June 2025

One of the more puzzling pieces of American tech and diplomatic policy in the new Trump era was the one recently announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio—a new visa restriction for foreign officials “complicit in censoring Americans”. The restriction would ban entry to the U.S. for foreign officials who impose content moderation over social media posts.

On April 28, Amazon’s Project Kuiper launched an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida and sent 27 satellites into low Earth orbit. The ground personnel rapidly established contact with the satellites. It was the first of a series of planned launches to an altitude of 280 miles, working toward a future constellation of 3,200 satellites beaming broadband service worldwide with extremely low latency. The hope is to give Starlink some competition. That sums up the state of the LEO-based broadband market today.