The dual-use problem with Starlink is really just the most visible version of something happening across the military. Phones with civilian GPS chips are increasingly used alongside dedicated mil-spec hardware, simply because the commercial stuff is more usable and gets updated faster.
The real strategic question isn't whether Starlink can be weaponized - of course it can - it's what happens when military operations become dependent on commercial infrastructure that a single company controls. The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict.
This is what the US’s defense production act is for. If a company makes a critical product, the US has openly stated that it will compel a company to prioritize making that product in times of need. They can’t refuse. This is also why the US wants all of its key systems to be US made- they cannot be held hostage by a foreign entity.
There’s obviously a few areas where this isn’t really true, like a foreign company setting up a US company to sell their product, but by and large the US is immune to the risks you describe. China similarly makes most of their own systems and is mostly immune. A large scale WW3 between the US and China cannot be stopped by a company refusing to participate.
> simply because the commercial stuff is more usable and gets updated faster.
And this isn't a new pattern by any means. Decades ago the UK military had a plan to replace their old analog centric radio gear with a system that integrated voice, data, gps blue force tracking etc. They called it BOWMAN.
The initial versions were so bad everyone started calling it Better Off With Map And Nokia.
The defense establishment moves at a glacial pace and consistently under delivers vs the equivalent commodity commercial products.
Had no idea about that, went down a rabbit hole researching it. It's a pattern that keeps repeating: by the time mil-spec hardware ships, the commercial equivalent is two generations ahead.
There’s a structural reason for that. Mil-spec hardware requires years of data on the failure modes of components to properly design. NASA has the same problem and in the last decade or two they’ve been relaxing that requirement for less critical missions because technology sped up so much.
For the military that won’t change until there’s an existential threat.
> There’s a structural reason for that. Mil-spec hardware requires years of data on the failure modes of components to properly design.
By now you pretty much know how it can break and what are the most common issues with hardware. No one invented a new type of EMP for example that can pass through the holes in a Faraday cage for example. The water in the ocean did not became ten times more acidic that hardware requires more protection.
A wild guess: you can strap an iPhone to a military grade radio kit to help with jamming and what not, and have a very usable product. Or whatever modern phone. You then swap them out easily and you are always up to date on capabilities. Cell towers are upgraded less frequently than phone hardware. Same thing with the military stuff.
I think a great part in this plays industry inertia and vendor and too much money that could be lost. “This is how things are done” and it costs $10,000 per screw because “it is certified”.
The recent war showed that you can use commercial drones with a grenade or two strapped to them in very effective ways. Not to mention the more “advanced” ones that you still go to the store and buy them.
We need more defense startups and a lot less red tape to iterate as fast as possible.
Until Starlink, you had hundreds of milliseconds of latency for satellite internet. Now it feels a lot more like you are on mobile data on a phone.
Incumbments had no reason to offer a better experience because there was no competition. Now they’ve been left in the dust because of Starlink.
The existential threat will be very instant when an enemy with no milspec equipment punches you hard in the face. And catching up will not be easy nor fast.
Isn't virtually all military hardware and software single-sourced? Ultimately they trust the supplier and have good contracts. I imagine the US military is migrating to Starshield over time where they have a better SLA.
Military connectors (e.g. MIL-STD-38999) are deeply multi sourced, like you can buy compatible connector sets from Souriau, Amphenol, ITT Cannon, some others. So it depends.
The other consideration is that the kill switch is ultimately controlled by the US. The US government can easily commandeer Starlink or jail Musk, but other countries use starlink at the pleasure of both Musk and the US government.
That's the part that makes allied nations nervous. If you're running military comms through Starlink and the US decides to play hardball in some trade dispute, your entire C2 network just became a bargaining chip. Ukraine showed how quickly access decisions become political. I think we'll see European and Asian allies start investing in their own LEO constellations specifically because of this - nobody wants their military dependent on another country's CEO.
Most countries would not need to make their C2 infrastructure fully dependent on Starlink, because most countries are not big enough and cannot project enough power globally to make this an actual requirement, and the few countries who can project power globally can afford multiple communications layers. But your core idea is true.
This is explicitly one reason the US marketed the F-35 so hard to their allies. In addition to giving their allies a good capability, it made their air force dependent on continuing US support, so politicians wishing to go against US positions have to be willing to sacrifice their military power to do so. This gives the US a strong lever in negotiating.
European and Asian allies would have to start by investing in low-cost launch capabilities. So far they're making approximately zero progress in that area.
The reality is that all US allies except for maybe France no longer have the capability to project power much outside their own territory without active US support. It's not only satellites. They're also missing just about everything else such as logistics, specialized aircraft, air defense, amphibious capabilities, intelligence, etc. With largely stagnant economies there's no way they can sustain the funding necessary to close those gaps unless they join together in closer alliances with each other.
Most European countries (except France and the UK) are not interested in projecting power outside of a fairly narrow geographic area (mostly the European continent and adjacent seas).
These “military starlinks” will be much smaller systems than actual Starlink. The German one plans for 100 satellites.
You're right that the launch cost gap is the real barrier. Europe's been talking about sovereign launch capability for years but Ariane 6 still can't compete on cost with SpaceX. I think the more likely path is that smaller nations lease capacity on someone else's constellation rather than building their own. The question is whether that actually solves the dependency problem or just moves it from one provider to another.
There's other interesting middle ground options, like O3b's equatorial MEO ring, that has coverage similar to GEO as far as latitudes go, but better latency.
Fair point on single-sourcing, but the difference is that Lockheed doesn't have a consumer business that creates geopolitical incidents on Twitter. Traditional defense contractors are purpose-built for that relationship. With Starlink, you've got a commercial network serving 80+ countries that also happens to be critical military infrastructure. Starshield helps on the SLA side, but the underlying constellation is still shared. What does "good contracts" even look like when the asset is literally in orbit and serving both markets simultaneously?
Starshield has a separate dedicated constellation and can also use the civilian Starlink constellation for certain purposes. This is not a problem. The US government has direct operational control for everything they need. No one of any importance cares about "incidents" on X.
That's valid and definitely changes the risk profile if the military constellation is operationally separate. Though the civilian network is still a force multiplier in many cases, which puts it in the targeting calculus for adversaries regardless of whether troops depend on it directly.
Irrelevant. Only China will have the capability to target satellites to any significant extent, and if it comes to a real war with them then we're probably all dead anyway.
> The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict.
If you turn commercial infrastructure into a military tool, you put it within the firsts rows of targets' list to dismantle in case of conflict.
Given the large number of Starlink's satellites, you will inevitably have to use their own space debris to dismantle them, which will turn the LEO orbit inoperable (for centuries). With this you reduces the agility that was giving those satellites.
You would therefore be forcing the use of military satellites placed at higher orbits (lower resolution, number, more use of fuel, slower) and also forcing to use military airplanes and drones to fly over your territory (exposition).
It would not be debris produced by a decoupling that loses speed, with decrease their centripetal force progressively, so therefore progressively they fall to the earth, deorbit.
