
Loading summary
Madupa Akinola
Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold butter. Yep. Chocolate ice cream.
Eugenia Lodri
Sure thing.
Madupa Akinola
Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be tied.
Esteban Carissimo
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk, crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
Madupa Akinola
Of $45 for three month plan $15.
Esteban Carissimo
Per month equivalent required.
Eugenia Lodri
New customer offer first three months only.
Madupa Akinola
Then full price plan options available, Taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com.
Isabella Roy
I'm Isabella Roy, intern at Lawfare with an episode from the Lawfare archive for October 18, 2025. Last week, the Nobel Committee awarded its 2025 Peace Prize to Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition politician who has led high profile demonstrations against disputed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. This week, the Trump administration directed the US Military to strike a fifth boat off the coast of Venezuela, killing six more people whom President Trump alleged were drug traffickers. On October 15, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration has secretly authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela, a development which, along with broader US Military buildup in the Caribbean, has led some analysts to predict that the Trump administration may seek to oust Maduro from power. For today's archive, I chose an episode from August 26, 2024, in which Eugeniolostri and Esteban Carissimo discuss how Venezuela's Internet censorship under Maduro affects domestic political conversations and election coverage, the organization of protests, the day to day functions of the private sector, Venezuelans, communications with family members at home and abroad, and more.
Eugenia Lodri
It's the Law Firm Podcast. I'm Eugenia Lodri, Law FIRs Fellow in Technology Policy and Law with Hevan Carissimo, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University.
Esteban Carissimo
I think if the political issue doesn't get resolved in some way, we will not see any changes. Sadly, we don't see a path to normalization in the country. We will not see that in the Internet either.
Eugenia Lodri
Today we're talking about the digital repression in Venezuela after the recent elections, how the current Internet infrastructure facilitates it, and what the path to recovery looks like. So on July 28, Venezuela held a presidential election which President Nicolas Maduro alleges to have won with, I believe it's 51% of the vote. Now, these results have been widely questioned by the US by several countries in the region. And in a new report, the UN says that Venezuela's national electoral authority kind of fell short of following through on some of the basic transparency and integrity measures that are required. There's a review from the Washington Post of precinct level tally sheets that kind of matches the results of independent exit polls and analysis. All of that actually gives the opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez victory in the last elections. So I was wondering, Theoan, if you could maybe get us started by walking us a little bit through the context in Venezuela ahead of the elections. How would you describe the mood? Would you say that the election was perceived maybe as a fair opportunity to exercise democracy?
Esteban Carissimo
Yeah. Well, this was the first time in many years in which the opposition unified behind a single platform. This was under the leadership of Maria Cornell Machado, who then nominated Edmundo Gonzalez Sorutia, a former diplomat, to be the presidential candidate of this platform. This was a great opportunity. This brought a lot of enthusiasm to the population and to the people outside of Venezuela, which, which was sadly not able to vote there. So this opened the opportunity to the opposition to win, or to have a, let's say, a fair contest with the presidential candidate Maduro for his second reelection. But the results were quite disappointing, so because all polls before the election suggested that the opposition was to win there. But this didn't happen. The National Electoral Council said that Madur won for nearly 10 points without showing any evidence there. And the opposition says that they have evidence of the tally sheets, and now those tally sheets are online. So now we don't know what is going to happen in the next days or the next month, if Maduro is going to take his third term in January or if Edmondo Gonzalez is going to be the president.
Eugenia Lodri
So this hope that the opposition had ahead of the elections just because they were consolidating behind this one platform. And now the questions about lack of transparency around the results did lead to a lot of protests in Venezuela and there's been reports of repression, both physical and digital. So can you talk through maybe the protesters demands and then the government's response and in both the physical and the digital realm?
Esteban Carissimo
Yeah. So these are very controversial results. Right. What the National Electoral Council said is not what the population was expecting. And what the votes are showing or details are showing. So all of the people were really upset in Venezuela, but the process were very peaceful, which is surprising. And Maria cone of Machado had that message to demonstrate in a peaceful way. But of course, the government did not tolerate this. And they repressed the protest, or at the beginning, they repressed the protest. And the same happened on the Internet. We read reports from very prestigious organizations that several services have been blocked. This is not the first time this is happening in Venezuela. The same organizations reported this before, the Freedom House, the United nations say the same. But this seems to be more severe. The government is trying to suffocate the digital protests as well.
