Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out! Since the Russian invasion began, Ukrainians have shared recipes for making Molotov cocktails and instructions for driving abandoned troop carriers. TIPPIN! They've used cryptid apps to coordinate tactics and to ask Russians to stand up to their government, who in turn have staged protests in Moscow and other cities. Though it may end up losing in the battlefield, Ukraine has been able to show the world the brutality and folly of the Russian attack, which is only possible because everyday citizens had maintained access to the internet. But maybe not for long. In areas with the heaviest fighting, internet outages are becoming common, and since information is power in the battlefield, there's a danger that Russia will find a way to knock the country fully offline, which is why Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation and Vice-Pri-Minister tweeted a plea to Elon Musk. We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand. Starlink service is now active in Ukraine, Musk tweeted back later that day, collapsing regulatory process that can take months or years into under 280 characters. Starlink, up and running since 2021, is a global satellite internet provider owned by Musk's company SpaceX, which aims to provide low latency, high-speed internet, to areas that are less densely populated, and where fast, reliable internet may be lacking. The first obstacle is that Ukrainians can't just connect directly to Starlink satellites. First they need ground terminals. Terminals en route with how Musk finished his tweet, and less than 48 hours later, Federer off-replied with a picture, showing a truckload of them in Ukraine. Starlink here. Thanks, Elon Musk. Those terminals will need to be brought into cities under siege and connected to Wi-Fi, in turn allowing Ukrainians to connect their devices. And if terminals lose power, they'll need batteries or generators to stay online. But if the terminals can be installed and maintained, Starlink could provide a digital lifeline to some Ukrainians. Divorcing the online world from geography, and placing it outside state control, isn't keeping with the internet's original promise. The dream of the internet was one of complete de-territorialization. The internet was supposed to mean that it doesn't matter where you live, you are connected to all of humanity through this completely transparent network, where geography is irrelevant. We've seen how far short of that we have fallen. We've seen some government censor the internet. Eli Gerado was a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity. I think a great outcome for the internet would have been for the US to be able to export the First Amendment to the entire planet, to be able to say, well, if you're a company that is based in the US, and you're serving the entire planet, and you're subject to US law alone, then the First Amendment applies everywhere, and nobody can stop you from speaking freely. In reality, it hasn't worked out that way, and the internet is still largely tied to the politics and geography of Earth. Can Starlink help make good on the internet's original promise to be a tool of liberation? Imagine if Putin had to answer to a populist with immutable internet access, where they could see the unvarnished reality of war. How might that change the way a conflict plays out? One of Starlink's key innovations is that the signal can be relayed laterally, a number of times across country borders, time zones, even oceans, before beating back down to a ground station. That could make it harder for any one country to censor or track what if citizens access online. But only if Starlink first turns on service in those places, and then routes internet traffic through ground stations and neighboring countries. Starlink is, of course, a commercial offering from an American company that's launching frequently into space, under the outer space treaty, the United States government is ultimately responsible for what SpaceX does when it's in space. While technology would allow for it, Starlink may not turn out to serve that grand purpose. So far, it's only available in countries that welcome its presence, but the technology hold to promise. Satellite internet might one day offer an uncensored alternative. For people living in hermit kingdoms, behind great firewalls are on Information Islands. And every day, Ukrainians are pretty true to power, coordinating their defense, calling directly to Russian kinship and a common humanity, rallying people to their cause, showing the devastating cost of war. Starlink could help them to prevail in that battle.