As of today, it marked three days from the start of PLN's decision to cut-off several areas of my province's electricity. During which, communication is rendered unavailable for several providers. Mainly Telkomsel, which, a lot of people are using.

I'm not one to correlate things, that's conspiracy talk. Conspiracy will always be conspiracy. This blog post is not at all about the links between these facts.

It's just a collection of facts, after all.

There is a rise of crime in Indonesia

Throughout 2025, police data shows a rise in criminal activity. More than 13.000 cases compared to previous year. By early 2026, recorded crime reached 81.166 cases.

Nationwide, 414.812 crime cases have occurred and reported and cataloged by police by the end of 2025. This means that crime, in Indonesia, can be said to be rising.

Of course, these are just recorded criminal cases. Things that happened and is actively shared across the Indonesian space.

Indonesia is pursuing a digitized future

Communication and social networking is the top reason Indonesia uses the internet. The government is also digitizing itself. Just look at SPBE, the digital ID card, and all of those.

Government, of course, also meant taxes and police systems. Coretax is the main example of digitization in tax system.

What about the people's security and reporting of accidents, disasters, riots, harassment, threats, and violence? Those are of course, sent through the INA Digital portal. A portal that needed the internet.

The internet needs the physical infrastructure

Every cell signal runs on a main AC power stepped down and rectified to DC. During citywide blackouts, even the batteries these towers has would die down.

A grid outage in an area affects every tower and transmission node. A citizen's home internet is dead because the router power's gone. A citizen's phone signal drops because the power to the towers are also lost.

PLN is doing blackouts

There are recorded massive blackouts in Sumatra, Java, and Kalimantan. All approved by PLN. They are also corroborated by PLN's social media, stating that it's because of a disturbance on a component of the plant itself.

But PLN has said it's just because of bad weather. It has been a bad string of weathers recently.

One good thing about PLN's current blackouts is that they updated social media often. Though, some places are not mentioned. So people are still blindsided over which area are actually going to get blackouts.

Effects of isolation and restricted access towards a certain population

On the cognitive level, a population cut off from information tend to lose calibration about how the world actually works. This condition makes competing narratives unable to spread organically. Making a cave with lights for shadows to dance around easier to construct.

Groupthink, conformity, all of that would foster. Especially without any conduit for dissent.

Historically, authoritarian system use this deliberately so that people struggle to organize.

Endnote

There's nothing to add nor subtract. These are just a series of facts. Maybe there's a correlation, but I don't know.

I won't know, really.