As an Iranian in Iran who is now connected, I have a request: Please tell google make colab available behind the safe browsing IP. Google's safe browsing IP is usually the #1 whitelisted IP in internet blackouts. Having colab on this IP allows tech people to ssh into their servers, and bootstrap connections based on the available protocols at the time.
> To mitigate the costs of its shutdown, the Iranian government has created an internal national internet and appears to be in the process of building a “whitelisting” system to allow certain individuals and services internet access while blocking the rest. If these measures successfully enable an unpopular Iranian government to remain in power, we can expect to see them replicated elsewhere.
Another emerging country to watch out for is India. Sliding democracy by suppressing any form for free speech in main stream media and overwhelming propaganda on social media that drowns genuine critics is very chilling.
Even if 90% of the country marks the box against the regime, they’ll still announce a 90% 'landslide' victory. Voting doesn't matter, when you print your own outcome
Trickling dose of brainrot propaganda and general level of incompetence of the people has made everyone numb. Youths for all care finding love and reels, boomers are content with whatever situation they are in as they consider it an ideal. Almost everyone is not made aware of anything that brings about 2 sides of any story. Empowering and thought provoking debates are frowned upon. The government will try to self-destructive itself, in order to disapprove critics. It is this mentality and situation the present government and bureaucracy amplifies and exploits to the maximum extent. I'm not critical of the present machinery but any successive legislature and judiciary will do the same.
> Had authorities withdrawn IPv4 routes, as they did with IPv6, Iran would have become completely unreachable, as Egypt was in January 2011. By keeping IPv4 routes in circulation, Iranian authorities can selectively grant full internet access to specific users while denying it to the broader population.
As of late, we’ve seen a few measures like the restoration of transit from Rostelecom and the return of routes originated by IPM, as the country appears to be moving towards a partial restoration. At the time of this writing, the plan appears to be to operate the Iranian internet as a whitelisted network indefinitely.
Not going to defend the islamic republic with its massacres,
but if there is no racial element there is no apartheid, no need to overload a precise term.
This is simply turning down methods of communications to reduce protestors ability to coordinate and enable mass killings
Apartheid isn't only about race. It can be about genre. It obviously exists in Iran. There's also a long history of Persians vs Arabs, an weaponised islam.
I understand what you are saying and I was thinking about it when I wrote it.
I still stand by the term. Apartheid literally means "apartness". Even though the segregation in this case is not on a racial basis they still classify their population into two major blocks. Some have full rights, others have none.
The Rostelecom mentioning isn't just an accident - in Russia they have been practicing whitelisting more and more by turning the Internet off, except for whitelisted sites, under the guise of safety measures during drone attacks (which is like almost every day/night), various high level visits, mass public events, etc.
There has been much prognostication about the internet blackout but it misses the real issue. The internet blackout only works perfectly when there are no media backed journalists on the ground. The absolute absence of any reporting from foreign journalists on the ground anywhere in Iran is striking.
There was even some reporting from Tiananmen Square in 1989, and from Baghdad in 1991.
News media has ceased to be a meaningful investigative endeavor.
There are plenty of Western journalists in Iran, but they are subject to the same internet blackout as everyone else. Embassies can use satellite communications due to diplomatic immunity, while journalists are just average nobodies who face extra scrutiny due to their jobs.
Immediately when the blackout started an Iranian living abroad told me there will be a massacre. No journalists needed to know that but journalists do bring credibility to a claim.
The tiny part of the population that is whitelisted is spreading lies, which doesn't help.
Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) for a couple years now after the Green Revolution [0].
Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], South Africa [4], Venezuela [5], Russia [9], and China [9]
My understanding is that during the current 5 year plan in Iran, they are trying to fully transition the Iranian internet to the NIN, as all ".ir" domains are supposed to be hosted on the NIN.
If someone wants to find a techno-authoritarian state I'd say Iran is probably closer to that vision than most other countries, as a large portion of their leadership are Western-educated (Stanford, MIT, UPMC/Paris VI, Supélec, UNSW, etc) Computer Engineers and Computer Scientists by training (eg. Iran's VP did his PhD under Thomas Cover at Stanford [8] and Rouhani's Chief of Staff studied EE@SJSU). Even Iran's NSC and former IRGC head (who's daughter is a surgeon at Emory - so much for marg bar amreeka) was a CS major turned Kantian philosophy PhD.
