By now, most people have heard of Starlink. Since it was launched five years ago, the satellite firm pioneered by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has become a bona fide telecommunications phenomenon, with over 3 million subscribers and more than 6,000 deployed satellites. But it is in the geopolitical arena where Starlink is arguably having its largest impact, because the company’s ability to provide greater internet connectivity for captive populations and embattled nations has the potential to reshape the struggle for freedom worldwide.
Ukraine provides a case in point. In the two-and-a-half years since the start of Russia’s war of aggression, Starlink has provided reliable satellite-based connectivity that has played a major role in allowing Kyiv to battle back against the Kremlin.
That, moreover, might be just the tip of the iceberg. Starlink has been floated as a tool to empower Iranian dissidents, assisted humanitarian organizations operating in war zones like Gaza, and has been suggested as an antidote to growing authoritarian control of the Internet. But Starlink could soon face some stiff competition—specifically, from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a payload of 20 Starlink internet satellites into space soars across the sky after sunset above the Pacific Ocean after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base on June 18, 2024, as seen from San Diego, Calif.
Kevin Carter/Getty Images
China’s state-backed Qianfan conglomerate recently carried out a successful launch of 18 broadband internet satellites. The deployment is part of a much bigger plan; by the end of 2025, the company hopes to have 600 such satellites in orbit—and by 2030, that number could grow to as many as 14,000.
Qianfan, moreover, is not alone. It represents just one of three planned Chinese mega constellations which will cumulatively field about 40,000 satellites for the PRC in coming years. Other players in this space include the China Satellite Network Group, which is aiming to deploy 13,000 satellites, and the Landspace corporation, which plans to launch 10,000 of its own.
The consequences will be far more than simply commercial. Experts have expressed worries that a proliferation of its satellites will increase China’s ability to carry out surveillance activities at scale, as well as augment its (already-extensive) media censorship capabilities.
But an even more serious threat comes from how China’s already extensive propaganda activities would be amplified as a result. That’s because global demand for telecommunications is exploding in places like Africa, where the continent’s population of 1.3 billion is currently just 40 percent wired. If countries there and elsewhere embrace China’s growing telecommunications offerings, it will profoundly shape the information their populations consume—and therefore how they will think about the world.
The results could be ruinous.
“In the same way that China is able to curate content for the U.S. audience on TikTok, it will be able to reach into any nation which has subscribers and provide its own, curated view of the world,” my colleague and former Air Force chief futurist Peter Garretson told me recently. “From the perspective of an autocratic state actor, space internet is an incredibly powerful propaganda weapon.”
That power lies in the unique properties of space-based communication, Garretson explained, which “can provide information direct to the end user and circumvent attempts by states to control information.” In other words, space-based communications can be used to connect poorly-served communities, empower embattled opposition forces, and break the growing authoritarian stranglehold on information—all functions Starlink currently performs, or likely will soon. However, it can also be used in the opposite way—to erect a monopoly over what a large swathe of the world sees, hears, and reads, in very much the same way China’s government already limits the information available to its own captive population.
Inherently, this contest is a zero-sum game. The more nations there are connected to China’s satellites, the smaller the global audience share left for Starlink or other Western conglomerates will be. Conversely, if Starlink succeeds in its current bid to make gains in places like Africa and Latin America, it will create an inherently pluralistic, open global media environment—one in which it will be much more difficult for the PRC to propagandize, isolate, and influence.
Only one of those pathways benefits American security. It’s up to policymakers in Washington to empower it.
Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C., where he directs the Council’s Future of Public Diplomacy Project.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