It would be a cluster of successive collisions in a short period of time. With each collision, each destroyed satellite would produce hundreds of thousands of microfragments at increased speeds, with would make them reach different orbits.
The microfragments at lower heights of LEO would decrease their speed due the atmosphere within months to a few years, and the ones at higher heights of LEO from decades to centuries, but this ones, at time they loses such speed they would decrease the height of their orbits and sweep across their new orbiting area (like a net/mesh), their kinetic energy would keep being able to destroy or damage what they cross.
If it were done it would be like a planned Kessler Syndrome event, and LEO is currently saturated with satellites.
> The real strategic question isn't whether Starlink can be weaponized - of course it can - it's what happens when military operations become dependent on commercial infrastructure that a single company controls.
This happens: Why the world's militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink
I watch CappyArmy on YouTube. Was shocked recently to learn that Russia had widely deployed StarLink in Ukraine to get orders to the front lines.
Recently this was cut off suddenly, with an immediate counter attack by Ukraine... along with Ukraine trolling the shit out of Russia frontline operatives; offering fake "recover your Starlink connection" websites and texts, scamming them out of their account credentials.
Great episode to go watch. I can't imagine how Russia thought this was a good idea?
The "Nazi salute" was just a cringy rendition of the "my heart goes out to you" thing. I can find dozens of other famous people doing something similar.
> I can find dozens of other famous people doing something similar.
The interpretation can be doubted, but you have to give credit to Elon Musk for being an actual techno-fascist coming from a family of pro-apartheid racists. Maybe it's not technically a nazi salute, but you can't argue it's not a fascist salute given his political inclinations.
> And the AfD isn't a neo-Nazi group.
Please read up on the AfD. They have nazi references in their propaganda, actual nazis in their ranks, and an actual nazi program. On that last point, when they plan secret meetings for deporting wrong-race german citizens, that's straight out of Hitler's playbook, and was his solution before the "final solution" (mass extermination).
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're simply uninformed and not actually downplaying nazism. Happy to provide sources for a specific point if you can't find any.
As someone who literally grew up next to Auschwitz - the attempts to excuse Elon's Nazi salute as anything but exactly that are just sickening. Those who don't study history are bound to repeat it, indeed. "My heart goes out to you" - a man literally doing a sieg heil. Bloody hell.
It absolutely is a Nazi salute, and it should be obvious to anyone.
>>I don't see that growing up next to Auschwitz makes you an expert in this area.
Something about being taught about this stuff endlessly at school and seeing it brought up all the time in your immediate neighbourhood makes you recognize when it happens - I guess that's just how it works.
I don't know dude - I think pretending it isn't what it very obviously is is just morally and intellectually bankrupt. We can cover our eyes and ears and pretend this isn't happening - and maybe it might even work for us and we might be spared the return of fascism as a normalized force in our society if things go right. Or we can just call it for what it is and not support it by trying to excuse it.
>> what was just an awkward moment
The whole idea that the self-proclaimed "most intelligent man on earth" didn't know what he was doing and it was actually some kind of heart felt awkward gesture is again, dishonest at best.
I could go on and on but I don't think it would make a difference. It continues to boggle my mind that the GOP, a party that for all of my life had been an enemy of Russia turned around and embraced it. I wonder why.
No it was debunked. It was always a conspiracy theory without evidence. I have read the Mueller report, it says no evidence was found of conspiracy (collusion). I can do better than regurgitating links at you and making handwaving claims about how I could go on and on, I can quote you verbatim passages which say just that.
Where is all that "ample evidence" that Adam Schiff, as chair House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, repeatedly claimed to have seen that provided Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election? He has seen it all, it's an open and shut case, so why did he go so quiet about it? Did Putin get to him too?
Obviously he has nothing and never did.
I've pressed people for specifics about this, and the only "evidence" they have been able to provide is Trump's "Russia if you're listening" speech, which is an obvious joke.
> I have read the Mueller report, it says no evidence was found of conspiracy (collusion).
You absolutely did not read the report, you listened to Barr’s brief lie about what was in it. There were endless examples of collusion and people in Trump’s inner circle found guilty of collaborating with the Russian government.
Let me guess, you also think Paul Manafort did nothing wrong?
> You absolutely did not read the report, you listened to Barr’s brief lie about what was in it.
I did.
> There were endless examples of collusion and people in Trump’s inner circle found guilty of collaborating with the Russian government.
For which apparently Mueller's team was incapable of using to substantiate any such charges, and apparently Adam Schiff seems to have lost all that evidence he lied about seeing.
The only reasonable explanation is obviously that Trump colluded with Putin to hack Mueller and Schiff, right?
> Let me guess, you also think Paul Manafort did nothing wrong?
A person who isn't called Donald Trump was found guilty of charges that did not include colluding with Putin to hack the election, but relating to to tax evasion and failing to register as an agent working for Ukraine, starting a decade before Trump's campaign started? No I don't think he did nothing wrong and never claimed he did. Nice strawman though, typical of conspiracy theorist rantings.
“Just left Ukraine. What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin. Let me tell you about my trip and why it’s important we stand with Ukraine.” - Mark Kelly
Musk replied directly to that post: “You are a traitor.”
Kelly fired back the next day:
“Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”
Musk later doubled down in media appearances, stating that putting “the interests of another country above America” makes someone a traitor.
I don't see Musk making those statement about US helping the interest of other countries.
It seems like stopping Russia from being an aggressor is in the direct interest of the US. Why would Musk think otherwise?
youll notice these tech bros from South Africa are in fact white...that, considering SA history, kind of half explains (to me) their affinity towards Russia
> It seems like stopping Russia from being an aggressor is in the direct interest of the US. Why would Musk think otherwise?
He is entitled to his own opinions.
From a business perspective Russia is a bigger market than Ukraine for Starlink. And since have no political color, it makes sense for him to not be pro-Ukraine that much.
And lastly, what is in the interest of the state is not neccesarily in the interest of people and vice-versa.
Did you collude with Putin today by not traveling to Russia to attempt to assassinate him or die trying?
Did Biden collude with Putin by not launching nuclear attack against Russia when he was President?
Did Obama collude with Putin when he secretly transmitted a promise to be "more flexible" with him after his election presumably in return for unspecified favors, then later meekly capitulating to Putin's annexation of Crimea?
Just because somebody does not take the most drastic or damaging action they possibly can against another, does not mean they are colluding with them or sympathizing with them. What an infantile worldview.
Starlink recently implemented new rules for satellites that travel more than 100mph. Service is deactivated unless they have a valid government ID and an aircraft's tail number attached to the account. While both can be faked, you could arguably correlated a provided tail number with ADS-B data because anyone with a Starlink is likely also broadcasting ADS-B. But it also provides a bit of 1:1 correlation on satellites and there is a finite number of tail numbers out there.
They also jacked up the subscription price which caused thousands of actual pilots to cancel their service. So expect a flood of used Starlink Minis to enter the market soon.
I thought Starlink doesn't allow you to move your terminal at all with the basic plan, and there's a premium plan where you can move it, but still can't use it, unless you stop?
