The Conversation: How Iran shut down the internet and built a sophisticated system of digital control

Posted on January 30, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

How Iran shut down the internet and built a sophisticated system of digital control

Published: January 29, 2026 3.58pm GMT

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  1. Gemma WareHost, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

Interviewed

  1. Amin NaeniPhD Candidate in International Relations, Deakin University; Dublin City University

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On January 8, as thousands of Iranians took to the streets in nationwide protests, the government cut off the internet.

Under cover of digital darkness, the Iranian regime launched a brutal and deadly crackdown against anti-government protesters. What information has got out, including testimony from morgues, graveyards and doctors who treated the injured, suggests thousands of people have been killed.

 Iran has shutdown the global internet before, but never for this long.  Without the internet, trading has slumped.  Many entrepreneurs who rely on Instagram to do business can’t post. Lorry drivers are struggling to cross borders because they can’t access digital documents. By some estimates, internet shutdown can cost more than US$37 million a day.

Read more: Iran’s latest internet blackout extends to phones and Starlink

After three weeks of internet blackout, reports from web traffic monitor Netblocks suggest that the internet is slowly coming back online but the connection is predominantly for government-approved users.

Our mission is to share knowledge and inform decisions.

Yet for most of the shutdown, banks and some local government websites and apps still worked. And that’s because Iran is developing its own, national internet, cut off from the rest of the world.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Amin Naeni, a PhD candidate researching digital authoritarianism at Deakin University in Australia, about how Iran built one of the world’s most sophisticated systems of digital control.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer.

Newsclips in this episode from The Guardian, Al Jazeera English, DW News, CNA, CBS News, CNN, CBC News and BBC News.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

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Big Think: The Pursuit of Mastery – The timeless quest to go beyond competence and achieve excellence.

Posted on January 30, 2026 by michelleclarke2015


The Pursuit of Mastery

The timeless quest to go beyond competence and achieve excellence.

Big Think, Stephen Johnson, Rachel Barr, and Steven Ross Pomeroy

Jan 30, 2026

María Medem

Big Thinkers,

Last Saturday, the American climber Alex Honnold successfully scaled the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan with no ropes or safety nets.

I’m not sure why. I’m not being a smartass: The feat was wildly impressive and made for great TV. But to those of us who prefer the interiors of skyscrapers over the exteriors, it’s not immediately obvious what compels people like Honnold to risk everything, all for what turned out to be an “embarrassing” payday, as he told The New York Times.

Perhaps it’s pride, prestige, or an adrenaline addiction. Or maybe the reason is as simple as the one that British climber George Mallory offered in 1923 when a reporter asked him why he wanted to climb Mount Everest: “Because it’s there.”

We are drawn to mastery, whether it’s perfecting our own craft or watching other people push the limits of human potential.

Our latest special issue brings you a collection of stories about all things mastery. Inside, we explore the science behind the “quiet eye” of elite athletes, the systems that create star performers, actor Ethan Suplee’s quest to master himself, and much more. You can catch the full issue here.

Read on,
Stephen

THE BIG SECOND ACT

From self-erasure to self-mastery: Ethan Suplee’s second act

By Mike Wehner

You’d probably recognize actor Ethan Suplee as the chubby bully on Boy Meets World, lovable Louie in Remember the Titans, and the aptly named “Tuna” (Johnny Depp’s sidekick) in Blow. But you probably wouldn’t recognize Suplee if you saw him today in the gym. Once weighing in at 550 pounds, Suplee is now down to about 250, and he’s documented his efforts to master his food addiction in his new career as a fitness influencer. Big Think recently caught up with Suplee to discuss his Hollywood career, his second act, and why eating a piece of banana bread is not the end of the world.

LEARN MORE

THE BIG GAZE

How training your gaze could help you master sports — and your own attention

By Ross Pomeroy

When thinking about what makes an athlete great, you might imagine Gretzky’s flick of the wrist, Serena Williams’ snap of the shoulder, or Messi’s blinding footwork. But the precision of these movements may be downstream from something far quieter: the movements of the eyes. In this piece, Ross Pomeroy looks at the science behind “quiet eye training,” a sustained gaze that helps the brain execute precise actions under pressure.

