technically, the Starlink megastar already covers the entire planet with its signals, just install a small antenna the size of a kitchen tray and you can receive signals at up to 200 Mbps and send them at up to 20 Mbps. That's enough for most Internet applications, including video streaming.

A country is considered "connected" when Starlink receives official permission from the authorities to operate in its territory. Judging by the map, North America, Australia and the European Union, almost all of South America, part of Africa, Kazakhstan and Mongolia in Central Asia, Israel, Jordan and Yemen in the Middle East are already fully connected. In July, India "fell" - Starlink received there the spectrum and the permission of the authorities to work, which it had been seeking since 2022. Of the really large countries, China and Russia will remain unconnected for obvious reasons.

The peculiarity of Starlink is that it, of course, requires ground infrastructure - gateways, powerful antennas that receive satellite signals and connect the megastar to the global Internet. The company has already built 150 of them around the world, according to Starlink Insider. Thanks to the fact that thousands of satellites are connected via high-speed laser communication into a common network, a particular country does not have to have a gateway on its territory for Starlink to work there - the signal is simply automatically routed to the satellite that has a connection to the nearest gateway.

That is, a country can be "turned on" without asking for its permission. This happened in June 2025, when Israel and the United States attacked Iran's nuclear facilities. Iran responded by firing rockets at Israel, and inside the country, in order to avoid unrest, limited or completely cut off access to the Internet.

On June 14, famous American conservative TV and radio host Mark Levin posted a request from another user on the X network: "Elon Musk can put the final nail in the coffin of the Iranian regime by connecting Starlink internet for the Iranian people! Iran has cut off the internet, people can't communicate and organize a coup." Musk's response was succinct: "The beams are on." One of the first to say "thank you" was Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah of Iran and considered the head of the Iranian opposition. Immediately, memes began circulating depicting Musk as a space lord, plugging and unplugging entire countries with the swipe of a finger.

"What about terminals?" - you ask. The smuggling of Starlink terminals into Iran was set up by the opposition back in 2021, intensifying in September 2022 when riots broke out in the country over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by Iran's "vice police," Time writes. At that time, by the way, Musk had already "turned on" Iran, so it's unclear whether he has since turned it off, or simply confirmed in 2025 what was already being done.

The revolution in Iran hasn't happened yet, but Musk's actions are already clearly going beyond just providing convenient services. Isn't that soft power?

However, in some cases it is quite tough. Starlink's ability to operate effectively in areas where there is no or destroyed ground infrastructure has proved indispensable not only during natural disasters, but also during military operations.

According to Politico, more than 40,000 terminals are operating in Ukraine, including providing communications in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict zone. About half of this number was provided and paid for by Poland.

Musk turned on Starlink in the country on Feb. 27, 2022, three days after the fighting began. A year later, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, said the company "could do something" to limit the Ukrainian army's use of the terminals. "We know the military uses them for communications, and that's fine, but we never wanted them to use them for offensive purposes," Reuters quoted her as saying.

"Elon Musk's current global dominance clearly demonstrates the dangers of concentrating power in unregulated areas," Martha Lane Fox, a member of Britain's upper house of parliament, said earlier this year, the agency writes. It worries not only her.

At the same time, Musk's control over Starlink is apparently not absolute. A Bloomberg investigation last year found that smuggling terminals are widely used in unconnected countries, notably Venezuela, Sudan, Central African Republic, South Africa and others (some of which, such as Ghana and Zimbabwe, have since been officially connected).

"The smuggling methods and widespread availability of Starlink on the black market suggest that its misuse is a systemic global problem. This calls into question the company's ability to control a system with clear national security aspects," the agency wrote.

According to a report by US analyst firm RAND, China sees the success of Starlink as part of an overall US plan to dominate space. "China views constellations of satellites in low-Earth orbit as evidence of the US "hostile intent" to integrate space technology into combat operations. This view was reinforced after Starlink demonstrated real-world effectiveness in Ukraine in early 2022, confirming the perceived military value of low-Earth orbit satellites," the report said.

China's People's Liberation Army fears that Starlink's functionality goes far beyond providing civilian communications services, and its satellites could be equipped with electronic warfare and "space debris shields" that could be used to intercept ballistic missiles and foreign satellites, although there is no evidence of this, RAND notes.

To counteract this, China will develop its own mega constellations of satellites, such as Guowang, which is operated by state-owned China Satnet. The constellation is planned to consist of 13,000 satellites, and while only a few dozen have been launched so far, the pace is picking up. This summer, there were four launches in just three weeks, Space wrote in August.

Another Chinese megaproject in this area is the Qianfan (Qianfan, "Thousand Sails") constellation, which will have 14,000 low-orbit satellites. The project began launches last year and now has 90 satellites in orbit. Qianfan is backed by the Shanghai government and Chinese state corporations - they have raised 6.7 billion yuan ($933 million) for it in 2024, according to Reuters.

However, according to the South China Morning Post, Qianfan is still far from its goal of launching 648 satellites this year. The reason is the lack of launch capacity. China does not yet have the equivalent of SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket, an engineer told the publication on condition of anonymity. According to the publication, achieving the Qianfan goal would require using nearly half of China's total number of annual rocket launches - a task that seems nearly impossible, and the shortage is unlikely to disappear over the next decade.

Nevertheless, some countries are already negotiating with the Chinese. For example, last November Brazil signed a memorandum of cooperation with Qianfan (under the SpaceSail brand) during Xi Jinping's visit. This happened shortly after the already mentioned high-profile scandal of the Brazilian authorities with Musk. For the Chinese company, this was the first international agreement, notes Reuters.

"We are working to ensure that Brazilian society has the opportunity to choose between several companies," the agency quoted Brazilian Communications Minister Juscelina Filho as saying.

The billionaire's home country of South Africa could also become a potential client of the Chinese. Musk doesn't want to launch Starlink there because he believes local laws discriminate against the white minority. "Starlink is not allowed to operate in South Africa because I am not black," he wrote in March. The post has racked up more than 50 million views on X.

Kazakhstan signed an agreement with Starlink in August this year and tested the SpaceSail system, which is expected to start operating in the country as early as next year. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe it was a hint to Elon Musk that he is not alone in the world. Not everyone wants to become dependent on the "soft power" of a flighty multibillionaire.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor