Declan Ganley’s Rivada Networks is developing an “Outernet” that is immune to the accidents and malice that can sever and sometimes have severed the undersea cables tying the current global Internet together.
When the Chinese Communist Party failed to lure Ganley into a lucrative partnership so that the Party could control his project, it slugged him with all manner of lawfare (The Epoch Times, November 18, 2025).
Every existing global communication network, including Starlink, currently passes through the internet—a porous “public highway” rife with malicious threats, according to Ganley, CEO of telecom firm Rivada Networks.
The Outernet, on the other hand, is “completely self-contained”: The signals stay in space, traveling through laser-linked satellite networks directly to users, bypassing traditional ground infrastructure….
Three years in and about 160 legal exchanges later, Ganley said he’s pressing on.
“We will fight every lawsuit that the Chinese bring, as we have done,” he said. “We will win them all, as we have been doing.”
Backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel and with a contract to serve the U.S. Navy, the Outernet is set to deploy 600 satellites in early 2026, and Ganley said the Chinese regime is working hard to ensure that doesn’t happen. He said his opponents have hinted that the lawfare decision “goes right to the top.”
Ganley’s struggle with the CCP goes back to 2022, when he wrested “spectrum permits from Chinese control” by buying a Liechtenstein company. Not long after, he was approached by a Chinese businessman who offered Ganley $7.5 billion to partner with him (or him and the Chinese Communist Party).
The man laid out his terms. The project would launch from China using satellites manufactured there. The service would immediately cover China, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Ganley could keep some operations in Germany; the rest would happen in China.
The man didn’t say it out loud, but Ganley said there was an implicit message: “If you don’t do this, your life will be miserable. The lawfare will increase, and we are going to make sure that this project will not happen.”
Ganley chose to walk away.
And because he did walk away, Rivada Networks did get hit with tons of lawfare that, because baseless, eventually got shot down in courts; but because relentless, has thus far chewed up more than $36 million in legal fees.
“We’ve had $36 million so far of stick, and we’re not taking the carrot, and we will never take the carrot, and they don’t like that.” In a cynical age, any manifestation of integrity may seem to require a special explanation. Which path to follow seemed pretty simple to Ganley, who “made up his mind early on to never do business in communist China. ‘I have a soul to be accountable for,’ he said.”
