The signal doesn't have to take down everything. Just a critical mass to take the world down. For example, if it couldn't get the hospital, it could get the power companies nearby. Or take down the next town over and overrun the functional town.

I'm pretty sure his elevated privilege was the gun (or bomb or whatever, it's been a minute since I read it).

The funder probably got to chose where the money went. And Kern wanted a monkey planet. I think the goal was to establish communication with them.

I think they found people were living there, and IIRC, that's how the book ends, with them headed back to earth.

I can't speak for the military thing. I don't remember it well enough.

[–] Ioughttamow@fedia.io 1 points 3 days ago

I still find it doubtful a single signal, sent out from earth, would be sufficient to do anything to a colony world, let alone even a run down rock hopper. I’d think that kind of attack would require a local agent in a sustained attack. I would expect ships and colony worlds to be fairly hardened against electronic warfare, especially important subsystems, which I would imagine might be set to not accept remote commands at all. Yeah often in the real world security is lax, but messing up doesn’t usually prevent us from breathing

I think the observation tech locked all other crew out of ship controls and then blew the ship by overloading the drives. Maybe I’m misremembering. I though kern only got through and released the monkeys and virus because he had neglected the coffin

I just find it unbelievable that the first terraformed world, which must be heinously expensive, would be used as an experiment instead of a colony

I thought the signal at the end was from the world from the next book, I didn’t read it though so idk

I swear they mentioned military personnel distinct from security personnel during the failed initial rebellion, but could be misremembering