Seems like after his satellite shenanigans in Ukraine, the US would be more.. cautious.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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Or there is more to that story than we know as the general public.
That this whole war is orchestrated by the deep state which has private corporations as a branch of government just like every other war waged since WWII (the last real war)?
Literally why is anybody shocked?
This. Musk disabled Starlink to fark over the Ukrainians. He should not be trusted with any military contracts. Ever.
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.
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...
Making boatloads of money
or
Making far less money along with loss of freedom for decades, or fleeing and sanctions while having your every shart logged...
I'm getting Deus Ex vibes
I spill my drink!
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.
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.
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.
I would rather they fund NASA to the fullest, and nationalize SpaceX under them.
Maybe this is naive of me
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.
Musk is a massive POS that cannot be trusted to maintain equal access to that communication.
What don't you grasp about that?
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.
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.
Why are you on here being a fence or fact checker for Russia and SpaceX anyway?
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.
We will find out soon enough. https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-russia-elon-musk-democrats-2024-3
why are you fact checking anyway?
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.
straight up supervillain shit, as always
" . . . for U.S. intelligence."
Yeah. Sure. Right. Musk will sell Intelligence to ANYONE who pays for it and US taxpayers will foot the entire bill for constructing the satellite network.
And then all the contractors and politicians will all pretend to be surprised by this and Musk will get the finger-wagging of a lifetime.
Seems problematic, considering what a fuckwad musk is.
Having mega corporations design space networks for you sounds like a great idea until they decide to lock you out and hold your government hostage. Or sell intel… Or sell access to other actors….
Just admit it—the corporations run the world at this point.
Nah, part of this is specifically that the US government owns it. This isn't SpaceX just providing access. Think of the US government buying an F-35 or something.
I imagine that might be because they want to do things with it that'd be riskier than what SpaceX does with SpaceX's constellation -- i.e. adversaries might aim to dick it up.
Just spitballing here, but it will get hacked and cause a major problem, if not a crisis.
They'll probably all drop out of orbit before that happens though. I give it a week from launch.
The more ridiculous, the more plausible, because it has happened. 😂