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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.

If this happened, they would blacklist it.

Doesn't using ssh from colab violate their ToS?

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.

> 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.

Hearing about this and calls about imminent genocide from the last 10 years. India never had free speech. There is plenty of propaganda on the other side too. YouTube is full of anti-govt. propagandists.

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

It would be easier if the people who built the tools that will be used for oppression simply disable those tools or turn them on the oppressors.

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

You have zero understanding of Iranian people. Their elections are far less shady than the ones in US.

When there's an uprising it's a pretty god indicator that the elections aren't working.

https://www.norwich.edu/topic/all-blog-posts/facade-democrac...

Though President Ebrahim Raisi’s sudden death in May 2024 prompted a new electoral cycle with six vetted candidates, all were affiliated with the regime and loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, ensuring little real policy divergence. The Guardian Council filtered out all but hardline male clerics and a nominal reformist, creating the illusion of choice while reinforcing conservative dominance. Moreover, the presidency in Iran holds limited authority — ultimate power resides with Khamenei, who, since 1989, has steadily centralized control in his hands, rendering both elected institutions and their leaders largely symbolic. In short, the article contends that no matter who wins, Iran’s domestic and foreign agendas — especially its nuclear program and regional interventions — will remain unchanged, as they are guided by the Supreme Leader's ideology.

I was born and raised in Iran with my entire family being there fighting the fight. I'd like to think I'd debated both sides enough to be able to make the argument for both sides. However, the inhumanity and corruption of the Iranian regime will be looked back upon in history with some of the most corrupt/inhumane governments of all time

That isn't even remotely true.

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.

Agreed. If we want democracy to prosper, we clearly need to start punishing people who vote incorrectly.

I don't think OP was implying punishing voters.

That's exactly what the US and Israel were doing in Iran.

This is why they tried to foment a movement to install a king currently living a playboy lifestyle in America with Israeli money.

Ultimately it failed because it stopped being able to coordinate and the carefully built agitator networks who exposed themselves are now getting rolled up.

America doesnt have a monopoly on messing with the electorate in this way as we discovered during jan 6th, the manufacture of antivax movement and (most humiliatingly) the arrest of the the presidential front runner in Romania because of a couple of tiktok adverts.

If, in the liberal democratic west, we dont want our own internet to get locked down china/russia style and our elections to get canceled, as people living in internet glass houses maaaaaybe we shouldnt be throwing quite so many stones.

As someone not from the west, I can relate to your viewpoints. While Iran and Venezuela, for example, may be flawed democracies, the west forgets that those who came to power there did so after a popular uprising and revolution. And just because the west doesn't like the current leaders there (for asserting their sovereignty on economic affairs), I am often bemused by the lack of political understanding of many westerners here who think just because Iranians are disgruntled at their current rulers, they are waiting to welcome the son of a despot ruler who they overthrew once, who has lived most of his life abroad, and urges foreign countries to invade his country so he can be the ruler of Iran again! The same with Venezuela too - however pissed of the Venezuelans are the current government, no Venezuelan is going to welcome the current Nobel peace prize winner, a right-wing politician who plans to privatize the energy resources of her country so her family can get back the "rights" that she believes was "stolen" from her, especially when she too urges foreign countries to invade her country.

I do subscribe to the view that politicians like these, who seek the help of foreign powers to come to power, are definitely traitors to their country. Inviting foreign powers to meddle in your affairs is how civil war erupt and lead to the eventual breakup of a country.

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.

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.

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?

Starlink is illegal in Iran. Being a foreign journalist is a huge red flag in totalitarian countries, making it harder to smuggle in illegal devices than for the average citizen or visitor. And because journalists are probably under surveillance by the regime, it's harder for them to obtain Starlink terminals in the country than for the average person.

Are there? It seems like an extremely dangerous place to do journalism.

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.

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> 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 my comment.

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?

For some reason this is never seen as a viable solution

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"

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...

Today, the internet in Iran returned to normal. Other things had already gone back to normal a week ago. Now go deal with your own problems and tell your dishonorable governments this: We don’t expect any good from you—just don’t do us any harm! Reason: experience.

What the parent said. Our government has the right to kill its own people, and in thousands at that, nothing for you to see here /s

Parent is what we call a cyber soldier in Iran. They probably were on the streets in the past weeks shooting at protesters.

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...

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

Yeah, or even just protectionism. Most economists I've heard say that protectionism doesn't work, but I feel like China being quiet and protectionist in the infancy of its key industries was like the move of the century for them.

