I would like to believe there is a future where blocking access to the internet is unilaterally impossible. Major powers being able to pull the rug on what has become a foundation of modern society like this is too scary of a thing to allow. What could the answer be? Satellite-powered relays and DIY-able user devices to talk to them?

There is no unstoppable tech, it's usually 100x cheaper to destroy than to build (a defining trait of our ever changing universe).

That said, I find FreakWAN [1] (from the creator of Redis) a very interesting low-cost, low-powered communication protocol that can go VERY far[2]

[1] https://github.com/antirez/freakwan

[2] https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1632664864538738688