LEARN MORE

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Magazines, memberships, and meaning.

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THE BIG RETHINK

The systems that build star performers

By Rachel Barr

Excellence rarely follows a straight line. Many top performers begin as late bloomers, developing through trial, failure, and cross-domain exploration. As neuroscientist Rachel Barr details in this interview with author David Epstein, the systems that produce stars often aren’t optimized for speed or certainty, but for adaptability over time.

LEARN MORE

More Articles

Stephen Johnson is the executive editor at Big Think.

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US Foreign Affairs calls the world to abandon Chinese products: “To all world leaders meeting with Xi Jinping: China sells nothing but cheap products and cheap friendships.”

Posted on January 30, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Mega Geopolitics

@MegaGeopolitics

BREAKING: 🇺🇸🇨🇳 US Foreign Affairs calls the world to abandon Chinese products: “To all world leaders meeting with Xi Jinping: China sells nothing but cheap products and cheap friendships.”

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Are you in your retirement years; do you fear being institutionalised in a nursing home, left for years not stimulated or truly cared for. Well here is Optimus to give us freedom

Posted on January 30, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
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TRUMP CALLS FOR BIPARTISAN VOTE TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN The president says Congress has come together on a deal to fund most of the government through September, with an extension for DHS and the Coast Guard. “The only thing that can slow our Country down is another long and damaging Government Shutdown.” He’s pushing both parties to deliver a “YES” vote without delay. Source: Truth Social

Posted on January 30, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Mario Nawfal

@MarioNawfal

🚨🇺🇸 TRUMP CALLS FOR BIPARTISAN VOTE TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN The president says Congress has come together on a deal to fund most of the government through September, with an extension for DHS and the Coast Guard. “The only thing that can slow our Country down is another long and damaging Government Shutdown.” He’s pushing both parties to deliver a “YES” vote without delay. Source: Truth Social

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Elon wants AI in Space

Posted on January 30, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

ELON WANTS AI IN SPACE

Because Earth is too basic for what’s coming, Elon is pushing to put AI data centers in orbit. Why? Cooler temps = less energy, less risk from Earth’s natural disasters, and it’s way more futuristic. Basically, he wants to make sure AI keeps running even if things go sideways down here. Wild idea… but very on brand. Source: Reuters

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Neuralink: Hope and Progress. Imagine being paralysed from the neck down

Posted on January 30, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
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Futurism: AI will make us all rich… any day now

Posted on January 30, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Sam Altman Says AI Will Cause Massive Deflation, Making Money Worth Vastly More

AI will make us all rich… any day now.

By Victor Tangermann

Published Jan 29, 2026 5:21 PM EST

When asked if AI can be used to "solve economic gaps," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argued that it's "going to be massively deflationary."
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

OpenAI is betting in the biggest way possible on a future ruled by AI. It’s committing to spending well over $1 trillion to build out enormous data centers — despite business fundamentals lagging far behind, stoking fears over troubling days ahead.

During a town hall livestreamed on Monday, CEO Sam Altman admitted that the company was looking to pump the brakes, revealing that it’s looking to “dramatically slow down” hiring as the company continues to burn through billions of dollars each quarter.

At the same time, Altman remained characteristically bullish about what his company’s tech will soon offer to the world. When asked if AI can be used to “solve economic gaps that have existed for decades,” the executive argued that it’s “going to be massively deflationary.”

“Given, certainly, progress with work you can do in front of a computer, but also what looks like it will soon happen with robotics and a bunch of other things, we’re going to have massively deflationary pressure,” he predicted.

As a result of this deflationary pressure, Altman promised that things would get “radically cheaper” and the “empowerment of individual people” will go up as money becomes more valuable — which, it’s worth noting, would be an inversion of virtually every economic system in history, which have overwhelmingly been inflationary.