You aren’t supposed to move the terminal on a residential plan, but there are plans for RVs, boats and planes that allow you to change location and/or use while in motion.
I had the RV plan when they said it would not work in motion, but it worked pretty well on the highway anyway.
Terminals in Ukraine are whitelisted (with whitelist being supplied by the Ukrainian MoD). Meaningful controls are possible, it's what led to the ukrainian forces advancing and liberating territory recently.
You missed my point. It's impossible to meaningfully control the export of physical terminals. But as I pointed out above, SpaceX has already been doing some geo-locking.
I did not. Whitelisting means Russia can not buy terminals in UAE and use them in Ukraine. Because the terminals in UAE are not whitelisted to be used in Ukraine. Therefore, it's possible to control the export of terminals.
I suspect nradov argues that this type of geofencing + allow-listing is not typically what people mean when they talk about "export control", which I agree with.
And while geofencing + allow-listing for sure provide value in e.g the Ukrainian conflict, it's a weak protection compared to goods that are actually under strict export control (e.g ITAR), and will always have to be done after the fact. Russia could for example put Starlink on drones launched from the Baltic Ocean targeting Poland or whatever.
Sure. But if you geoblock all use on Russian controlled land, you're also blocking Ukrainian use on Russian controlled land. I have no idea if that would cause issues or not, but it's not that far fetched to imagine it might.
I know this is a meme but for those at home the whole point of a war is to cross over the front line into the opponent's territory and capture it. If your comms are disabled when you cross the front you can't really fight. So "just disable Starlink within Russian territory" does not solve anything.
You can have a hybrid approach - deny access in that area by default but have a secure way to whitelist specific terminals for short periods (mission duration)
The issue isn't Russians using Starlink inside Russia (they have other option, e.g. wired system, etc. there); the issue was their using it for drones and other combat operations inside Ukraine (including Ukrainian territory presently held by Russia).
It's beyond sickening what none of you even bother with the idea what a civilian service should not be used by the military, especially in the zone of the conflict - by any side.
SpaceX is a privately-owned defense services company. Their #1 client is the United States. Their launches out of Vandenberg occur because the United States Space Force allows them to happen.
Are you on their board? Who are you to make the call that the product they are offering is a "civilian" (only?) service?
It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.
I think what's actually funnier is that the satellite shooting the laser has to know where the terminal is with pin point accuracy too. So it's pretty easy to cut off targeting to a vast chunk of the planet.
How would they geolock terminals on active conflict zone where conflict line changes in realtime. Terminals also cross miles across the line on drones etc. regularly. There was also pushback from Ukraine forces, when they are asked to register their terminals to be whitelisted a while back.
Nowadays Starlink terminals to operate in Ukraine they have to be approved so right now Russians cannot waste them anymore on drones as it's much harder getting one working (in the past they have been).
The theory is the US let some Russians use it as a trap to get them dependent on it and then pulled the rug which gave Ukraine a big advantage to clear some areas and generally disrupted Russian operations.
The DoD has always been deeply involved in running Starlink there
How does radio transmission with fast moving targets work (including LTE on phone), doesnt the doppler effect shift the frequencies of all radio waves?
Yup, it shifts but it's a minor shift and easily handled in the receiver. Receivers already need a little ability to tune the carrier frequency to account for ordinary variations in the circuits. From memory GPS's doppler shift is on the scale of a single digit khz, so Starlink's probably double that. A few khz of shift is no big deal for ghz carriers.
All RF protocols have some provision for signal acquisition. It can take a bunch of forms but what it nets out to is the oscillator in the receiver can acquire the signal from the sender. A simple example of this is "pilot" signals or prefixes that have an easily recognizable structure and allow the receiver to align to the sender in the clock recovery sense. So the receiver needs a little extra tunable bandwidth and to run the messy intermediates through something like a convolution filter, but it can latch on easily. This is early days of radio technology, like mid century post war.
Yes. Their brilliant 5D chess moves I can see at the gas station every day. Their long term plan is clearly to drive everyone away from the fossil industry and towards renewables.
That story keeps being spun by people who don’t read articles (or don’t expect people to). What SpaceX did there was limit the use of Starlink in Russian controlled territory. The very same new pattern of Ukraine whitelisting and geofencing access which is what everyone is praising today.
The only reason Ukraine complained was their special ops were running drone boats deep in Russian territory. After they asked for permission (following this controversy) SpaceX did a deal with DoD to let them manage those special cases allowing its use behind enemy lines.
Starlink has been nothing but positive for Ukraine
While there is a massive US advantage in space launch, it should be used to the maximum. It's not going to last forever (while perhaps, sufficiently long that China fizzles out demographically before it's gone).
The American advantage in launches would get narrowed within ten years. China only needs to be able to get their own constellation up; they don't need to keep SpaceX levels of launch cadence.
American technological superiority is overblown. The only reason we’re ahead is because of immigration. As China/other countries get wealthier and the US gets less friendly, smart people stay home. One generation later and the best scientists will in those countries, not here.
Oh my goodness, this is deeply untrue. China is facing a massive population implosion. A lot of their global strategy can be understood through that lens: they are racing to accumulate power, standing, and wealth before the implosion starts to kick in.
The West is destroying third world countries to take their human resources. Blowing up the middle east created more uber eats drivers than defunding all the schools in Detroit ever did.
I think you haven't been following the news. US demographics is by far the healthiest of all halfway developed countries, with the exception of Israel. China has third low TFR in the world after South Korea and Taiwan, and is facing extinction within two generations whereas society and the economy will simply cease because all available labor will be consumed by caring hundreds of millions of extremely elderly people.
By 2100, US will look about the same as Western Europe looks today: ageing, but still OK. China will be no more.
CSIS is republishing work from PLA affiliated writers from PLA affiliated think tanks, published an a PLA affiliated journal because it does in fact capture aspects of internal PLA thinking. This article is from 2023, it's not written in the context of the current administrations policies and rhteroic. While we can always be certain that there are aspects of external facing PR/propaganda, we also should consider "how does China view the militarization of Starlink and Space".
And to that end, we can clearly see that the PLA sees Space Dominance as being strategically destabilizing. They see threats to their ability to disperse and hide their nuclear launch systems.
In fact, from a 2026 lens, the best way to read this paper would be "the PLA has mapped out its vulnerabilities, and all of its risk control and escalation options (basically its suggestions in the conclusions) are basically off the table. Therefore, it's very obvious that the PLA will attempt to compensate through simultaneously achieving its own space based capability similar to Starlink, develop additional ways to hold US strategic assets (read nuclear strike platforms) at risk, and find asymmetric means of deterrence".
EDIT: Just made a connection in my head - there's been a lot of news about Chinese nuclear arsenal increases in recent years, with a uptick starting around 2023, and the DoD estimating a rough tripling from 2025-2035. I suspect these developments might be connected.
EDIT2: I think to summarize what I think would be important take away from reading this paper is that while the most immediate examples of militarized Starlink use are all very tactical level (thinking about drones in Ukraine), this piece clearly signals that the PLA also believes that Starlink militarization poses treats at the strategic (read nuclear) level. And therefore, if we think purely in terms of tactical/operational capabilities, we may be caught off guard by certain reactions by the PLA/China.
