34 days without internet in Iran

Summary

This Marketplace Tech episode has [[MeganMcCartyCorino|Megan McCarty-Carino]] interview Amir Rashidi of Mian Group about Iran’s wartime internet blackout and the [[NationalInformationNetwork|National Information Network]]. Rashidi argues that the blackout is not a total connectivity failure: domestic services on the state-controlled network can still work, while global internet access, independent news, and social media are cut off.

The episode’s main synthesis is that Domestic Network Sovereignty can preserve selected local services while isolating people from outside information. It also shows how Domestic Service Censorship and Internet Blackout Public-Safety Risk turn censorship from an online speech issue into a problem for war alerts, medical access, police checks, and civil coordination.

Key Claims

• Iran is described as experiencing the longest internet blackout in its history while U.S. and Israeli airstrikes continue into their fifth week.
• Amir Rashidi says Iranians still have access to the [[NationalInformationNetwork|National Information Network]], or NIN, a domestic network controlled by the regime.
• The NIN allows some domestic services to function, including local delivery-style apps, but blocks access to Google, social media, and international news sites such as BBC and CNN.
• Rashidi says Iran has domestic equivalents for services such as email and search, but a search for “war” on the national search engine returns no results.
• The episode uses Domestic Service Censorship to show that censorship is embedded inside approved domestic platforms, not only at the border between Iran and the global internet.
• Rashidi says Ukrainian-style strike reporting and alert apps are not technically possible on the NIN because the government is sensitive about bombing, explosions, and war information.
• Mahsa Alert was developed by the internet freedom community outside Iran, but it still needs internet access, so the blackout itself limits the workaround.
• Rashidi cites medical-access problems and a police license-plate check failure as examples of Internet Blackout Public-Safety Risk.
• VPNs, satellite internet, Starlink, and local communication tools can help some people, but Rashidi says the resources needed to support roughly 90 million people would be much larger.
• Rashidi says the government would frame the shutdown as protecting people, but he interprets it as an attempt to control the wartime narrative and prevent mobilization.

Key Quotes

“absolutely zero” - Rashidi on access to global internet services.

“war” - the term Rashidi says returned no results in the national search engine.

“absolute control” - Rashidi’s description of the state’s narrative goal.

Connections

• Marketplace Tech, [[MeganMcCartyCorino|Megan McCarty-Carino]], Amir Rashidi, and Mian Group - show, host, expert, and organization context.
• Iran and [[NationalInformationNetwork|National Information Network]] - state and domestic-network infrastructure in the episode.
• Domestic Network Sovereignty - the broader pattern of preserving controlled domestic services while cutting global connectivity.
• Domestic Service Censorship - censorship inside state-approved local services and search.
• Internet Blackout Public-Safety Risk - emergency, medical, police, and civilian safety consequences of the blackout.
• Mahsa Alert - workaround project whose usefulness still depends on internet access.
• Digital Infrastructure War Risk and War-Aware Disaster Recovery - adjacent infrastructure-risk frames widened from physical war damage to deliberate network partitioning.
• War Visibility Strategy - contrast case: the blackout suppresses war visibility for civilians rather than making conflict costs visible.
• How We Survive and Amy Scott - post-roll Marketplace promotion context rather than the episode’s main subject.

Contradictions

• No direct contradiction found with existing wiki content.
• The source extends the existing Iran branch beyond sanctions, chokepoint diplomacy, drones, and Iran-linked cyber operations into domestic information control during war.
• The episode qualifies simple outage language: the blackout is not presented as total technical collapse, but as a selective partition where regime-controlled domestic services still function while global internet and independent information access are blocked.