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SpaceX is reportedly building a $1.8 billion network of spy satellites for US intelligence
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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He's already selling to both sides with Starlink. Who is to say Musk won't be doing the same with this? He's really playing up the Bond Villain stereotype.
root password: "putin6969"
In the recent Musk biography it was said that at some point after a meeting with NASA he changed his laptop password to “ilovenasa” so you’re not far off in terms of terrible password security if the story is accurate.
I'm getting Deus Ex vibes
I spill my drink!
A lot wrong here, I'm sorry to say, and I'm really not a fan of Musk. He is absolutely not selling Starlink to be used by Russia. That would be shut down real quick. (They may be using black-market terminals, but that's a different question.) And this new constellation will, as I understand it, be owned and operated by the US govt. Think like every single spy satellite ever: govt finds a contractor and asks them to do a thing.
Oh, right. They couldnt possibly make another and sell that to someone else, oh wait...
or
You're (probably knowingly) spreading disinformation if you're implying SpaceX is selling Starlink terminals to Russia. You have no moral standing to criticize them if you yourself are spreading lies.
It's not disinformation at all. Russians are using Starlink on the battlefield. SpaceX knew, and didn't report it. Russians continue to use it without any remediation from SpaceX yet. That sure as shit meets the bare minimum in my book as complicity.
Why are you on here being a fence or fact checker for Russia and SpaceX anyway? Fuck Russia, and Fuck Elon Musk.
We will find out soon enough. https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-russia-elon-musk-democrats-2024-3
Showing our true feelings now, are we?
And people laugh when I say both sides are idiots. bothsides lmao! yeah? but they do X while I sit here and do X! so you can see how dumb and stupid they are right guise!
That's enough Lemmy for me today.
The accusation being made here is not about Russia using Starlink but about SpaceX selling them to both sides for which I haven't seen any evidence for. You can not like Musk all you want but making statements like that as if it's an established fact is dishonest. It implies malice when the most likely explanation is that these terminals simply just were obtained via 3rd parties. Starlink doesn't work in Russia or in the occupied territories but it does work near the front lines because Ukraine is using them there so if Russians are able to obtain an active terminal somehow then there's a good chance it will work.
You also seem to be implying that SpaceX isn't doing anything about it. What are you basing this on? How could you know? They've said that they're going to disable all terminals found out to be used by sanctioned parties and I don't see any reason to assume they're not doing this. For all we know they could have disabled hundreds if not thousands terminals by now. Ofcourse if you have evidence to the contrary then I'm interested in seeing it.
Because I have no dog in the fight and I only care about the truth. I have zero interest in the anti-Elon circlejerk - I'm just trying to figure out what's actually going on.
Would you rather he, as a non-government affiliated citizen, pick a side? War is stupid. Communication is great. Maybe this is naive of me, but I think the world would be better, and maybe require less war, if everyone had equal access to communication.
The fuck are you talking about? These are surveillance satellites, not some unity communications empowering satellites or something.
Surveillance is a usecase for communication. I can't think of a communications technology that hasn't been (ab)used for surveillance... Books even! Historically people have been prosecuted due to the books they possess! Should our target of ire be the entity building the network? Or the entity wanting to use it for surveillance? The vibe I'm getting from this thread is that folks would prefer the US government, via NASA or otherwise, have control of the whole thing instead.
You have no idea how a spy satellite works, do you?
They take pictures.
With really, really fancy cameras.
Cameras that are very carefully, and secretly, designed to be very good at their jobs.
No, you can’t just let some third party decide to use your fancy spy satellite, that means they now know what your satellite can and can’t do, which means they can hide things from it, which means it’s now just a very expensive lump in orbit.
And need I remind you that SpaceX is not some magical self funded space ferry service. They’re a US Government contractor, that’s where most of their money comes from. The satellites are made by other contractors. There’s not a government satellite factory somewhere in the desert, they pay companies like Boeing and Honeywell to make them the parts for the satellite, and then SpaceX gets money to launch it.