I don't think that Starlink affects nuclear deterrence / the MAD doctrine in any meaningful way. But it does seriously affect "conventional" warfare. And China is rather visibly preparing for a conventional war.
I believe it's exactly that thinking that CSIS was trying to check when they chose to translate and publish this specific article. They are trying to get analysts and policy makers to think through, and make an active decision on if they believe that China will treat military/militarized mega constellations as destabilizing in a nuclear/strategic sense.
It's fair to decide that that is not major factor, but it should be an informed decision. It requires looking at the nuclear risk issues that the piece raises, and finding reasons to dismiss them.
Even the best space comms system does not make your ICBMs invisible to your adversary, and does not allow you to shoot down your adversary's return salvo of ICBMs. Hence the mutually assured destruction is not going away, and the side starting an all-out nuclear war still cannot win. I don't see how anything what's available now changes this; do you?
What might be destabilizing would be long-range hypersonic missiles that fly relatively low (30 km above the surface, not 1000 km), so they can't be easily detected until it's pretty late, and can arrive from multiple directions. This is exactly the kind of weapon that is China apparently developing, BTW.
The article argues that space and AI dominance meaningfully threatens China's second strike (mobile land based ICBMs) survivability, which would bias China to act more proactively (ie, more hair trigger) in escalation scenarios.
Chinese and Russian developments (HGVs, FOBs, the Russian "superweapons" like Poseidon) are all destabilizing to an extent. But as long as none them challenge/hold at risk the US second strike capability (a robust C2 network and the SSBN fleet), they won't be massively destabilizing.
For what it's worth, HGVs that could strike the US from China still need to be launched off what are effectively ICBM class rockets. The launch signatures would almost certainly be detected.
And finally, let's not even get started with what Golden Dome would do to strategic stability.
There's simply no need to go pointing fingers right now. The reality is that all sides are taking various self-interested actions that in the absence of communication or coordination will lead towards less stable environments. No side has the ability to compel the others to not take these actions, and so the best we can do is try to anticipate the new operating environments and be ready for them as best we can.
I think the issue is that one side having an overwhelming non-nuclear, conventional advantage might push the other to a nuclear response in the event of a catastrophic loss in a conventional conflict. Imagine Chine tries to invade Taiwan and they are defeated so badly that the CCP might fall -- then perhaps a nuclear response becomes more likely.
However, I think this is not the case. In the end no one wants to reduce the world to ashes over losing power. But... well, I suppose there are people crazy enough to want that.
> The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.
Sorry, may I get more information on why this is considered Chinese army propaganda?
My understanding is that CSIS (https://www.csis.org/about) is an US based organisation that provides analysis on topics which include Chinese organisations/military.
Not specific to this article, but I generally like to find third party sources to confirm or deny the "bipartisan" and "nonprofit" parts of their about page. I've seen too many where that turned out to be false.
When you were a kid, did you stop listening when your parents said “Santa”, or did you keep listening in order to glean useful information from their propoganda, even knowing that Santa isn't real?
Were you under the impression the Chinese Communist Party has been telling you sweet lies only because they find joy in seeing your childlike naivety and wonder?
The general principle of extracting useful information from the scenario “(party a) tells lies because (ulterior motive b)” transcends the particular values of party a and motive b
No no, American media corporations are virtuous courageous freedom fighters intent on "speaking truth to power" and "standing up for democracy" and "science". To suggest otherwise makes you a something something denier, a dangerous conspiracy theorist, a puppet of fascism, etc.
Interpret: China is a CSIS project aimed at facilitating a more nuanced understanding of global strategic issues through a library of translated materials matched with expert commentary.
Americans are so propagandized and paranoid that they see a DC blob foreign policy think tank translating Chinese PLA source documents and start wondering if there's a nefarious plot afoot. "Understanding the enemy?! That sounds like an axis of evil conspiracy!"
I haven't read it fully but it doesn't seem to be promoting any sort of falsehoods. As an American I consider any reliance on Starlink and the thoroughly compromised Elon Musk to be a weakness rather than a strength.
It really is that simple. Straight up CCP propaganda translated from a Chinese journal, written by Chinese professors worried about Chinese national security.
Musk started SpaceX with Michael D. Griffin, the guy who invented large constellations of military satellites to win a nuclear war. And then he funded Starlink.
Starlink project began after Musk and Greg Wyler parted their ways. Wyler approached SpaceX in 2014 with a proposal to build OneWeb (then called WorldVu), and initially they worked on the project together. But then they started to accuse each other of doing various underhanded things, and split. After that, Musk decided that he could do a similar and even better system without Wyler, and that's how Starlink was born in 2015.
I noticed this the other day with the Anthropic upholding its redline. I think this is the first time in history where consumer tech exceeds military tech. Historically, it was always military tech trickles down to consumer.
weren't the first instances of that.
you could argue that places like /r/combatfootage are the consumer 'tech' that leads some of this, but it wasn't 2022.
I argue that it’s different. Ukrainian military needed this to adapt to the warfare. The US has plenty of means to bomb people (look at Iran) with or without consumer drones. Our military does not have any native LLM capabilities.
This is a completely unfounded conspiracy theory, but I think it’s a fun one. I think Elon Musk is running these companies the same way that he is a top ranked Diablo player. He just plays one on TV. The decision makers in the military industrial complex pushed black programs into a group of private company so they could scale and cut red tape while shedding contractors with really serious performance problems. So now a faction of “the insiders“ control space launches, social media, and have a backup AI company. There are less successful programs like Tesla for getting cattle like me to drive an electric car that can be remotely driven into a median or disabled if someone in Bethesda decides that they don’t like you. Also there is a not so successful attempt to revolutionize tunnel logistics for defense. So what I’m saying is that this is military tech, they just pretend these are private companies run by a Tony Stark showman. I can’t support this with evidence, but it makes for a good story.
Conspiracy theories aren't very productive. But the one thing that continues to bother me is how there is no great explanation for why TSLA is still worth much. It's a shrinking car company that is failing to execute at FSD and says it's going to make humanoid robots instead of cars.
There is no good reason TSLA should be valued any more than 10% of its current valuation, and even that would be rich. There is a fine argument it should be worth 3-4% of what it currently is.
It is almost like there's a connection between PayPal, Elon Musks fortunes, and crypto.
I still wonder who Satoshi really was. I wonder how Microstrategy remains solvent.
The vision for the future elon gives us (exploring the stars, human augmentation, advanced AI likely leading to elimination of suffering) is a heaven-like vision in a western world where most people don’t believe in anything much, and many of our leaders and intellectuals are misanthropes who think having kids is selfish.
I don’t care what tesla’s quarterly sales are, I’m supporting elon’s vision.
That vision is a lie, and it's a distraction. It is taking advantage of the emptiness that they themselves created, and now they are making you angry to distract you while they rob you. I sincerely wish you well in life, don't pick the wrong heroes.