Neoclassical economics is quite clear that targeted protectionism is desirable under certain exceptions.

As for China, they would be more wealthy without the meddling of their government. There's no reason they couldn't be like Taiwan, but bigger. The Chinese people got to where they are in spite of their anchor.

Median wage in Taiwan is something like $14k, less than many urban areas in China, though obviously higher than the very rural areas in China. [1] It's a Reddit link, but it's using first party government data. I'm linking to it since just linking to a site in Chinese would not be very informative for most.

Huge GDP/capita in certain places is because of outsized industries that don't really translate to the average person. Ireland is another example where it's nearly twice as 'rich' as the US by that same metric, but it's just a nuance of it being an international hub for tax avoidance, not because the Irish are doing especially well.

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/taiwan/comments/1jmhhk1/realistic_s...

I remember half of the neoclassical economics focused articles about China from the late 90s and early 00s predicting that by not following ricardian comparative advantage China was shooting itself in the foot.

They kept predicting collapse, too.

Nobody talks much about the ricardian theory of static comparative advantage today. China's rise kind of invalidated it.

America was taken by surprise by its rise because of this. The cordial relations and trade flipped almost overnight to hostility once it was realized that China's economic power now rivaled that of that of the US and was poised to grow even more.

How do you know those economists were wrong? It's easy to conflate China's size with China's success. They liberalized their economy a great deal since the 1980s, which is responsible for the success they have had. That doesn't mean they couldn't be even more successful with further liberalization. Like a larger Taiwan.

Not really. In neoclassical economics protectionism is only justified as a necessary evil and it is always a form of militarism (spending money to weaken or defend against your enemy), rather than building yourself up.

Protectionism and sanctions form a kind of virtuous feedback loop :)

https://incyber.org/en/article/iran-between-isolation-and-te...

>The Iranian Information Technology Organization (ITOI) even set precise rules to evaluate candidates based on three different standards: ISO 27017 (cloud security controls), ISO 27018 (protection of personally identifiable information), and NIST SP 900-145, which concerns the American definition of cloud computing. “They want a comprehensive offer with its three components— IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS https://incyber.org/en/article/iran-between-isolation-and-te...

Not sure tbh.

China could have been like Japan per capita. Protectionism puts a big cap on economic growth potential.

This is what Japan's GDP/capita [1] looks like. I assume you're around my age because we grew up in a time when Japan was set to become the next economic super-power, and it looked like it might even surpass the US. But sometime around 1995, their economy peaked and they've been in pretty bad shape since then. Their current GDP/capita is about 25% lower (and falling) than it was in 1995. They work as a great argument against people who insist to just always buy the dip. What goes down does not always come back up.

By contrast this [2] is China's GDP/capita which is something really close to a vertical line. But for all the talk about economic systems, I think it's just because of good leadership and a motivated population. There's plenty of capitalist countries that aren't going anywhere, and there's endless examples of hybrid/social economic systems that have also gone nowhere. So I think there have to be explanations outside of the economic system itself.

[1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

[2] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

If they had allowed the western tech companies, these tech companies could easily control the information atmosphere and incite riots for instance.

I might have missed something here

"current dollar valuations are more appropriate. Nominal GDP measured in these units are plotted in Figure 2." https://econbrowser.com/archives/2009/06/how_important_i_2#:...

(What do those bumps correspond to?)

Yes you have missed something. I wrote per capita.

That's tough. I did miss that. Cross my heart and hope 1 child policy will payoff as well as WWII

Take a look at a plot of China's gdp per year since 1980. A curve can only get so exponential.

Japan was leveled to the ground by 1945.

What’s the excuse for not having the same GDP per capita 80 years later?

The curve became exponential way too late. And only after they (partially) opened up.

Japan was an industrialized country even before WWII, China was not. Moreover, both Japan and China used protectionism to nurture domestic industries.

They went from 100% communism to 90% capitalism, then had exponential growth, and we are supposed to believe the growth was because of the residual 10% communism.

When comparing a growth rate between 90/10 and 100/0 the difference is apparently explained by the 10

It’s 100/0 and 10/90.

America is 100/0 and China is 90/10. One of them is doing much better, and the difference is apparently explained by the 10.

If you are of the opinion that the people in China are living a better life we can stop the conversation. In that case we don't have any common ground for a fruitful discussion.

Exactly.

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...

