Starlink's conquest of the Amazon leaves Brazil in a dilemma

The helicopter swooped into one of the most inaccessible corners of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian special forces commandos leaped from it into the caiman-inhabited waters below.

- Tom Phillips

Their target, lurking in the woodland along Brazil's Bóia River, was a hulking steel mining dredge, caught drilling into the riverbed in search of gold. Onboard, troops from the national environmental agency, Ibama, and the federal highway police found tools from this illegal industry.

They also found a sleek white receiver made by Elon Musk's satellite internet firm Starlink, which is at the centre of a showdown between Brazilian authorities and the US billionaire that last month resulted in his social network X being blocked in South America's biggest country.

"It's a satellite internet antenna that provides communications to this whole criminal network," a special forces combatant said. It is one of scores taken from such criminals this year. "We find it everywhere now every mining dredge has at least one of them," he added of the antenna.