Eugenia Lodri
So what does that look like? How is it more severe than in previous cases? And what does it look like in practice when your online protest is being censored?
Esteban Carissimo
Well, what is different here is because there are many things we can talk about. The first is the extent of the repression or the censorship, the duration and the number of services that are being blocked. In the past, we heard about very isolated cases that didn't last too long. And now we're seeing that this is expanding to many services. For example, X or Twitter, WhatsApp and other digital communication means, which are really important from Venezuelans. Think about this. Venezuela is a country that at its peak has 33 million people, and now approximately 25% of that population lives abroad. So when Twitter or WhatsApp is blocked, it's not only the protest, it's the way you have to communicate with your family that is living abroad. So Venezuelans are experiencing a very hard time with their communications being banned.
Eugenia Lodri
Now, I know that you've researched the way that authoritarian leaders can quell protests through the censorship of the Internet or, you know, by disrupting it. So even if we're not speaking exclusively about the context in Venezuela, maybe can you expand a little bit more on what are the tools that you've seen being used by authoritarian regimes? What are the commonalities? Are there some, I don't know, some actions that are region or country specific that you see only in Venezuela, or is there like a common playbook here?
Esteban Carissimo
Okay, there are various methods to impose censorship on the Internet. As you can say that there are different mechanisms to block, for example, specific content or specific domains, for example, a website or specific website, or while the most extreme cases are the ones that disconnects users to ban access to the network. So in recent days, we see that, for example, netblocks or uni, which are very prestigious organizations reporting censorship, detected instances of censorship in Venezuela. This seems to be targeted on censorship on services, as I said, Twitter, WhatsApp, I think Reddit was blocked too. Freedom House publishes an annual report called Freedom of the Net and they highlighted censorship in the past in Venezuela as well. So this is not new in Venezuela. But as you said, other governments have other practices. And I collaborated with colleagues on a study last year in which we reported nationwide government order shutdowns. This is the most extreme censorship, that is to connect all users, regardless of their activities on the Internet. And this typically happens or this type of censorship conductors in countries where governments do not have the technological capabilities to apply more targeted censorship. So instead of disconnecting just a service, they don't have the tools to target to a specific service. For example, Twitter, WhatsApp or digital communications. When we studied this last year, which was a study that looked to between 2018 and 2022 and 2023, we did not find any type of this connection, government ordered disconnection or shutdowns in Venezuela. So Venezuela is apparently having the technological means to apply targeted censorship.
Eugenia Lodri
That's really interesting. And then just to make this super clear to anyone that's listening, the real world effect of this digital censorship, you can imagine it can be harder to organize the protests. It can be harder to report on what's actually happening when there is a crackdown of the protests. But what are the maybe other effects that we're not thinking about when you have online censorship, what does that look like in the quote unquote, real world?
Esteban Carissimo
Well, it depends on the type of censorship that is being applied. When the government tried to reduce the protests or to mitigate the protests, it has collateral effects. As I said, when they apply these shutdowns and everybody gets offline. For example, if you have, I don't know, a shop or a cafe, and if your business relies on the Internet, as many things relies on the Internet these days, is going to be effective in digital communications as well. WhatsApp is a widely adopted tool not only to organize a protest, it's also for, I said family communication or other businesses. But when Venezuela wants to extend, this is going to start blocking other services which is going to have collateral damages. For example, a domain may not be restricted for a single service. For example, Amazon or cloud providers are serving millions of websites. And if the government wants to block that, it's going to end up blocking many things altogether.
Eugenia Lodri
Now this that you mentioned, the capability that the government has to do targeted censorship is really interesting and you know, I'd like to connect this to this new paper that you authored on the effects of the Venezuelan crisis on Internet infrastructure in the country. Right. But before we dive into your findings and how this connects to everything that is going on, I would like to ask what were your motivations in writing this? Why did you think that the effects of the crisis on Internet infrastructure was you needed to focus on that issue?
