I’m guessing Musk could easily have Starlink cut them off if he wanted to. It’s not exactly hard for them to geographically locate one of their base stations.
The problem is that both sides are using it and both sides are in the same general area. So cutting off a device on Russian soil could very well be a special forces group planning sabotage.
There are definitely solutions but they all involve giving a Russian agent direct knowledge of troop movements.
There are definitely solutions but they all involve giving a Russian agent direct knowledge of troop movements.
Starlink terminals are activated using a unique identifier. It’s how billing works.
SpaceX knows which terminals have been provided to Ukraine. We know they can geofence service. Geofencing the Ukrainian theater to terminals that were provided to Ukraine shouldn’t be a massive technical leap and doesn’t provide any information they don’t already have.
SpaceX knows which terminals have been provided to Ukraine.
They know which ones they’ve provided to Ukraine. Hardware like that has been and is still being donated through third parties daily.
Now, they could have Ukraine tell them which terminals are in use, including anything they’ve gotten from elsewhere, including stolen back from Russia, and use that to manage, but that would require the CEO of the company to actually want to help honestly.
Hardware like that has been and is still being donated through third parties daily.
It’s more in Ukraine’s interest to limit the use of Starlink to only those terminals that have been vetted through official channels than to allow blanket use and try to filter out things through other means due to… the exact kinds of situations this article is talking about.
but that would require the CEO of the company to actually want to help honestly.
Sure. And part of the reason we know Starlink is entirely capable of geofencing is because Elon’s done it explicitly to stop Ukraine from being able to operate near Crimea. That whole kerfuffle lead to military usage being pushed over to Starshield and a contract with the US government that gives them explicit say on when and where Starlink works in Ukraine.
Elon is dumber than a bag of hammers but it’d be next level stupid even for him to willingly break a DOD contract, especially when people were already floating the idea of invoking the Defense Production Act last time around.
Precisely. It’s not rocket science. And SpaceX is literally doing rocket science. This is a fully solvable problem. Eel on musk just doesn’t want to solve it.
For very obvious reasons, Ukraine may not want musk to have every single units position. Let alone groups that supplemented their own resources with Amazon.
Could starlink figure this out? Yes. But it would make everyone involved uncomfortable to know the theoretical has become documented and easily searchable.
I bet money Russia starts getting absurdly good. And they’ll have really good info. And it will be because of starlink.
Location info shouldn’t be needed, though. (Even though they should technically be able retrieve location data from any terminal on their own already. It’s all their hardware and network.) They should be able to geoblock traffic from Ukraine/Russia while having a kind of Allow filter for the terminals they know they provided for use by Ukraine.
It’s the same concept as blocking a country’s domains but allowing certain domains of that country through for emails. They just need to setup a “spam” filter.
Again, that assumes that Ukraine want a company run by a Russian asset to know every single device.
But also? There is a lot of value in civilians being able to reach the outside world as well. Especially under an occupation.
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You know what’s weird? There’s an Xfinity wi-fi access point near me, but unless I have the right credentials, I can’t log in.
Yet I’m in the same area as others who can log in. What gives???
Almost like, I dunno, there are other ways to block people besides being completely location-based. Especially when we are talking about military-use.
I would think you could wait until Russia took over a town and then cut off Starlink to that town until Ukraine makes advances.
Same problem
“Hey musk? Could you restore service to this town at 2 am on Wednesday? No reason but also please don’t tell putin or trump.”
Cool, except that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying the Ukraine military tells Starlink where the Russians are and they block them. Then if they move, the Ukraine military tells them that. I’m guessing Putin already knows where his own troops are and I’m guessing Starlink has a phone number, as does the Ukrainian military.
Why would Russia move? I’ll give you a hint: it involves shooting at them.
So unless Ukraine wants to not be able to communicate with recon units before every attack…
So unless Ukraine wants to not be able to communicate with recon units before every attack…
You mean like with a phone? You’re right, not possible.
Explains why Musk is supporting Trump so hard, a Harris admin will ask hard questions about stuff like lol
I 1000% believe that Musk sees Trump as his only way out of all of this… Especially with Twitter losing so much money.
If you look at Nazi history, fascism and big business have a very close relationship. He wants to be the Henry Ford of the New American Nazi Party (AKA the GOP).
He wishes he was Henry Ford. But also… fuck Henry Ford.
When you look at the regulatory environment and enforcement under the Trump admin, even before they were best buds, it’s very clear that Elon is absolutely terrified of a Harris administration. The moment Biden took office, he was almost instantly under investigation from basically every letter agency in the USA, and they’ve been slowly chipping away at his Jenga tower of fraud. He sees Trump as the only way to hold on to his ill-gotten gains and avoid a prison cell.
Not shocking a sociopath would choose a sociopath as a role model.
You forgot the Catholic church. But that was for different reasons…
a Harris admin will ask hard questions about stuff like lol
Harris is in power right now… Literally as we speak and has several more months. This has been going on for months already. What makes you think she’s going to do anything when she hasn’t thus-far? I’ve seen at least a half-dozen articles on similar outcomes of “Elon’s technology is aiding Russia”. For well over a year now. If she hasn’t done jack shit about it for the past 12 fucking months… and will not for the next 3 she’s still in power… What in the ever living fuck makes you think she’s going to do anything about it at all?
Edit: I recognize that Trump won’t do shit about it either. I’m not backing Trump here. Just finding it laughable that people think Kamala will either when she’s done nothing against it before.
Either you have no idea how the government works or you’re lying.
