Unreported World Season 2025 Episode 4 - Elon Musk's Rainforest Revolution

Airdate: 2025-Apr-04

Episode summary:

Unreported World reports from Brazil, where Elon Musk's Starlink is transforming isolated tribes living in the Amazon. Reporter Guillermo Galdos travels deep inside the rainforest to find out if the internet revolution is for better or worse. The Amazon is the internet's final frontier, and the Javari Valley reserve is home to the largest concentration of uncontacted tribes in the world. Starlink antennas have divided Marubo leaders, who disagree on whether its immediate benefits outweigh the possible long-term loss of their culture and way of life. In the village of São Sebastião, which lies 500 miles by river from the nearest city, Galdos meets Cloves and his 13-year-old son Wany. Cloves introduced Starlink to the village, believing the internet would help with healthcare and education. But the impact of screens showing the outside world was immediate, and in just 18 months most of the village's teenagers have left. On a boat patrol in an area renowned for the illegal smuggling of gold, timber and drugs, Indigenous communities are using Starlink to protect the Amazon's precious resources. But criminals also use the technology to help their operations, and government agencies responsible for the Javari Valley are taking a keen interest in those bringing Starlink to the Amazon.

About Unreported World series:

Unreported World is a foreign affairs programme produced by Quicksilver Media Productions and broadcast by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. Over th...Show more >