Esteban Carissimo
Yeah, I'm going to leave aside all my personal views and motivations here. I'm going to only use my research motivations here. The first is more my background. Studying Latin America's Internet infrastructure is part of my research agenda. I started my research career studying the transformation of Bolivia and Paraguay Internet infrastructures after the development of some key infrastructures in the country. This was approximately 310 years back during the pandemic, I also published a paper which investigated the creation of Internet exchange points, which are critical infrastructures that are in Latin America and in many other countries as well. These infrastructures serve for domestic data exchanges. And my study was about Latin America. What is the role and the creation of these Internet exchange points in the region. So studying Venezuela is another piece of my research agenda. But at the same time, Venezuela is quite unique. This crisis invites us to investigate the consequences of large crisis on Internet infrastructure. Not too long ago, Venezuela was a wealthy country with a thriving middle class. So this is a very unique starting point. Many countries have experienced different types of dramas. But anyone similar to Venezuela when the crisis started, Venezuela's Internet development was similar to the rest of Latin American countries. Venezuela had good Internet for Latin American standards and tens of years later we'd like to know what's going on there. So this is very unique. So the starting point of Venezuela was middle income country with good Internet. So we'd like to know what happens when the country faces courses of such magnitude.
Eugenia Lodri
So I was really curious and maybe this connects back to the theme of lack of transparency that we were talking about before. But I'm sure that collecting the information that you needed in order to conduct this assessment about what has been happening with Venezuela's Internet infrastructure in the last 10 years was not the easiest thing. So what was your methodology? How did you get around some of the challenges in acquiring that information?
Esteban Carissimo
Yeah, so the methodological part is where the part we collected data, actually we did not collect the data. We used publicly available datasets. But the question here is which are the right data sets to capture what happened in Venezuela during the past decade? So we need to get data from Venezuela, which is that can give us a longitudinal view for at least 10 years of what happened there. But there are several Internet data sets or Internet measurements data set that can give us this perspective. And we combine or we employed a wide range of publicly available data sets for this purpose. So this is the part that I'm going to start talking about technical stuff of Internet measurements. This is not trying to be a computer network class, which is the class I teach at Northwestern and I did it before at University of Buenos Aires. I'm not trying to give a lecture on measurement platforms, but I need to give some explanation of how we get this visibility, how can we view the problem? And I'd like to start with an example which is RIPE Atlas. Ripe Padelas is a measurement platform. So let's think Iser, a network of computers which is globally distributed and it's administrated by the European Rational Internet Registry. So this platform seeks volunteers willing to host a small, non intrusive measurement device. It's like you plug a little box, the size is a. I don't know, it's like a wallet that you plug to your network or connect to your WI fi and it's going to execute noninterested Internet measurements. And currently ripe administrates approximately 10,000 devices around the world, nearly in every country. So these boxes are launching Internet measurements all the time. And with this we can construct a view of the reality of different services. So this is like an example, but we use many data sets. We use many data sets collected by these platforms. Another research measurement platform which is administered by Caida, which is a research lab at UC San Diego, M Lab, which is an initiative founded by Google, and other data, which is public network data reported by Meta. And with all this information we created, because that is the way I can explain it, we created a multidimensional view of the Venezuela's Internet in the past 10 years.
Eugenia Lodri
And what did you find? What were your main takeaways?
Esteban Carissimo
Well, this is a very extensive list of findings here, but the results are catastrophic. Venezuela Internet infrastructure has not seen any major investments or updates for at least 10 years. So let me explain a few of them. It's going to take us a very long time to explain everything what we found there. But I'd like to show you some things that are very clear to explain what happened there. So for example, summary connectivity, submarine cable networks is one of the very first pieces we extend there. Summary cables are key infrastructures that enable intercontinental connectivity or in many cases international connectivity as well. For example, we use summary cable infrastructure when we download data from A server that is hosting a website or another resource abroad. Let's think about Venezuela, for example. A user that is fetching content that is being served from Miami. That is going to require a submarine cable. But we also use summary cables in video calls when participants are in different continents. It's the only option we have. We tend to think that satellites are connecting continents, but it's not typically the case. 99% of Intercontinental Communications use submarine cable infrastructure. So submarine cable infrastructures are undeniably key infrastructures. They are very expensive, and they require at least a few years for planning and deployment. So in this context, we investigated what happened in Venezuela. Was Venezuela able to keep pace of construction of this infrastructure? And sadly, the answer is no. Venezuela only planned and deployed one submarine cable since Chavez took office in 1998. One cable. But the most important part is, what is the nature of this cable? This cable has no impact because it only connects to Cuba. In fact, this cable was created to give Cuba access to the Internet through Venezuela, rather Venezuela benefitting from it. And this highly contrasts with Latin America, which constructed nearly 40 submarine cables during the same period. So, in summary, Venezuela's international connectivity remains the same as when Chavez won the election 25 years ago. But the Internet has dramatically changed since then. So this is the first piece of the results I can show you, but we have many more results.