That first link you shared is fascinating. This group also published this incredible report on an AI-enabled influence operation aimed at toppling Iran
Kinda envious of them that, due to sanctions, they end up with hyperscalers. Europe will never get hyperscales while being too tight with the US, and any protectionism at the service industry level would make the US go more mental than it already is.
It's not only because of sanctions. It's primarily because their leadership have deeply technical backgrounds. Most of my peers who ended up in policymaking roles in Europe (and in some cases the levers of power) all had a humanities or legal background and never worked in or adjacent to the tech industry.
Assuming Iran didn't follow the path that it did, Iran would have also ended up becoming a tech hub like Israel became today.
But this recognition should not be used to glaze a regime that has officially admitted to killing at least 5,000 protestors [0] in just 2 weeks and in reality killed significantly more people than that.
Being adept at understanding the applications of technology doesn't make one a humanist.
A friend of mine (from Iran) managed to send me a few messages on January 18th via Telegram (Telegram is very popular in Iran) when the situation was though to be resolving and then nothing, blackout again.
And even when the blackout was not present, my friend had to used some complex V2Ray server (in Iran) to another server (in Germany) to connect and it was shared by other people, so if he cannot connect probably 99% of other people in his area cannot also connect outside.
The heavily censored truth about Iran: were there not western sanctions, the motive of which are much more related to "good old" western imperialism than to "national security" concerns, there would not be the violence seen today.
The west complains about lgbtx[..] executions but did not care a bit about the million dead, or how many there were, in the Iran-Iraq war fomented by the west, neither they care about what the majority of pepple of Iran wants (I very much doubt they want the return of Pehlewi family).
The west has more and more blood on its hands. Ukraine war (would never happen if the west would not use their nationalists for the west's aggression against the Russian people), Iran, and so many others.
Do you understand how much you are hated everywhere?
Sometimes you start reading comments like this being like "interesting viewpoint", but then somehow Russia deciding to invade a foreign country is the fault of the west and you're like "ah it's a Russian troll"
What I understand is that the Mollahs are hated by most Iranians, and that they have even managed to make the Persian population actually hate islam. Well done, bassij !
weakest point is fire guns on one side and no guns to speak of on the other side. To understand the scale of Iranian killing - for 23 days of protests up to 20K people killed - that is half of the killing rate in Ukraine war which is a full scale war with a 1000km battle line and more than 1M of soldiers shooting at each other.
Just to be clear, I think you meant to say it's half the civilian casualty rate in Ukraine. Aside from guns, it seems like the Iranian government also pulled in foreign mercenaries to shoot on their own citizens, geez.
As an Iranian in Iran who is now connected, I have a request: Please tell google make colab available behind the safe browsing IP. Google's safe browsing IP is usually the #1 whitelisted IP in internet blackouts. Having colab on this IP allows tech people to ssh into their servers, and bootstrap connections based on the available protocols at the time.
On the small chance that cloudflare is also whitelisted.., you might want to try a cloudflared tunnel..
Good luck! i hope you will soon be able to call your congressman
https://archive.ph/2026.01.22-082913/https://www.aljazeera.c...
> To mitigate the costs of its shutdown, the Iranian government has created an internal national internet and appears to be in the process of building a “whitelisting” system to allow certain individuals and services internet access while blocking the rest. If these measures successfully enable an unpopular Iranian government to remain in power, we can expect to see them replicated elsewhere.
Another emerging country to watch out for is India. Sliding democracy by suppressing any form for free speech in main stream media and overwhelming propaganda on social media that drowns genuine critics is very chilling.
If you want things to change we need to start going after the source of the governments power, the people that vote for them. T
Even if 90% of the country marks the box against the regime, they’ll still announce a 90% 'landslide' victory. Voting doesn't matter, when you print your own outcome
2 replies →
Agreed. If we want democracy to prosper, we clearly need to start punishing people who vote incorrectly.