There are many such mysteries, right? How does Oracle make money when every product of theirs sucks and is worse than free alternatives? How is it that Google and Meta seem to have more revenue from “advertising“ than everyone spends on advertising? Where are the product sales that can be traced to this massive amount of spending? I don’t think you could even articulate a plausible business plan around what Google claims to do, especially when they were hot in the early 2000s. How do large financial institutions, like JP Morgan, get fined for financial crimes yet still operate with total public trust? Just as strange as Bigfoot and aliens but in plain sight.
Again, I’m going to qualify this with the disclaimer that this is my own baseless conspiracy theory presented purely for its entertainment value. I suspect that the United States has many effectively state owned enterprises just like the PRC, but there are elaborate obfuscation techniques used to make that seem as if that were not the case. In part that is because a large criminal network is wearing the dead US government like a skin suit.
Whomever it is, was, there are a handful of individuals still holding block controls on the ORIGINAL chain... that could topple ANY valuation. Those who sold around $0.32/USD would be happy to know that chasing the dragon would have made them as mad as the leads on TV shows.
I think the notion of a cryptocurrency treasury company is idiotic but Strategy (MicroStrategy) is an audited public company. If you want to know how they're solvent then you can literally just read their financial statements.
I mean most of us knew from day 1 this would get militarized as soon as possibly can... the same goes for spacehip (large payloads delivery to battlefields) as well and neuralink (during interrogations).
I was early at Planet (and fresh out of college) and the transition internally towards govt money was very painful for the bright eyed save-the-world hackers internally.
The initial technical architecture was aligned with broad good (low res, global, daily, openly available), but the shift towards selling high res satellite capabilities directly to governments has been tough to see.
Their role of providing a public ledger is still a net good thing IMO, and i doubt Planet is adding much increased capability to the US war fighter (they have way better stuff). Harder to say for their deals with other governments that have fewer native space capabilities.
this is very difficult to address with intellectual honesty.
It seems obvious to me that people of conscience and standing have built plenty of the most cutting edge tech of this age. Yet those people are structurally embedded within business and government. Far-reaching technology is one thing, but satellite networks are especially impactful in many ways for both real time intelligence gathering and also building a record of analytic data over time.
So, PlanetLabs.. without a doubt, completely sincere in Doves reading save-the-whales data over the entire Earth. And also, connected "at the hip" to the US Federal Government. Does the US Federal Government work diligently to save-the-whales? You be the judge.
PlanetLabs is business, with investors. That is the horse that brought the endeavor to its current state. Larry Ellison seems to run a very stable business, in the same locales, and that seems to be just fine with investors. Is there any way that PlanetLabs would not be subject to the same investor pressures and direction, lawsuits and governance letters, that Oracle is subject to? seems likely that lots of the same actors are close at hand, from the beginning.
SO there is tragedy and comedy, stock price and hiring practices, technical capacity and brilliance. The mission is the message ? feedback here seems likely to escalate, so let's set a tone of informed debate, and recall that after the typing, almost nothing will actually change in practice.. just an educated guess.
The current administration is openly extractive without the fig leaves of old.
I don’t think we can look forward to nature - whether it’s national parks or marine parks or just being a non polluting neighbor - getting any priority or protection from now onwards.
They're hardly a voice of reason, they criticize the US so everyone rallies around them, but they're just taking advantage of the situation like anyone else would. It's all optics. I think the era of the superpower is already over.
They can't build a peaceful relationship with taiwan, it would hurt the PRC if they did that. They need an point of contention for political reasons there, but taiwan has seen what has become of hong kong. They have historical ties but since the 1940's much like the Koreas their culture and society has developed separately. Peace is possible, if the PRC can accept a separate independent Taiwan, but they won't for the same reason putin doesn't like countries like ukraine nearby, that have a significant military and economic advantage to be outside its sphere of influence.
China is like a carefully crafted house of cards, long term planning means they will likely establish a long lasting prosperous nation, but that's only possible if contemporary situations don't force them into desperate actions, like invading taiwan, a military conflict with the US,etc.. right now their sources of oil from iran and venezuela are being cut off, they've been heavily investing in renewables predicting this exact situation, and that's what I mean by long term, they're a few decades away from the fruition of most of their longterm plans. Xi won't be alive to see it, but he needs to make a mark in their history too. The fate of china depends on Xi's patience, and the ability of China to endure temporary economic hardship.
They've been building alliances like BRICS for the same reasons, they're grandstanding now also to avoid a direct confrontation with the US.
The US isn't increasingly being radicalized, it is beyond that. it is right a strange mix of kakistocracy and kleptocracy. On one hand, the US's hegemony is practically over, on the other hand who will fill in the void? certainly not China. Even things like the UN are not a given anymore. The best outcome is one that avoids conflict between countries with large economies and militaries.
It is similar to G8, and like I said, they're been building one, I didn't say they're completed the building. But current events are helping with that effort.
Nah, they're not building anything. China and India will never agree on substantive issues. South Africa is a failed state and Russia may be headed in the direction. BRICS is a total joke.
> China and India will never agree on substantive issues.
And the US and Russia do? (G8)
South Afica is the largest economy in Africa, 13% of the continent's GDP. Your views on its political state doesn't change that. And honestly, as an American, I can't say my country is doing better than SA. Sure they have more crime, but at least they don't have a military force dedicated to ethnic-cleansing migrants . Lol, sad times.
depends on what you call an alliance. obviously i wasn't alluding to a military alliance. these are economic forums, where economically allied countries get together to discuss policy. What is a better term that describes their relationship? frenemies? I would insist BRICS is certainly an economic alliance, their one common goal is to resist the western lead economic order of things, even if they can't agree on specifics they agree and are allied over that one goal.
Are you new to this site? I ask because your comment is entirely against the decorum we try to maintain here. This is a place for meaningful discussion (on topics pertaining to engineering and science in particular), it is not like Reddit where we hurl insults on one another in some apparent attempt to ratio people we disagree with.
Meaningful discussion. Bike shedding, mostly. And illiterates hiding behind llm-generated content. I’m new to this site, sure. Stop impeding my „freedom of speech”.
This is a common attitude among Americans, to see other countries as a beacon of reason and even contemplate moving there, when theirs is moderately frustrating and has plenty of constructive reform available to do at the person’s level of influence. It was popular during the Cold War to fantasize about living in the USSR, and today, the fantasy is typically Canada, Europe, Russia or China depending on politics and level of interest in technology.
> If they can build a peaceful relationship with Taiwan without military involvement
Xi fucked this up because he’s a dictator.
Taiwanese polling on national identity was mixed until the 2010s [1]. Left at peace, it would have probably voted for reintegration in our lifetimes. But then Xi decided the post-Mao system of political competition within the CCP was inconvenient, launched his wolf warriors on all of China’s neighbors, annexed Hong Kong prematurely and started warmongering with Taiwan, all of which has lead to an avoidable but now-permanent polarization across the strait.
"annexed Hong Kong prematurely" ? I'm not sure what you mean here.
Reports I've read are that China was surprised when the UK got in touch a few years before 97, wanting to start the prep work for the handover of HK. China, it seems, just assumed the UK would call HK a historical legacy whose lease agreement was made with a now-defunct country, and leave it at that without a handover.