Eugenia Lodri
You know, as I was reading your paper, I was really struck by this comparison that you were able to draw between where Venezuela is and where the rest of the region was. I think maybe the one that struck me the most was the speed of connectivity, the download speed. Because it's just, I cannot imagine going back to a time where you just like actually had to wait for a website to load. And I just, I thought that was crazy. Even if just as a way for me to remember what it was like in the early days of Internet connectivity.
Esteban Carissimo
Well, this is even worse because we are not downloading content as we were doing it in 1998. Now, our requirements are completely different, and Venezuela's Internet capabilities do not meet the current standards. So let me give you the numbers of Venezuela's bandwidth. So we use M Lab, which give us speed tests, a repository of at least 15 years of download speeds. And the current median download speeds in Venezuela are 3 Mbps, while the regional average is above 20 milliseconds. So Venezuela is nearly 10% of the regional average. But the most important part here is the evolution. Venezuela is at 3 Mbps now, but it was stagnated at 1 Mbps for more than 10 years. And the recent years they have a very quick growth from 1 to 3. Well the region is still in 20 but they they narrow this gap from 1 to 3 in approximately two to three years since 2020 because Cantabe, which is the largest provider in the country, the state owned provider in Venezuela started to offer high speed services. But these high speed services are unaffordable for Venezuelans because they cost 10 times the minimum wage. So Venezuela is recovering but only a portion is benefiting from it and it's still way behind of the rest of the region.
Ben Whittis
Hey folks, Ben Whittis here and I just have a confession for you. I'm not into crypto, just not into it. It's just numbers on a screen. I don't believe it'll really hold its value. I think its main use case is crime. Gold and silver are tangible. They're not just numbers on a screen. Unlike crypto, these are real assets with thousands of years of trust behind them. And that's why I want to tell you about Noble Gold. Noble Gold is a US based team. It is available from 6am to 6pm Monday through Friday and Saturdays offering personalized and consistent support. Pricing is clear and upfront, no hidden fees or tricky fine print. And gold IRAs let you hold real assets in a tax deferred or tax free retirement account. And it's the number one ranked gold IRA country four years in a row with more than $2.5 billion in precious metal transactions. So the folks at Noble Gold are here to serve. They anticipate questions and guide people through complex topics with patience and clarity. They're informed. They know the markets, the metals and the strategies. And they explain them in a way that's easy to understand. So take advantage of this limited time offer. Open a new qualified IRA or cash account with Noble Gold and get a free 10 ounce silver flag bar plus a silver American Eagle proof coin. Visit noblegold investments.com that's noblegold investments.com Lawfare.
Madupa Akinola
Hi, I'm Madupa Akinola from TED Business and I'm here to talk about the Financial Times. Every day the world bombards you with endless headlines and noise. What matters most, facts and context. That's where the Financial Times comes in. With clarity, depth and truly independent reporting, the FT helps you cut through the noise and see what's real and why it matters. Stay informed with the trusted source leaders around the world rely on. Visit FT.comSourceFT to read more and save 40% on a digital FT subscription. Most people overpay for car insurance not because they're careless, but because switching feels like too much hassle. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry AI Acast today.
Esteban Carissimo
Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows home, so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app. Download today.
Eugenia Lodri
So it really does make intuitive sense that the crisis in Venezuela is the main driver of this lag in Internet infrastructure, right? And you did mention that they were roughly in the same spot as the rest of the region 10 years ago. But how did you go about assessing and establishing this causality? Is there something more specific that you can point to?
