, Columnist
What If Russia Destroys Ukraine’s Cell Networks
Peer-to-peer systems would allow civilians and soldiers to stay in contact if conventional phone networks stop working.
Staying connected.
Photographer: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images
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As Taliban insurgents fended off U.S.-led forces in their battle for Afghanistan in the late 2000s, local warlords decided that the nation’s mobile phone network was becoming an unacceptable risk. So they shut it down.
Sometimes the outages in Afghanistan were only during the night or sporadically enforced. Quite often, though, the Taliban simply blew up cellphone masts so that they could never be operational.