If they can build a peaceful relationship with Taiwan without military involvement where both countries can continue to prosper we really will have a new super power
Ah, if only.
Those damn intransigent Taiwanese!
It’s almost as if they don’t want to join the PRC.
An odd take on a regime that has known and significant human rights violations. I’m not saying the US is doing great right now, but China is not something to look up to.
The US is doing much, much worse. This is no compliment to China. The US
* murdered a political leader the were negotiating with in Iran after using the military to kidnap the leader of Venezuela.
* is credibly threatening military allies in Greenland, countries with which it has mutual protection treaties and is credibly threatening, without casus belli, to militarily invade another weaker neighbor, Cuba.
* spent months threatening to invade Canada. This wasn't trolling, it is forgotten with their strategy of constant chaos, but they really tried and Canada has made alliances with other countries as a result
* is actively murdering thousands of people in Haiti via a Republican allied private military contractor
* is actively subverting domestic elections
* is building and filling concentration camps with people who have committed no other crime than illegal residency, without due process, and giving them substandard care, leading to many deaths in custody.
* has masked secret police detaining people without due process and deporting them to foreign prison camps, frequently in violation of judicial orders
* has masked secret police arresting citizen because of their nationality and because they are not carrying "their papers"
* is using the power of government to force mergers and ownership changes of corporations to political allies
* is using the power of the government to hide an embarrassing a criminal conspiracy involving leadership in the country, in violation of the US Constitution, since it was ordered by Congress.
* has completely disregarded conflict of interest laws which the leader of the country is using to enrich himself and his family at completely unprecedented levels in US history.
I could go on, but China is a more ethical superpower by a lot of measures and that is a very painful conclusion to state.
This is not even touching on the subject of competency.
The internationally accepted US hegemony and the privileged role of the US dollar was the result of almost a century of goodwill. It is now gone, and then some. The next two decades will not be pleasant for regular Americans who have grown accustomed to, and frankly taken for granted, the level of privilege they had.
edit: and speak of the devil, and competency: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/what-happens-w... just made it to the top of the front page. Even with everything I wrote above, I had neglected to include that the US lies about embarrassing economic data now due to political intererence.
edit 2: this didn't even make the front page and would have been the biggest scandal in modern American history: https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-deal-fee-trump-administratio... "Trump Administration Set to Receive $10 Billion Fee for Brokering TikTok Deal"
Wow, nativism from the left is wild to see. Obama was the son of an immigrant vs the grandchild of one for Trump. There’s a lot of valid criticism of Melania but claiming it’s because she “can’t” speak English is wild (she speaks with an accent but so what).
I’m tired of attacks on personal characteristics that have no bearing (or are even outside their control) rather than on legitimate things like ideas, temperament, decision making, track record. Do better.
Swipe the dirt under the carpet. For what we know there’s no difference between “throwaway” and “jumping criss cross”. You’re hiding behind a nickname, too!
The US has due process, judicial transparency, and free speech. There are still rich people that operate above the system, but they're largely still accountable and the free press can crucify them.
Authoritarian regimes have execution vans, no freedom of the press, no free speech, and a paranoid leadership that will jail or kill anyone who threatens their power. They lock citizens inside and prohibit capital flight.
No system is perfect, but democracy is strictly better.
I love China and the Chinese people, but the CCP is a drag on both.
I'm no fan of the party in power in the US, but I can campaign and speak out against them. I can raise money to oppose them. I can band together with like minded individuals to protest. That's superior to unilateral oppression.
> I'm no fan of the party in power in the US, but I can campaign and speak out against them. I can raise money to oppose them. I can band together with like minded individuals to protest.
You can. Just not in any way that matters. And you won’t. Because that takes organization and all existing organizations that matter are captured by the system and novel ones would quickly be.
Perfect example: The US just launched a disastrous and illegal (both in their own and the UN system) war at the behest of a foreign power/influential minority against the will of its people and against its geopolitical interest. And the “opposition” does less than nothing. There is little anti-war protest and none of consquence.
Compare it with 2003 and earlier wars: The American public has been all but neutralized as a political force. Not that it could do much even then.
> You can. Just not in any way that matters. And you won’t.
I’ve gotten language I wrote passed into state and federal law. The bottom line is a lot of people are too busy, lazy or nihilistic to call their electeds and show up to create political pressure. That’s unfortunate. But it also means that the payoff for relatively small amounts of effort are huge.
Did that language imping on the interests of America’s ruling elites, its security apparatus, or the interests of a certain entity in the eastern Mediterranean? No? Then we’re talking about entirely different things.
The “opposition” attempted to assert the congressional authority the branch is supposed over war powers, and were defeated because the American public gave majority power to the current majority whom rejected that authority to the executive branch to do whatever.
They have the most economic output, the highest quality technology, and the sanest voices of reason. It's too bad they're a dictatorship. If they can fix that I might have to move there.
They are supporting and encouraging Russia’s war against Ukraine. They also provide diplomatic cover and economic support for the Iranian regime. They promote nationalist radicalism and harassment of nonconformists on foreign campuses. They ruthlessly suppress dissent, or even just non Han ethic identity and implement racist eugenic policies in their regions.
The comment you replied to referred to Taiwan as existing alongside China as a country. That’s a crime in mainland China.
> They also provide diplomatic cover and economic support for the Iranian regime
I can't believe some people can still argue in good faith the US and israel are the good guys, do you have a ounce of self reflection? You kidnap presidents, kill entire families of political leaders, talk about them like they are dogs (see the latest white house propaganda videos or Hegseth speeches), and then you come here to argue China is bad because they may one day plan to do something similar, how blind are you? Everything you accuse the others of planning you already have done it or are actively doing it right now...
The Usa does similar things across the world. Here I swapped for the Usa.
> They are supporting and encouraging Israel’s war against Iran and Palestine. They also provide diplomatic cover and economic support for the Israeli regime. They promote nationalist radicalism and harassment of nonconformists on foreign campuses (Columbia protests). They ruthlessly suppress dissent (you must support the troops, using chemical weapons on protestors), or even just non White ethic identity and implement racist policies in their regions (rounding up immigrants without due process).
Do you speak Mandarin? Because upthread there’s a guy railing against Melania because she speaks English with an accent and I suspect you’ll get a similar reception in China.
Also, if you think racism in America is a problem, ooo boy do I want to see your experience as a foreigner in a largely homogenous country that has little immigration.
Only because they have such a large population. Their economic output per person (GDP per capita) is only around $15k, similar to Turkey. And they've hit a severe aging population problem that other East Asian countries only hit when their GDP per capita was around $30k; they're getting old before they get rich. Unless they dramatically increase immigration or birthrates (now less than 1.0), it's likely that even by 2100 Chinese people still won't enjoy the same standard of living (GDP per capita of around $80k) that Americans enjoy today.
Just because I have a knife doesn't mean it affects the stability of my neighborhood. Even if I use my knife to kill a killer, that doesn't necessarily affect the stability of my neighborhood. It could even improve it.