Esteban Carissimo
Well, Latin American countries. We can say that Latin American countries have a lot of commonalities, so we expect Venezuela to share those commonalities with the rest of Latin American countries. And Venezuela did share those commonalities 20 years back, but we don't see that anymore. For example, there are many things that we can see and we can explain that Venezuela is not experiencing the same growth path or development as other countries. For example, there is another thing that I wanted to mention which is primary facilities. What are prim facilities? Primary facilities are buildings where network providers put dedicated network equipment to peer with each other. Basically, network providers go and install routers and with these routers they exchange data. So the region these days has 600 peering facilities. Latin America as a whole has 600 facilities, with Brazil having approximately 300 facilities. But other countries like Mexico and Argentina, which are large territorial countries, highly populated, in the case of Mexico, as 50 each, the number in Venezuela is four. So out of 600, Venezuela only hosts less than 1%. And compared to Argentina, which has similar population, it has 4 compared to 50. This is quite different. So it's impossible to see that Venezuela is going to have similar Internet qualities or characteristics of other countries. But we Expect it to be similar in timber submarine cables. We were talking about that before Venezuela was leading submarine cable deployments in the 90s, probably because it's close to the United States, have a privileged location, but well, it's not anymore.
Eugenia Lodri
That's really striking. So are we talking about a lack of investment? We're talking about an isolationist position. Is it there? But it's not affordable. What are some of the causes of this delay?
Esteban Carissimo
There are many things altogether happening in the country. One of the things that I wanted to share I think is going to depict what happens in Venezuela is the role of Cantabe or cantv, which is Venezuela's staten provider. Cantve is the largest ISP in the country, has been historically the most important provider provider in Venezuela. It was privatized in the 90s and renationalized by Chavez in 2007. So the country is the largest and it's a state owned and theoretically, and let me quote this theoretically offers affordable services because if you would like to get that subscription, you'll never get it. So our study investigates what happened with Cantabia, especially with its network connectivity during the past 25 years. To examine Cantos connectivity, we examine their Cantos upstream providers. When you have an Internet provider, it's typically connected to other providers. And what we call access providers, which are the providers we use to connect to the Internet, are connected to transit providers that interconnect our residential ISPs. So we track during 25 years changes in upstream connectivity of Cantabe. One of the things we notice is Cantabay has been losing ops from providers in the past 10 years since the crisis started. A big difference here is that US based providers or US based companies stop peering with Cantabe, stop announcing or sending traffic to Cantabe. And we don't know the root causes here, but we can speculate here. The first one is Cantabe's insolvency. The company is broken so cannot pay in US dollars upstream connectivity to send traffic to other countries. We can think that the sanctions are going to have an impact here? The US imposed sanctions so I doubt US based providers can provide any services to Cantafe.
Eugenia Lodri
That's a great example. Is there any other story like this or vignette that really struck you that represents the really deep effects of the crisis on Internet infrastructure that you want to share?
Esteban Carissimo
Well, there are others. One of the things that we can talk is about what we call content providers or CDNs, content delivery networks. The content delivery networks are key infrastructures that serve the content we use every time we get to a website. The modern way to the deliver the content we are consuming is through infrastructure that is specifically designed to serve this content. There are some companies that offer these services. For example, if I have a company, I don't have to serve the content to my users. I'm going to pay a third party company that is going to do this for me. It's like a mail service, not an email, like the post service in the United States. Somebody is going to deliver content for me. I don't have to deliver it myself. And these companies typically deploy infrastructure in all countries to have logistics there. It's like having content warehouses in the country, data centers. That is the example. But when we look at Venezuela, we have different stories there. We see that some content providers deployed infrastructure within Venezuela before the crisis started. But the content providers, which are more modern or technologies that did not exist before the crisis, those counterparts did not deploy any infrastructure there. Why there are many sanctions could be a reason. The second one is they don't know what is going to happen with their infrastructure. Is it secure to place your own hardware, probably with intellectual property inside of it in a country that you don't trust. So when those servers are not in the country, users are going to experience a worse quality of experience. Their user experience surfing the web, watching videos or any type of content is going to be much worse.
Eugenia Lodri
So what can be done? What would it take to get Venezuela up to speed, so to speak?
Esteban Carissimo
Well, there are many things that we can think about. I think if the political issue doesn't get solved in some way, we will not see any changes, sadly. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think if we don't see a path to normalization in the country, we will not see that in the Internet either.