Iranians have a 5+ millennia culture of being highly educated, technical and creative.

That expertise wasn’t just gonna disappear in a couple of decades.

And yes, the Iranian regime is brutal and terrible. This was one time the opposition was strong enough that they may have had a chance and yet our fellow in chief decided to launch incendiary words, which only allowed the regime to paint the opposition as western funded, while not providing any actual support (there’s a reason Israel, which is at least led by competent leadership, kept quiet about the protests in Iran because they understand how their words of support would undermine them).

Agree with you on pretty much everything you have said. The background of policymakers in Europe really annoys me. Just to be clear, I wasn't glazing Iran or anything.

The background of most everyone in Brussels seems so wrong for the technological realities nowadays. I believe this sentiment is shared by a lot of people, and now it unfolds in Europe plainly lacking behind in technology. Which is such a shame given history of discoveries and advancement that was going on on the continent for centuries.

I mean most countries send their failures there, also people who are not liked in the respective countries usually slip there for comfy jobs.

The whole European political elite and ruling class feels like a quasi-aristocracy (something the US is slowly moving into as well, with political dynasties and such) that is used to go to some big-name art/humanities place and then slide into the bureaucracy ladder. Totally detached people, and it's a pity because we really need Europe to be better.

The failures fall upwards into Brussels usually, sadly then you get very much second rate politicians that were even hated in their own countries.

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...

This is the issue for any US/western regime change operation in Iran (whatever one may think of its moral merits or lack thereof).

Iran is not Syria, there's a lot of wily people in the leadership and they won't be rolled over so easily

Yeah, wonder why Trump doesn't threaten North Korea? Because they actually have achieved all this, internal internet completely sealed, nuclear weapons and developing ballistic missiles to reach the USA.

So actually.. getting the nukes was the right play for them because eventually they would get sold out by China or Russia. Having nukes gets you to shake hands and send love letters to Trump. Frankly Trump sees Europeans as total cucks and has more respect for Kim Jong-un

If Iran actually had nukes, the Israeli lead bullying would immediately halt.

Everyone seems to have forgotten the independent French nuclear deterrent.

I should probably put an outside bet on the next country to get the Bomb being Poland, maybe by 2050. They've only just started building a civilian reactor, but weapons would make strategic sense for them.

I would say the next country is likely much sooner than 2050, because 24 years is longer than the timelines for China, for India and Pakistan given when they became independent even assuming they started on that immediately, I think for Israel but it's hard to be sure given the secrecy, South Africa arguably but IIRC they didn't complete it, and obviously the USSR, USA, France, and the UK.

Yep at the end of the day, this is 1940s/50s technology. It's complicated but not that complicated

I remember back when Poland was joining NATO, they basically said that we want in NATO or we will build our own nuke.

Not sure if Trump understands that he is playing quite a dangerous game in terms of nuclear proliferation because if the US deterrent goes away, the small countries will start thinking about it.

Good analysis out there indicating sweden could beat Poland there. Finland and Germany also on the likely list. Then in the east Japan and sk. The npt is dead. The French government being completely gridlocked with a nonzero chance to go authoritarian itself, along with the us stepping away guarantee this.

> 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 theocratic regime’s decision to restrict communications coincided with a violent nationwide crackdown on a growing protest movement driven by worsening economic hardship."

Right. Because MI-6, Mossad, and the CIA isn't worth mentioning here. whistles kicks some pebbles on the ground furtively looks around

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"

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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-...

Jeffrey Sachs in other places has admitted Trump cannot think in terms of strategy so ascribing any strategy to whatever the U.S. has been doing in Iran is a categorical mistake and the entire article appears to be a case of p-hacking to try and fit the facts to the authors’ pre-determined narrative.

Similarly tangentially related - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/iranian-offic...

What?! that's literal sniping

This conversation and thread is about the Iranian NIN. If you want to talk about Gaza, you can post that to HN and start the discussion there.

It is irrelevant with regards to conversations about the Iranian NIN and is essentially a form of whataboutism.

That article I linked was about Tehran, first photo is of Tehran, though it might look like Gaza

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.

No worries, we might have full-scale soon https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/21/us-iran-threaten-br...

No, fortunately civilian casualties in Ukraine are significantly less than that (except for Mariupol where 20-50K civilians were killed during 2 months of fighting in 2022). It is the soldiers deaths, 500-1500/day each side.

Ah, I see, I misread the part about rate, my bad.