All in all, I would rather live in a somewhat free America than in communist China.
I've done so. I saw a country that is a mix of third and first, full of wonderful people who the government fear so much they have to cut them off from the rest of the world and run the place as a police state.
We are already in some sense past the threshold of sats required for a potential civlizational collapse that would be caused by the loss of access to space.
There are way too many sattelites, starlink militarizing means it's a viable target now for enemy nations, any one of them taking out a couple sats and causing debris would cause a chain reaction that would effectively turn space into a dump, let's not even mention that military = more money = more sats, making it even riskier.
Or the fact that at any moment those sats could also die from a carrington+ level event.
Besides, SpaceX could launch more sats to even lower orbits (where they wouldn't last long just due to atmospheric drag) during a conflict -- enough to win, then we can figure out how to get all that debris cleared out.
You may want to read an actual study about it. And this doesn't even consider the possibility that militarization of starlink satellites may cause them to get taken out, which will trigger the KS the same way.
The relative impact of Kessler syndrome is honestly overblown: we're simply not that dependent on satellites for day to day activities. It would be an economic disaster, but those aren't civilization ending.
The dual-use problem with Starlink is really just the most visible version of something happening across the military. Phones with civilian GPS chips are increasingly used alongside dedicated mil-spec hardware, simply because the commercial stuff is more usable and gets updated faster.
The real strategic question isn't whether Starlink can be weaponized - of course it can - it's what happens when military operations become dependent on commercial infrastructure that a single company controls. The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict.
This is what the US’s defense production act is for. If a company makes a critical product, the US has openly stated that it will compel a company to prioritize making that product in times of need. They can’t refuse. This is also why the US wants all of its key systems to be US made- they cannot be held hostage by a foreign entity.
There’s obviously a few areas where this isn’t really true, like a foreign company setting up a US company to sell their product, but by and large the US is immune to the risks you describe. China similarly makes most of their own systems and is mostly immune. A large scale WW3 between the US and China cannot be stopped by a company refusing to participate.
> simply because the commercial stuff is more usable and gets updated faster.
And this isn't a new pattern by any means. Decades ago the UK military had a plan to replace their old analog centric radio gear with a system that integrated voice, data, gps blue force tracking etc. They called it BOWMAN.
The initial versions were so bad everyone started calling it Better Off With Map And Nokia.
The defense establishment moves at a glacial pace and consistently under delivers vs the equivalent commodity commercial products.
Had no idea about that, went down a rabbit hole researching it. It's a pattern that keeps repeating: by the time mil-spec hardware ships, the commercial equivalent is two generations ahead.
There’s a structural reason for that. Mil-spec hardware requires years of data on the failure modes of components to properly design. NASA has the same problem and in the last decade or two they’ve been relaxing that requirement for less critical missions because technology sped up so much.
For the military that won’t change until there’s an existential threat.
> There’s a structural reason for that. Mil-spec hardware requires years of data on the failure modes of components to properly design.
By now you pretty much know how it can break and what are the most common issues with hardware. No one invented a new type of EMP for example that can pass through the holes in a Faraday cage for example. The water in the ocean did not became ten times more acidic that hardware requires more protection.
A wild guess: you can strap an iPhone to a military grade radio kit to help with jamming and what not, and have a very usable product. Or whatever modern phone. You then swap them out easily and you are always up to date on capabilities. Cell towers are upgraded less frequently than phone hardware. Same thing with the military stuff.
I think a great part in this plays industry inertia and vendor and too much money that could be lost. “This is how things are done” and it costs $10,000 per screw because “it is certified”.
The recent war showed that you can use commercial drones with a grenade or two strapped to them in very effective ways. Not to mention the more “advanced” ones that you still go to the store and buy them.
We need more defense startups and a lot less red tape to iterate as fast as possible.
Until Starlink, you had hundreds of milliseconds of latency for satellite internet. Now it feels a lot more like you are on mobile data on a phone.
Incumbments had no reason to offer a better experience because there was no competition. Now they’ve been left in the dust because of Starlink.
The existential threat will be very instant when an enemy with no milspec equipment punches you hard in the face. And catching up will not be easy nor fast.
Isn't virtually all military hardware and software single-sourced? Ultimately they trust the supplier and have good contracts. I imagine the US military is migrating to Starshield over time where they have a better SLA.
Military connectors (e.g. MIL-STD-38999) are deeply multi sourced, like you can buy compatible connector sets from Souriau, Amphenol, ITT Cannon, some others. So it depends.
The other consideration is that the kill switch is ultimately controlled by the US. The US government can easily commandeer Starlink or jail Musk, but other countries use starlink at the pleasure of both Musk and the US government.
That's the part that makes allied nations nervous. If you're running military comms through Starlink and the US decides to play hardball in some trade dispute, your entire C2 network just became a bargaining chip. Ukraine showed how quickly access decisions become political. I think we'll see European and Asian allies start investing in their own LEO constellations specifically because of this - nobody wants their military dependent on another country's CEO.
Most countries would not need to make their C2 infrastructure fully dependent on Starlink, because most countries are not big enough and cannot project enough power globally to make this an actual requirement, and the few countries who can project power globally can afford multiple communications layers. But your core idea is true.
This is explicitly one reason the US marketed the F-35 so hard to their allies. In addition to giving their allies a good capability, it made their air force dependent on continuing US support, so politicians wishing to go against US positions have to be willing to sacrifice their military power to do so. This gives the US a strong lever in negotiating.
European and Asian allies would have to start by investing in low-cost launch capabilities. So far they're making approximately zero progress in that area.
The reality is that all US allies except for maybe France no longer have the capability to project power much outside their own territory without active US support. It's not only satellites. They're also missing just about everything else such as logistics, specialized aircraft, air defense, amphibious capabilities, intelligence, etc. With largely stagnant economies there's no way they can sustain the funding necessary to close those gaps unless they join together in closer alliances with each other.
Most European countries (except France and the UK) are not interested in projecting power outside of a fairly narrow geographic area (mostly the European continent and adjacent seas).
These “military starlinks” will be much smaller systems than actual Starlink. The German one plans for 100 satellites.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-07/airbus-te...
I'm betting on every single implementation costing $10B minimum
You're right that the launch cost gap is the real barrier. Europe's been talking about sovereign launch capability for years but Ariane 6 still can't compete on cost with SpaceX. I think the more likely path is that smaller nations lease capacity on someone else's constellation rather than building their own. The question is whether that actually solves the dependency problem or just moves it from one provider to another.
LEO is pretty expensive. Smaller countries might be better off with cheaper Astranis GEO satellites.
There's other interesting middle ground options, like O3b's equatorial MEO ring, that has coverage similar to GEO as far as latitudes go, but better latency.
It's not a matter of migration. The US military used Starshield from the start and never relied on Starlink for anything important.
Good point. I think I was mixing up the US paying for Ukraine to use Starlink with the US military itself using it.