Eugenia Lodri
Right. I mean we have the last 10 years to look at to see how that hasn't helped.
Esteban Carissimo
Yeah. So let's suppose Venezuela starts a path to normalization and I think there are some quick fixes and some other long term goals there. Quick fixes. I was saying that Cantabe lost a lot of providers. The infrastructure is there. If providers were serving Cantabe, I don't know, five, ten years back, they have the infrastructure to start serving Cantabe again. So it's quick fix. They need to resume their connections, their connectivity. This is, let's say this is code, it's not infrastructure. They need to flip the switch and start serving Cantabia again. And I think that will help to improve international Connectivity. Another piece of infrastructure that I did not mention is DNS. DNS is like Internet phone book. Let me give a quick example here. When we Visit a website, for example www.example.com, we need to transform that name into bits. Our routers and computer networks adapters, they use bits instead of strings. That convergence uses a hierarchical distributed database, which is DNS. I don't want to explain the details, but in this database the best you can have is to have a close replica or instance of that service close to you. And those servers were installed in Venezuela. So Venezuela has those servers, but they are unreachable. We don't know what's going on. The infrastructure is there, but Venezuelans are not getting content from there. They're not exchanging data with those servers. So I think I can imagine that those servers are still there and running. But the only thing we need to do is to improve the connectivity there to optimize their routing to get to those servers. And if we can do that, Venezuela will immediately get better Internet. But the last part is investments. If we see a regime change in Venezuela and we see that the country goes to democratization and normalization, we're going to see foreign investments or international aid to Venezuela. Venezuelans need urgent investment in San Richelos. As I said, 25 years without cables when the Internet has expanded dramatically during the same period. Burn facilities. Less than 1% of Latin America facilities are in Venezuela. That is unacceptable.
Eugenia Lodri
So you kind of hinted at this by mentioning international aid, but do you see a particular role for maybe regional support, whether through an organization like the Organization of American States or in a bilateral way?
Esteban Carissimo
Well, I think it's not only governmental entities. I think companies can help here. I think companies are going to be interested in getting back in Venezuela soon. The country gets better, normalized. I think Venezuela is a very attractive country for investments, has a large population. It's a country that hasn't seen any investment. So I think probably I'm not in the business, but I guess that providers will interested to get back in Venezuela or content providers will be interested in hosting or having their servers there to offer better services there. I think international AWS is going to help. I think governments are going to be willing to support Venezuela. This, as I said, submarine cables are very expensive to install, but they are not as expensive as many other things that Venezuela needs. And they are going to have a very quick impact and a very important, important one in society. Everything on these days runs or needs the Internet. So I don't know. I believe that International aid, multilateral credit agencies, or any other organization is going to be interested in funding projects in Venezuela.
Eugenia Lodri
Let's dig a little bit more on that, because as your paper recognizes, we've seen a lot of really good reporting on the effects of the Venezuelan crisis on health and education, mortality. And I think your research is a really good contribution to that kind of wide picture of what does the country look like a decade after. So, given all the needs in Venezuela, if again, the hypothetical normalization and stabilization of the political situation, what is the case for kind of immediate support for Internet infrastructure?
Esteban Carissimo
I think that the most urgent here is to restate, to reconnect Venezuela with its former providers. That is the quickest and easiest way to do it. I would say that we can think about emergency plans here, not the optimal Internet structure that we can build for Venezuela, but the quickest to get it better. Venezuela can connect to. For example, there are some hubs close to Venezuela that could be used to get better Internet. For example, Colombia. One of the things that my paper or our paper shows is that these devices that I mentioned to measure the Internet, the ones that are next to the Colombian border, have better. I don't want to talk about the technicalities, but let's say in one metric, we can say they have better Internet than the ones that are in Caracas, which is far from the border with Colombia. So one of the things that I can imagine is what if we connect those providers in the border to Colombia? Colombia has much better infrastructure than Venezuela these days. So that is an option. Brazil is a huge hub for the Internet. So Pablo runs the largest ixp, the Internet exchange point. Maybe Sao Paulo is far from Caracas, but Fortaleza is not too far. And Fortaleza has become a very important hub in Latin America as well. But talking about other countries which are small countries or territories close to Venezuela, but with good Internet, we can talk about Curacao. If I remember correctly, Curacao is approximately 100 km from Caracas, and they have good Internet infrastructure. I don't know if it's enough to support all 33 million or 25 million people these days in Venezuela connected to the Internet, but they have good infrastructure. And it's only 200km and the same for Trinidad and Tobago. It's on the east side of Venezuela, it's further from Caracas, but it's another option.