Trickling dose of brainrot propaganda and general level of incompetence of the people has made everyone numb. Youths for all care finding love and reels, boomers are content with whatever situation they are in as they consider it an ideal. Almost everyone is not made aware of anything that brings about 2 sides of any story. Empowering and thought provoking debates are frowned upon. The government will try to self-destructive itself, in order to disapprove critics. It is this mentality and situation the present government and bureaucracy amplifies and exploits to the maximum extent. I'm not critical of the present machinery but any successive legislature and judiciary will do the same.
> Had authorities withdrawn IPv4 routes, as they did with IPv6, Iran would have become completely unreachable, as Egypt was in January 2011. By keeping IPv4 routes in circulation, Iranian authorities can selectively grant full internet access to specific users while denying it to the broader population.
As of late, we’ve seen a few measures like the restoration of transit from Rostelecom and the return of routes originated by IPM, as the country appears to be moving towards a partial restoration. At the time of this writing, the plan appears to be to operate the Iranian internet as a whitelisted network indefinitely.
I’d call that digital apartheid.
Not going to defend the islamic republic with its massacres, but if there is no racial element there is no apartheid, no need to overload a precise term.
This is simply turning down methods of communications to reduce protestors ability to coordinate and enable mass killings
Apartheid isn't only about race. It can be about genre. It obviously exists in Iran. There's also a long history of Persians vs Arabs, an weaponised islam.
I understand what you are saying and I was thinking about it when I wrote it.
I still stand by the term. Apartheid literally means "apartness". Even though the segregation in this case is not on a racial basis they still classify their population into two major blocks. Some have full rights, others have none.
Iran treats Jews as second class citizens and prevents them from all leaving.
Couldn't they just not kill people in mass?
That's pretty much their plan - to create an Internet-e-Paak or "Pure" Internet. This all started back during the Green Revolution.
Very tangentially (For those prone to normie-sniping :)
Picture of Tehran (hybrid warfare)
https://archive.ph/2026.01.21-041206/https://www.aljazeera.c...
The Rostelecom mentioning isn't just an accident - in Russia they have been practicing whitelisting more and more by turning the Internet off, except for whitelisted sites, under the guise of safety measures during drone attacks (which is like almost every day/night), various high level visits, mass public events, etc.
RIC exchange tech amongst themselves
https://eh4s.eu/publication/sino-russo-iranian-tech-cooperat...
"under the guise of safety measures "
>> Like in Europe then. :o)
"It's to protect the children"
There has been much prognostication about the internet blackout but it misses the real issue. The internet blackout only works perfectly when there are no media backed journalists on the ground. The absolute absence of any reporting from foreign journalists on the ground anywhere in Iran is striking.
There was even some reporting from Tiananmen Square in 1989, and from Baghdad in 1991.
News media has ceased to be a meaningful investigative endeavor.
There are plenty of Western journalists in Iran, but they are subject to the same internet blackout as everyone else. Embassies can use satellite communications due to diplomatic immunity, while journalists are just average nobodies who face extra scrutiny due to their jobs.
Why can't they use starlink?
It's depressing really. Unfortunately the business model for media companies isn't what it used to be.
These days, I think the business model is selling influence rather than selling subscriptions and generic ads.
Immediately when the blackout started an Iranian living abroad told me there will be a massacre. No journalists needed to know that but journalists do bring credibility to a claim. The tiny part of the population that is whitelisted is spreading lies, which doesn't help.
[dead]
Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) for a couple years now after the Green Revolution [0].
Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], South Africa [4], Venezuela [5], Russia [9], and China [9]
My understanding is that during the current 5 year plan in Iran, they are trying to fully transition the Iranian internet to the NIN, as all ".ir" domains are supposed to be hosted on the NIN.
If someone wants to find a techno-authoritarian state I'd say Iran is probably closer to that vision than most other countries, as a large portion of their leadership are Western-educated (Stanford, MIT, UPMC/Paris VI, Supélec, UNSW, etc) Computer Engineers and Computer Scientists by training (eg. Iran's VP did his PhD under Thomas Cover at Stanford [8] and Rouhani's Chief of Staff studied EE@SJSU). Even Iran's NSC and former IRGC head (who's daughter is a surgeon at Emory - so much for marg bar amreeka) was a CS major turned Kantian philosophy PhD.