Altman reasoned that these economic changes would be the result of AI allowing individuals to be vastly more productive. He argued that by the end of this year, an individual spending $1,000 on inference — essentially the cost of running an AI — could complete a piece of software in a short period of time, a task that would have previously taken a whole team a much longer period.

It’s not the first time Altman has argued that AI could make money more valuable. In March, he claimed that AI will have a deflationary impact on the global economy during a closed-door Morgan Stanley conference.

The broader argument that AI could lead to an age of “abundance” in which the cost of living starts to decrease — and that we could even choose not to work if we didn’t want to — has long been deployed by tech leaders, including Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk, to drive the AI hype cycle.

But given the current state of the economy, such a point remains little more than a daydream. The reality is that AI is still incredibly far from boosting efficiency enough to offset inflation. Just earlier today, the US Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, citing ongoing concerns over “elevated” inflation.

In fact, AI has more frequently been linked to mass layoffs that make it harder to survive. Long-term unemployment hit a four-year high earlier this year as jobseekers struggled to find new work. The cost of living has also continued to climb, particularly in larger US cities.

Whether AI will come to the rescue and dramatically bring down prices remains to be seen, as uncomfortable questions surrounding the tech’s viability linger.

Researchers have shown that AI is largely failing to boost productivity, at least in its current form. Surveys have found that the number of people using AI at work is falling, a troubling trend that flies in the face of promises made by tech leaders. Many of these workers argue that AI is essentially useless to them, despite their employers’ insistence that it’s revolutionary, productivity-boosting tech.

To AI’s many critics, it’s a dead end. Some have argued that OpenAI itself could be a house of cards that’s one run on the banks away from collapsing in on itself.

In short, there are plenty of reasons to remain skeptical of Altman’s claims that AI will put more buying power into each of our pockets as productivity goes stratospheric. He’s also gone as far as to argue that AI could cure cancer, solve climate change, and alleviate our financial struggles with “universal extreme health.”

Musk has similarly prophesied that “there will be no poverty in the future, and so no need to save money.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has also argued that we could one day work far less as a result of AI.

It’s an enormous bet — and Altman and his counterparts have plenty still to prove as reality continues to lag behind their lofty promises.

Even Altman himself isn’t entirely convinced that sudden abundance will actually be a good thing for the average person.

“Massively more abundance and access and massively decreased cost to be able to create new things, new companies, discover new science, whatever…” he said during this week’s town hall. “I think that should be an equalizing force in society and a way that people who have not gotten treated that fairly get a really good shot.”

“As long as we don’t screw up the policy around it in a big way,” he warned, “which could happen.”

More on Altman: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Is Slashing Its Hiring Pace as Financial Crunch Tightens

Victor Tangermann

Senior Editor

I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.

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The Rundown AI: AI Revolutionary War series

Posted on January 30, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
Darren Aronofsky debuts AI Revolutionary War series
Image source: TIME
The Rundown: Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s AI venture Primordial Soup released “On This Day… 1776”, a new series recreating the American Revolution using Google DeepMind, with each episode dropping on the 250th anniversary of the event it depicts.
The details:
The short-form series combines AI-generated visuals with SAG-AFTRA voice actors, positioning itself as “artist-led” AI rather than being fully automated.The series drops episodes on TIME’s YouTube channel timed to the 250th anniversary of each depicted event.Aronofsky partnered with DeepMind in May to collaborate on AI storytelling, releasing the Veo-assisted film ANCESTRA in June at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Why it matters: AI video is creeping further into real production studio workflows, and moving from simple shorts and hidden tricks to hide faces to handling the entire visual process. While it still might not be fully accepted or mainstream, the sentiment is shifting — and Hollywood’s once-uneasy use of the tech is coming more into focus.
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US now exceeds Japan for the first time in 30 years in steel production (thanks to tarrifs)

Posted on January 29, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
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