Eugenia Lodri
Now, I want to connect these kind of two sections of our conversation, right? We talked about the protests around the election, and we also talked about the state of Internet infrastructure. Now, would you say that the current state of Internet infrastructure eases or supports digital repression. Would you say it makes it harder or it doesn't really have much weight at all. It would still happen in the same ways?
Esteban Carissimo
Well, it's not very clear. It's not a straightforward connection here in the paper I mentioned before that in which we study shutdowns, government order shutdowns. One of the things we notice, it's easier for government that hold large state owned providers to shut down the Internet. But we haven't seen any shutdown in Venezuela. If I try to make an analogy, we can say that Cantabe has a major role in the country. So that could help Venezuela to apply censorship in the country. But at the end of the day, if you have a repressive government with, I don't know, with power, whatever power is in the country, they are going to be able to shut down or ban the Internet in the way they want. But for sure centralized infrastructures as the one we see in Venezuela, the lack of alternative paths make this simpler to conduct censorship.
Eugenia Lodri
So Eston, before we wrap up the conversation, do you have any last thoughts, any wisdom that you want to make sure that our listeners get.
Esteban Carissimo
Yeah, this is now just personal. I hope Venezuela can find a path to normalization soon. That is my personal hope here and I'm very optimistic the country is going to recover soon. And if the country starts to path to normalization, I'm pretty sure the Internet is going to one of the things that they are going to address at the very first initiatives of the government. I think everybody knows that the Internet is a key tool for modern life, for businesses, for education, for government as well. And I think and I optimistic that this is going to happen soon, probably next January.
Eugenia Lodri
Here's hoping. Thank you so much for joining me today. This was great.
Esteban Carissimo
Thank you.
Eugenia Lodri
The Lawfur podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other law firm podcasts by becoming a law firm material supporter through our website law firmedia.org support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for our other podcasts including Rational Security, Chatter, Allies and the Aftermath. Our latest Law Firm Presents podcast series on the government's response to January 6th. Check out our written work@lawfordmedia.org the podcast is edited by Jen Patya and your audio engineer. This episode was Carl Schillin of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music as always. Thank you for listening.
Madupa Akinola
Hi, I'm Madupak and Ola from TED Business and I'm here to talk about the Financial Times. Every day the world bombards you with endless headlines and noise. What matters most? Facts and context. That's where the Financial Times comes in. With clarity, depth and truly independent reporting, the FT helps you cut through the noise and see what's real and why it matters. Stay informed with the trusted source leaders around the world rely on. Visit FT.comSourceFT to read more and save 40% on a digital FT subscription.
Release Date: October 18, 2025
Host: Eugenia Lodri
Guest: Esteban Carissimo, Postdoctoral Researcher, Northwestern University
Episode Focus: How Venezuela’s Internet infrastructure has enabled, shaped, and compounded digital repression following controversial presidential elections, and the broader implications for civic life and the country’s future.
This episode, a Lawfare Archive selection, revisits an August 2024 conversation between Lawfare’s Eugenia Lodri and Esteban Carissimo. On the heels of Venezuela’s widely contested 2024 presidential election, the episode dives into how the country’s aging, poorly maintained, and centrally managed Internet infrastructure enables the Maduro government’s digital repression. They explore the roles of infrastructure, censorship methods, collateral damage to society, and offer thoughts on what it would take for Venezuela’s digital ecosystem to recover if political conditions normalize.
This in-depth conversation lays bare the interdependence of political repression, Internet infrastructure, and daily life in Venezuela. Through vivid technical and human examples, Carissimo and Lodri show not only how authoritarian governments wield digital tools against their citizens, but also how societal decay and lost investment close off the possibilities for open communication and modernization. The episode closes on a note of realistic optimism: after political normalization, rapid digital healing is possible, but only with international will, investment, and urgent attention to this foundational issue.
Listen to the full episode at Lawfare Blog or wherever you get your podcasts.