Emily Schrader reveals leaked August 2025 regime documents describing an eight-year blueprint to cut Iranians off from the global internet, force them onto state-run platforms, criminalize VPN use and supercharge mass surveillance with AI, while allegedly leaning on Chinese-style infrastructure and capabilities tied by experts to Huawei. You’ll learn how “temporary” shutdowns become institutional control, why the regime wants its cyberspace authority insulated from elections and how this information-war architecture intersects with escalating U.S.-Iran tensions and stalled negotiations. The episode then pivots to grim reporting on abuse in detention and a widening crackdown, before closing with a sharp “good, bad, ugly” roundup that shows how propaganda, influencers and Western court decisions can all become accelerants in a regional firestorm.