Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) for a couple years now after the Green Revolution [0].

Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], South Africa [4], Venezuela [5], Russia [9], and China [9]

My understanding is that during the current 5 year plan in Iran, they are trying to fully transition the Iranian internet to the NIN, as all ".ir" domains are supposed to be hosted on the NIN.

If someone wants to find a techno-authoritarian state I'd say Iran is probably closer to that vision than most other countries, as a large portion of their leadership are Western-educated (Stanford, MIT, UPMC/Paris VI, Supélec, UNSW, etc) Computer Engineers and Computer Scientists by training (eg. Iran's VP did his PhD under Thomas Cover at Stanford [8] and Rouhani's Chief of Staff studied EE@SJSU). Even Iran's NSC and former IRGC head (who's daughter is a surgeon at Emory - so much for marg bar amreeka) was a CS major turned Kantian philosophy PhD.

[0] - https://citizenlab.ca/irans-national-information-network/

[1] - https://www.arvancloud.ir/fa

[2] - https://tvbrics.com/en/news/uganda-and-iran-to-boost-ict-co-...

[3] - https://mail.techreviewafrica.com/public/news/1361/kenya-and...

[4] - https://www.samenacouncil.org/samena_daily_news?news=64545

[5] - https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/08/06/752585/Iranian-fibe...

[6] - https://zmc.co.ir/

[7] - https://www.rayafiber.com/en/home

[8] - https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/1011657

[9] - https://www.kharon.com/brief/iran-sanctions-maximum-pressure...

Kinda envious of them that, due to sanctions, they end up with hyperscalers. Europe will never get hyperscales while being too tight with the US, and any protectionism at the service industry level would make the US go more mental than it already is.

It's not only because of sanctions. It's primarily because their leadership have deeply technical backgrounds. Most of my peers who ended up in policymaking roles in Europe (and in some cases the levers of power) all had a humanities or legal background and never worked in or adjacent to the tech industry.

Assuming Iran didn't follow the path that it did, Iran would have also ended up becoming a tech hub like Israel became today.

But this recognition should not be used to glaze a regime that has officially admitted to killing at least 5,000 protestors [0] in just 2 weeks and in reality killed significantly more people than that.

Being adept at understanding the applications of technology doesn't make one a humanist.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/iranian-offic...

Agree with you on pretty much everything you have said. The background of policymakers in Europe really annoys me. Just to be clear, I wasn't glazing Iran or anything.

The background of most everyone in Brussels seems so wrong for the technological realities nowadays. I believe this sentiment is shared by a lot of people, and now it unfolds in Europe plainly lacking behind in technology. Which is such a shame given history of discoveries and advancement that was going on on the continent for centuries.

The whole European political elite and ruling class feels like a quasi-aristocracy (something the US is slowly moving into as well, with political dynasties and such) that is used to go to some big-name art/humanities place and then slide into the bureaucracy ladder. Totally detached people, and it's a pity because we really need Europe to be better.

The failures fall upwards into Brussels usually, sadly then you get very much second rate politicians that were even hated in their own countries.

I mean most countries send their failures there, also people who are not liked in the respective countries usually slip there for comfy jobs.

Iranians have a 5+ millennia culture of being highly educated, technical and creative.

That expertise wasn’t just gonna disappear in a couple of decades.

And yes, the Iranian regime is brutal and terrible. This was one time the opposition was strong enough that they may have had a chance and yet our fellow in chief decided to launch incendiary words, which only allowed the regime to paint the opposition as western funded, while not providing any actual support (there’s a reason Israel, which is at least led by competent leadership, kept quiet about the protests in Iran because they understand how their words of support would undermine them).

Iran is rich in natural resources(gas,oil), one of the richest actually. No country so rich can become a tech hub like Israel/Singapore (which just had no other options for development).

A subtle reason for preferring negotiations towards mutually beneficial ends-- sanctions can supercharge tech adoption

Yeah, or even just protectionism. Most economists I've heard say that protectionism doesn't work, but I feel like China being quiet and protectionist in the infancy of its key industries was like the move of the century for them.

Protectionism and sanctions form a kind of virtuous feedback loop :)

https://incyber.org/en/article/iran-between-isolation-and-te...

>The Iranian Information Technology Organization (ITOI) even set precise rules to evaluate candidates based on three different standards: ISO 27017 (cloud security controls), ISO 27018 (protection of personally identifiable information), and NIST SP 900-145, which concerns the American definition of cloud computing. “They want a comprehensive offer with its three components— IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS https://incyber.org/en/article/iran-between-isolation-and-te...

Not sure tbh.

China could have been like Japan per capita. Protectionism puts a big cap on economic growth potential.

I might have missed something here

"current dollar valuations are more appropriate. Nominal GDP measured in these units are plotted in Figure 2." https://econbrowser.com/archives/2009/06/how_important_i_2#:...

(What do those bumps correspond to?)

Yes you have missed something. I wrote per capita.

That's tough. I did miss that. Cross my heart and hope 1 child policy will payoff as well as WWII

Take a look at a plot of China's gdp per year since 1980. A curve can only get so exponential.

Japan was leveled to the ground by 1945.

What’s the excuse for not having the same GDP per capita 80 years later?

The curve became exponential way too late. And only after they (partially) opened up.

They went from 100% communism to 90% capitalism, then had exponential growth, and we are supposed to believe the growth was because of the residual 10% communism.

