There are some weird assumptions in your question.
Assumption 1: a government is able to shut down its entire internet, and block off all electronic communications.
This assumption is fine. There are multiple historical examples of governments of doing this.
When a government does this though, there is no network split. A network split is when you have 2 networks that are cut off from one another. The government "shutting off the internet" does not create 2 networks. it make the population of the country have zero access to ANY network. Which means no split.
Which leads us to:
Assumption 2: A government is able to cut off access to the OUTSIDE internet, while also maintaining an INTERNAL network that can talk to each other, but not talk to the outside world.
This is basically impossible. There are no examples of governments being able to do this in any significant capacity.
Sure, there is some attempted internet censorship in countries like China, but the great firewall is extremely leaky. And even if it were 99% effective, 99% effective isn't good enough.
In order to partition the bitcoin network, you do not need to make it impossible for 99% of the population to get access to the outside world. You need to stop 100%, with no margin for error. This is because as soon as a SINGLE node is able to get access to the outside world, it can rebroadcast the information to all internal nodes.
Assumption 1: a government is able to shut down its entire internet, and block off all electronic communications.
This assumption is fine. There are multiple historical examples of governments of doing this.
When a government does this though, there is no network split. A network split is when you have 2 networks that are cut off from one another. The government "shutting off the internet" does not create 2 networks. it make the population of the country have zero access to ANY network. Which means no split.
Which leads us to:
Assumption 2: A government is able to cut off access to the OUTSIDE internet, while also maintaining an INTERNAL network that can talk to each other, but not talk to the outside world.
This is basically impossible. There are no examples of governments being able to do this in any significant capacity.
Sure, there is some attempted internet censorship in countries like China, but the great firewall is extremely leaky. And even if it were 99% effective, 99% effective isn't good enough.
In order to partition the bitcoin network, you do not need to make it impossible for 99% of the population to get access to the outside world. You need to stop 100%, with no margin for error. This is because as soon as a SINGLE node is able to get access to the outside world, it can rebroadcast the information to all internal nodes.