Vice presidents have absolutely no power to affect anything at all in the US government. The only power they do have is to break a tie in the Senate which never happens.
You are wholly wrong.
https://www.usconstitution.net/vice-presidents-constitutional-powers/
For one, constitutionally they have several additional powers that you neglected to outline, not just the one you provided. This also assumes that we’re talking about a president and vice-president who are hostile to each other and not actively working together, you know… how it originally was when #1 vote became president and #2 became vice-president, which hasn’t been a thing in over 200 years now.
For two… https://youtube.com/watch?v=81gnQ4Xo9Wc&t=12m50s
Biden says: “She helped passed all the laws being employed now. She’s a major player in everything we’ve done. Including passes of legislation which we were told we could never pass”
If she’s so “powerless” then why is the President stating that she’s been instrumental to passing all that legislation? You act like Biden wouldn’t/doesn’t listen to her. And if that is indeed what you’re asserting, then there’s no point in discussing anything further with you since the man himself said otherwise. Which does indeed include everything that he’s assigned to the vice-president over the years. I’m a bit too lazy to pull up all the cases where he’s said that himself… I’m sure we can agree that it’s happened a few times though.
The fact that you want to make some assumption that she has no power simply because the constitution doesn’t directly give her all that much in the form of power ignores the fact that Biden clearly relies on her quite heavily by his own admission. She has power. You’re bullshitting me and everyone who reads your post.
Edit: Oh! and also… you stated that tie breaks never happen. That’s funny because Kamala even exercised that power 33 times.
https://ballotpedia.org/Tie-breaking_votes_cast_by_Kamala_Harris_in_the_U.S._Senate
for something that “never happens” seems to have happened a lot. Nearly once a month for her whole term. So yes, you are wholly wrong on everything you stated outside of the tie break being one of her current powers.
Nothing to see here, just Musk enabling fascism and genocide, as per usual
“Illegal”
Kyiv and Washington face difficulties solving the problem of Russian use of Starlink, analysts have said, especially … the technical challenge of denying access to the Starlink network without affecting Ukrainian troops.
SpaceX … said it deactivates terminals if used “by a sanctioned or unauthorized party.”Not that I like Musk, but, this really seems like a tough case of whack-a-mole rather than Starlink deliberately helping Russia or looking the other way. Also,
Interrupting the software update process and tweaking GPS settings can get it working in Russia, said a Ukrainian drone pilot operating there.
So even using a whitelist of IDs may not be enough if the Russians are good enough to register a terminal in the EU and then forge the GPS to make it look like the terminal is still somewhere in the EU.
Basically it seems like Starlink is trying to cooperate but it’s just not a simple fix.
To activate a device, users need a foreign phone number, email and bank account to pay the monthly subscription fee, prompting suppliers to seek out people willing to lend their identities. Users in “client support” Telegram chats say it is easy to buy and register Starlink kits abroad. Most are obtained in Europe and transported through the United Arab Emirates. One page warns not to activate the terminal in Russia.
Wow, they are really going quite a long way to avoid detection!
Turn them all off except the ones explicitly tied to Ukraine military and government.
They’re forging the GPS to look like it’s in the EU. Do we turn off all the EU terminals too?
I’m a little surprised they can’t identify spoofing by comparing the incoming signal to the proposed location. They already have antennas that can be steered using the phased array.
You answered your owm question right there.
No we dont shut off the eu, we shut off any terminals picked up by sattelites over ukraine and Russia. They have multiple satellites and could discern position from which satellites see them when.
Across the whole wide world? So only Ukraine’s military and gov’t can use them? (And maybe a few related exceptions, e.g. for US gov’t and military.)
That would do the trick, I think (except for the rare case of the Russians capturing a terminal from a Ukraine unit and then using it before Ukraine can notify Starlink to deactivate it).
Probably a major money losing proposition for Starlink, but on the other hand, does Musk really need any more money?
In the conflict area you could ban all terminals that are not tied to Ukraine. Not worldwide. As satellites enter conflict area they will receive traffic from new terminals, check are these terminals registered to the good guys and turn off all others.
I think that’s what they were trying to do with the GPS tracking, and why the Russians started spoofing the GPS location. So the illegal terminal would think it’s in Poland or some other part of the EU rather than being in the conflict area.
I wonder though if GPS is the end here though. The actual signal from the terminal to the Starlink satellites itself - that can probably be triangulated. Perhaps with less accuracy than GPS but … so do all the things you said, plus: if the triangulated signal somehow doesn’t match the GPS coordinates by too big a difference, shut the terminal down.
There still remains the case of Russian military units killing a Ukraine unit and stealing the terminal before they have a chance to deactivate it. However, first eventually HQ will realize that the unit is unaccounted for and cancel it so it only has a limited window to be used, and second it would cost the Russians quite a bit in human life to acquire terminals in this manner, hopefully high enough that they won’t be willing to pay it at all.
Jesus christ, it’s a second time in the past 5 minutes that I see another post about some “news” that’s just “remember the bad guy? Yea, he’s still at it, just did the same thing as last time again, mmhm, it’s the news where new things happen.”. Not saying it’s bad to reported this, but I’m getting really fucking sick of shit not changing. We knew that Elon loved playing war games basically since the beginning, doing shit like disabling starlink in the middle of missions. There’s no rule of law in the US, MAGA is proof of that.
You seriously don’t think this is newsworthy? What a strange reaction.
Not saying it’s bad to reported [sic] this, but I’m getting really fucking sick of shit not changing.
No, they’re saying they’re sick of all the obvious corruption and obvious bullshit going unpunished.
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