Illegal Starlink terminals helped Russia advance at front line, particularly in capturing Vuhledar.
Illegal Starlink terminals helped Russia advance at front line, particularly in capturing Vuhledar
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
See the explanation in the source article https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/12/starlink-russia-ukraine-elon-musk/
It is pretty much what was answered to you, when it's on the frontline it is very hard to know if it's Ukrainian or Russian usage, even in Russia now that the Ukrainians did an incursion. Ukrainian themselves are worried to be cutoff by geo fencing.
About the billing account, there is a well organized black market that will use European identities and bank accounts before selling the service to Russians.
I don't think people would particularly mind if their Portuguese account didn't work, specifically, on the Ukrainian front line. Unless they're Russian soldiers in which case boo-hoo. The only accounts who should work anywhere close to the Ukrainian-Russian border should be Ukrainian army ones.
I feel like they’ve got to have something like MAC address filtering that they could easily employ in combination with geofencing. Specifically, have the Ukrainians give the MACs of transceivers they’re using in/near contested areas, and only let those have connectivity. To not have that would be kinda insane.
Also, Musk just doesn’t want to, because he thinks it’s better if the Russians win.
Really a bit shocked the DoD isn’t stepping in over this matter and how he’s handling it.
It's paywalled. And I'm pretty sure they could work with the Ukrainian military so they can say "turn it off over in this place."
How is it hard to send an RSA key to the Ukrainians and geofence every starlink in the region that doesn't provide it.
You could collect Serial Numbers from any node that moves from inside of russian space to outside of russian space and hard block them.
This would even keep units that move from Ukraine to Russia working in the case of Ukrainian military using it.
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.
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.
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.