I don't think it's always true. It seems like it would have to depend on how the nation state responds to its citizens when the nation state does things like break large portions of the web. And what actual economic leverage the state has (or could bring to bear) over the company.
Losing the citizenry might be more politically damaging faster than economically damaging to X/Starlink.
> Provide evidence Brazil will lose the citizenry over this.
Just this month, people literally got out of their homes, went out and onto the street, assembled and protested this judge, demanding his impeachment. This happened in seven of our capitals.
https://www.ft.com/content/142a6d95-b06e-47e3-a605-a203e2bc4...
https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-moraes-bolsonaro-sa...
https://g1.globo.com/jornal-nacional/noticia/2024/09/07/mani...
While this was going down, the judge was apparently attending a barbecue with the ruling party. They made fun of the protesters. "Your homages have already begun", they are reported to have said to him.
> Losing the citizenry might be more politically damaging faster than economically damaging to X/Starlink.
Provide evidence Brazil will lose the citizenry over this. It appears that Brazil has been surgical in directing access restrictions to X; millions of X social followers have moved to Bluesky [1], and while Starlink customers might be impacted (~250k terminals) who cannot access X, they are not a majority in any sense (based on ground station count; 250k vs a Brazil population of 215.3 million people).
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It's also easy to get caught in the trap to believe that other people think how one's own self thinks [2].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41550053
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect