Undersea cables get cut occasionally, fiber gets disconnected...s##t happens. I'm not even talking about anything intentional.
Edit. But to answer your question, some activists in the middle east have some stories to tell you. It doesn't have to be literally cut, state mandated filtering works too. Good luck jamming a HAM radio set.
Not sure if your last sentence is sarcasm or otherwise, but radio jamming is trivial for state actors if they really tried. It's been matter of fact since radio was invented and the cold war has plenty of episodes of broadcasts being jammed by both sides.
That's true. Didn't think that part through. Still, even in cases where there isn't overt jamming or filtering, it seems like the ability to set up direct, long-distance connections would make a big difference in how the internet is structured.
No need for luck jamming a ham radio operator. Even the most permissive ham licenses only allow a maximum of 1.5kW PEP with many bands limited to 200W. Ham bands also aren't very wide which means it would is trivial for a state actor to jam them.
But an unfriendly government doesn't even need to bother with jamming. A ham (or pirate operator) relaying Internet traffic over radio would be trivially easy to find. It's fairly easy to triangulate the location of a transmitter, especially one constantly keyed up. A government frowning on such activity would just triangulate the transmitter and go arrest the operator. An extremely unfriendly government would just blow up the station, operator and all.
If you want to make some decentralized network go buy some cantennas, leave hams out of it.
State mandated filtering will affect you regardless of physical medium. Running radio will not make it especially harder. If they want to get you, they'll either impose laws, or send people knocking down your door. They don't need to jam or cut anything.