Exactly.

When comparing a growth rate between 90/10 and 100/0 the difference is apparently explained by the 10

It’s 100/0 and 10/90.

America is 100/0 and China is 90/10. One of them is doing much better, and the difference is apparently explained by the 10.

If you are of the opinion that the people in China are living a better life we can stop the conversation. In that case we don't have any common ground for a fruitful discussion.

Japan was an industrialized country even before WWII, China was not. Moreover, both Japan and China used protectionism to nurture domestic industries.

If they had allowed the western tech companies, these tech companies could easily control the information atmosphere and incite riots for instance.

This is what Japan's GDP/capita [1] looks like. I assume you're around my age because we grew up in a time when Japan was set to become the next economic super-power, and it looked like it might even surpass the US. But sometime around 1995, their economy peaked and they've been in pretty bad shape since then. Their current GDP/capita is about 25% lower (and falling) than it was in 1995. They work as a great argument against people who insist to just always buy the dip. What goes down does not always come back up.

By contrast this [2] is China's GDP/capita which is something really close to a vertical line. But for all the talk about economic systems, I think it's just because of good leadership and a motivated population. There's plenty of capitalist countries that aren't going anywhere, and there's endless examples of hybrid/social economic systems that have also gone nowhere. So I think there have to be explanations outside of the economic system itself.

[1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

[2] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

Neoclassical economics is quite clear that targeted protectionism is desirable under certain exceptions.

As for China, they would be more wealthy without the meddling of their government. There's no reason they couldn't be like Taiwan, but bigger. The Chinese people got to where they are in spite of their anchor.

I remember half of the neoclassical economics focused articles about China from the late 90s and early 00s predicting that by not following ricardian comparative advantage China was shooting itself in the foot.

They kept predicting collapse, too.

Nobody talks much about the ricardian theory of static comparative advantage today. China's rise kind of invalidated it.

America was taken by surprise by its rise because of this. The cordial relations and trade flipped almost overnight to hostility once it was realized that China's economic power now rivaled that of that of the US and was poised to grow even more.

How do you know those economists were wrong? It's easy to conflate China's size with China's success. They liberalized their economy a great deal since the 1980s, which is responsible for the success they have had. That doesn't mean they couldn't be even more successful with further liberalization. Like a larger Taiwan.

Not really. In neoclassical economics protectionism is only justified as a necessary evil and it is always a form of militarism (spending money to weaken or defend against your enemy), rather than building yourself up.

Median wage in Taiwan is something like $14k, less than many urban areas in China, though obviously higher than the very rural areas in China. [1] It's a Reddit link, but it's using first party government data. I'm linking to it since just linking to a site in Chinese would not be very informative for most.

Huge GDP/capita in certain places is because of outsized industries that don't really translate to the average person. Ireland is another example where it's nearly twice as 'rich' as the US by that same metric, but it's just a nuance of it being an international hub for tax avoidance, not because the Irish are doing especially well.

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/taiwan/comments/1jmhhk1/realistic_s...

That first link you shared is fascinating. This group also published this incredible report on an AI-enabled influence operation aimed at toppling Iran

https://citizenlab.ca/research/2025-10-ai-enabled-io-aimed-a...

This is the issue for any US/western regime change operation in Iran (whatever one may think of its moral merits or lack thereof).

Iran is not Syria, there's a lot of wily people in the leadership and they won't be rolled over so easily

Yeah, wonder why Trump doesn't threaten North Korea? Because they actually have achieved all this, internal internet completely sealed, nuclear weapons and developing ballistic missiles to reach the USA.

So actually.. getting the nukes was the right play for them because eventually they would get sold out by China or Russia. Having nukes gets you to shake hands and send love letters to Trump. Frankly Trump sees Europeans as total cucks and has more respect for Kim Jong-un

If Iran actually had nukes, the Israeli lead bullying would immediately halt.

Everyone seems to have forgotten the independent French nuclear deterrent.

I should probably put an outside bet on the next country to get the Bomb being Poland, maybe by 2050. They've only just started building a civilian reactor, but weapons would make strategic sense for them.

I remember back when Poland was joining NATO, they basically said that we want in NATO or we will build our own nuke.

Not sure if Trump understands that he is playing quite a dangerous game in terms of nuclear proliferation because if the US deterrent goes away, the small countries will start thinking about it.

Good analysis out there indicating sweden could beat Poland there. Finland and Germany also on the likely list. Then in the east Japan and sk. The npt is dead. The French government being completely gridlocked with a nonzero chance to go authoritarian itself, along with the us stepping away guarantee this.

> Good analysis out there indicating sweden could beat Poland there

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_progra...

I would say the next country is likely much sooner than 2050, because 24 years is longer than the timelines for China, for India and Pakistan given when they became independent even assuming they started on that immediately, I think for Israel but it's hard to be sure given the secrecy, South Africa arguably but IIRC they didn't complete it, and obviously the USSR, USA, France, and the UK.

Yep at the end of the day, this is 1940s/50s technology. It's complicated but not that complicated

> Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1]

This is already repeated by the Google Search AI summary, which is unfortunate since your reference (from 2012) doesn't seem to back it up.

Much of this capacity only started getting built out after 2012. Heck, Arvaan Cloud was only founded in 2015 and operated under the radar hidden from the sanctions regime until 2020.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com