When the government pays for something, the contractor is legally required to keep their mouth shut about it, hand over the keys, and be available if it breaks. The contractor cannot just decide to let someone else play with the government’s toys, that’s called espionage.
It really is. We're not discussing the philosophy of free and open communication, we're talking about a single narcissist who has been given money and power and how that's a problem.
Science fiction of the 90s was the time to discuss philosophy. We didn't come to a conclusion then. The future is now. A global low latency, highly available communications network is technologically inevitable. In our timeline, a rich narcissist has gathered enough support and competence around himself to start building that network. So now we have real, concrete questions that need answers: who should have access to that network, and who should decide?
The way I see it, the options are (besides opening the network for everyone globally):
Do you have another suggestion?
Then what are we even discussing? we've had orbital cameras for decades. These are just networked better and launched different?
This is a huge network (hundreds) of very low orbit satellites, making surveillance far closer to realtime, with more global coverage, with presumably a higher resolution. Since there are so many of them they’re also more resistant to anti-satellite weapons than traditional surveillance assets.
Remember that the existing Keyhole satellites are basically the same build as the Hubble Space Telescope, meaning fewer, larger, more expensive satellites. This is a huge leap in capability.
And what, you want to be able to use spy satellites to see your neighbor sunbathing in the backyard?
These are military satellites, to look at military shit like what planes an enemy has on the runway and how many, where tanks are on a battlefield, if a convoy is getting ready to leave a depot and how many vehicles it has. Not to mention, what they are even capable of seeing is a matter of national security. If an enemy knows your satellite only has a certain resolution, they can figure out exactly what camouflage they need to defeat it. If they know how the infrared photography works, they can develop strategies to fake the number of functional vehicles they have. Not everyone in the whole world should know that shit. Otherwise the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States should just pack up and retire.
We already have a global low latency communication network, it’s the thing I’m sending you this message on now. When we don’t need is a global, high quality, spy satellite network that everyone and their brother can use and learn the capabilities of.
Exactly my point. YOU don’t need a surveillance network. The US government DOES. And what do you know, this constellation was purchased by the US military, and is entirely for their exclusive use.
This constellation is being purchased from SpaceX but is not going to be operated by SpaceX. I’m not sure why everyone thinks this is the same as Starlink as if it were a consumer product.
Because Elon is both smart and stupid enough to build in a personal backdoor.
Elon barely does anything at SpaceX these days. No doubt this deal is being run by Shotwell instead.
I would rather they fund NASA to the fullest, and nationalize SpaceX under them.
So that the US government can more directly use starlink for surveillance?
Sure, they won't sell it to Russia at least
Communications are important, which is why they're one of the number one things an invader disrupts upon invasion: communications systems. Disrupting your enemies communications is incredibly common and to act like simply because Musk is "offering communications" means he's a good guy is such a simplistic fucking take I want to blow my brains out.
Maybe you should read some McLuhan or some Debord.
Do you have any particular pieces of theirs you can recommend I read?
I don't consider Musk, by any means, to be "a good guy". Ideally, I'd just rather let SpaceX keep building out starlink for the good of the world and have it be a medium for communication that is difficult to disable.
Why do we need to kill our enemies at this point in our civilization even? it's barbaric and ridiculous. The state of the art of weaponry right now is trending towards remote operations. How long until it just becomes BattleBots but with collateral damage? When do we get to world leaders settling disputes in a game of Worms?
Musk is a massive POS that cannot be trusted to maintain equal access to that communication.
What don't you grasp about that?
I recently read about Ted Hall who shared nuclear secrets with the Soviet Union because he thought everyone should have equal access to nuclear weapons and this would prevent another world war.
Your logic is similar and it's not a good thing.
Putting aside the fact that this is a bit of a straw man, multiple countries having nuclear capability is the only thing preventing nuclear war. Russia does not nuke the US (or allies) because they know the US will respond with a nuclear launch of its own. same for the other way around. Awareness and access to similar capabilities makes everyone think twice about becoming the aggressor. if I had to pick, a cold war is preferable to a hot one.