[0] - https://citizenlab.ca/irans-national-information-network/
[1] - https://www.arvancloud.ir/fa
[2] - https://tvbrics.com/en/news/uganda-and-iran-to-boost-ict-co-...
[3] - https://mail.techreviewafrica.com/public/news/1361/kenya-and...
[4] - https://www.samenacouncil.org/samena_daily_news?news=64545
[5] - https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/08/06/752585/Iranian-fibe...
[6] - https://zmc.co.ir/
[7] - https://www.rayafiber.com/en/home
[8] - https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/1011657
[9] - https://www.kharon.com/brief/iran-sanctions-maximum-pressure...
That first link you shared is fascinating. This group also published this incredible report on an AI-enabled influence operation aimed at toppling Iran
https://citizenlab.ca/research/2025-10-ai-enabled-io-aimed-a...
Kinda envious of them that, due to sanctions, they end up with hyperscalers. Europe will never get hyperscales while being too tight with the US, and any protectionism at the service industry level would make the US go more mental than it already is.
A subtle reason for preferring negotiations towards mutually beneficial ends-- sanctions can supercharge tech adoption
11 replies →
It's not only because of sanctions. It's primarily because their leadership have deeply technical backgrounds. Most of my peers who ended up in policymaking roles in Europe (and in some cases the levers of power) all had a humanities or legal background and never worked in or adjacent to the tech industry.
Assuming Iran didn't follow the path that it did, Iran would have also ended up becoming a tech hub like Israel became today.
But this recognition should not be used to glaze a regime that has officially admitted to killing at least 5,000 protestors [0] in just 2 weeks and in reality killed significantly more people than that.
Being adept at understanding the applications of technology doesn't make one a humanist.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/iranian-offic...
3 replies →
> Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1]
This is already repeated by the Google Search AI summary, which is unfortunate since your reference (from 2012) doesn't seem to back it up.
A friend of mine (from Iran) managed to send me a few messages on January 18th via Telegram (Telegram is very popular in Iran) when the situation was though to be resolving and then nothing, blackout again.
And even when the blackout was not present, my friend had to used some complex V2Ray server (in Iran) to another server (in Germany) to connect and it was shared by other people, so if he cannot connect probably 99% of other people in his area cannot also connect outside.
The heavily censored truth about Iran: were there not western sanctions, the motive of which are much more related to "good old" western imperialism than to "national security" concerns, there would not be the violence seen today.
The west complains about lgbtx[..] executions but did not care a bit about the million dead, or how many there were, in the Iran-Iraq war fomented by the west, neither they care about what the majority of pepple of Iran wants (I very much doubt they want the return of Pehlewi family).
The west has more and more blood on its hands. Ukraine war (would never happen if the west would not use their nationalists for the west's aggression against the Russian people), Iran, and so many others.
Do you understand how much you are hated everywhere?
Sometimes you start reading comments like this being like "interesting viewpoint", but then somehow Russia deciding to invade a foreign country is the fault of the west and you're like "ah it's a Russian troll"
[flagged]
This narrative doesn't work when it's the Iranian government who is shutting down the internet to cover up their own wrongdoing.
What I understand is that the Mollahs are hated by most Iranians, and that they have even managed to make the Persian population actually hate islam. Well done, bassij !
Very tangentially (For those prone to normie-sniping :)
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/19/in-iran-the-us-...
Similarly tangentially related - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/iranian-offic...
What?! that's literal sniping
2 replies →
Perhaps next time brave Persian people will figure a way to do all of it without internet, as it turned the weakest point of the whole effort.
weakest point is fire guns on one side and no guns to speak of on the other side. To understand the scale of Iranian killing - for 23 days of protests up to 20K people killed - that is half of the killing rate in Ukraine war which is a full scale war with a 1000km battle line and more than 1M of soldiers shooting at each other.
Just to be clear, I think you meant to say it's half the civilian casualty rate in Ukraine. Aside from guns, it seems like the Iranian government also pulled in foreign mercenaries to shoot on their own citizens, geez.
3 replies →