Fair point on single-sourcing, but the difference is that Lockheed doesn't have a consumer business that creates geopolitical incidents on Twitter. Traditional defense contractors are purpose-built for that relationship. With Starlink, you've got a commercial network serving 80+ countries that also happens to be critical military infrastructure. Starshield helps on the SLA side, but the underlying constellation is still shared. What does "good contracts" even look like when the asset is literally in orbit and serving both markets simultaneously?
Starshield has a separate dedicated constellation and can also use the civilian Starlink constellation for certain purposes. This is not a problem. The US government has direct operational control for everything they need. No one of any importance cares about "incidents" on X.
That's valid and definitely changes the risk profile if the military constellation is operationally separate. Though the civilian network is still a force multiplier in many cases, which puts it in the targeting calculus for adversaries regardless of whether troops depend on it directly.
Irrelevant. Only China will have the capability to target satellites to any significant extent, and if it comes to a real war with them then we're probably all dead anyway.
> The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict.
If you turn commercial infrastructure into a military tool, you put it within the firsts rows of targets' list to dismantle in case of conflict.
Given the large number of Starlink's satellites, you will inevitably have to use their own space debris to dismantle them, which will turn the LEO orbit inoperable (for centuries). With this you reduces the agility that was giving those satellites.
You would therefore be forcing the use of military satellites placed at higher orbits (lower resolution, number, more use of fuel, slower) and also forcing to use military airplanes and drones to fly over your territory (exposition).
Basically I read the article as a warning.
> which will turn the LEO orbit inoperable (for centuries).
Is this true? I understand that they deorbit without power in up to 5 years. So their debris would decay in essentially the same time.
It would not be debris produced by a decoupling that loses speed, with decrease their centripetal force progressively, so therefore progressively they fall to the earth, deorbit.
It would be a cluster of successive collisions in a short period of time. With each collision, each destroyed satellite would produce hundreds of thousands of microfragments at increased speeds, with would make them reach different orbits.
The microfragments at lower heights of LEO would decrease their speed due the atmosphere within months to a few years, and the ones at higher heights of LEO from decades to centuries, but this ones, at time they loses such speed they would decrease the height of their orbits and sweep across their new orbiting area (like a net/mesh), their kinetic energy would keep being able to destroy or damage what they cross.
If it were done it would be like a planned Kessler Syndrome event, and LEO is currently saturated with satellites.
That's why the US military got Starshield. It is run by and belongs to the military. Make sense for critical infrastructure really.
> The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict
This describes Boeing and lots of other firms
The US has also done lots of protectionism for a bunch of monopolistic businesses out of (alleged) national security interests.
> The real strategic question isn't whether Starlink can be weaponized - of course it can - it's what happens when military operations become dependent on commercial infrastructure that a single company controls.
This happens: Why the world's militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2517766-why-the-worlds-...
For example all the Israeli tech in CENTCOM.
I watch CappyArmy on YouTube. Was shocked recently to learn that Russia had widely deployed StarLink in Ukraine to get orders to the front lines.
Recently this was cut off suddenly, with an immediate counter attack by Ukraine... along with Ukraine trolling the shit out of Russia frontline operatives; offering fake "recover your Starlink connection" websites and texts, scamming them out of their account credentials.
Great episode to go watch. I can't imagine how Russia thought this was a good idea?
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"[O]pen sympathy towards fascists"? What do you mean by that?
Probably refering to his nazi salute, and support for far-right neo-nazi groups like AfD in Germany
That's what I thought.
The "Nazi salute" was just a cringy rendition of the "my heart goes out to you" thing. I can find dozens of other famous people doing something similar.
And the AfD isn't a neo-Nazi group.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..... then we have to entertain the possibility we might be dealing with a duck.
Why defend him?
> I can find dozens of other famous people doing something similar.
The interpretation can be doubted, but you have to give credit to Elon Musk for being an actual techno-fascist coming from a family of pro-apartheid racists. Maybe it's not technically a nazi salute, but you can't argue it's not a fascist salute given his political inclinations.
> And the AfD isn't a neo-Nazi group.
Please read up on the AfD. They have nazi references in their propaganda, actual nazis in their ranks, and an actual nazi program. On that last point, when they plan secret meetings for deporting wrong-race german citizens, that's straight out of Hitler's playbook, and was his solution before the "final solution" (mass extermination).
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're simply uninformed and not actually downplaying nazism. Happy to provide sources for a specific point if you can't find any.
> The "Nazi salute" was just a cringy rendition of the "my heart goes out to you" thing
Okay, you believe what you want, I guess.
> And the AfD isn't a neo-Nazi group.
Uh, huh. Sure.
As someone who literally grew up next to Auschwitz - the attempts to excuse Elon's Nazi salute as anything but exactly that are just sickening. Those who don't study history are bound to repeat it, indeed. "My heart goes out to you" - a man literally doing a sieg heil. Bloody hell.
I don't see that growing up next to Auschwitz makes you an expert in this area.
It wasn't a Nazi salute, and that should be obvious.
It absolutely is a Nazi salute, and it should be obvious to anyone.
>>I don't see that growing up next to Auschwitz makes you an expert in this area.
Something about being taught about this stuff endlessly at school and seeing it brought up all the time in your immediate neighbourhood makes you recognize when it happens - I guess that's just how it works.
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It was so obviously a Nazi salute, and anyone denying it is lying. Either to themselves or to others.
I get that Musk isn't popular here, but the idea people would assign that kind of motive to what was just an awkward moment is just sick.
I don't know dude - I think pretending it isn't what it very obviously is is just morally and intellectually bankrupt. We can cover our eyes and ears and pretend this isn't happening - and maybe it might even work for us and we might be spared the return of fascism as a normalized force in our society if things go right. Or we can just call it for what it is and not support it by trying to excuse it.
>> what was just an awkward moment
The whole idea that the self-proclaimed "most intelligent man on earth" didn't know what he was doing and it was actually some kind of heart felt awkward gesture is again, dishonest at best.
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No that Russia collusion conspiracy theory rubbish has been debunked.
It was effectively quashed but not debunked:
I could go on and on but I don't think it would make a difference. It continues to boggle my mind that the GOP, a party that for all of my life had been an enemy of Russia turned around and embraced it. I wonder why.No it was debunked. It was always a conspiracy theory without evidence. I have read the Mueller report, it says no evidence was found of conspiracy (collusion). I can do better than regurgitating links at you and making handwaving claims about how I could go on and on, I can quote you verbatim passages which say just that.
Where is all that "ample evidence" that Adam Schiff, as chair House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, repeatedly claimed to have seen that provided Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election? He has seen it all, it's an open and shut case, so why did he go so quiet about it? Did Putin get to him too?
Obviously he has nothing and never did.
I've pressed people for specifics about this, and the only "evidence" they have been able to provide is Trump's "Russia if you're listening" speech, which is an obvious joke.
> I have read the Mueller report, it says no evidence was found of conspiracy (collusion).
You absolutely did not read the report, you listened to Barr’s brief lie about what was in it. There were endless examples of collusion and people in Trump’s inner circle found guilty of collaborating with the Russian government.
Let me guess, you also think Paul Manafort did nothing wrong?
https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-investigati...
> You absolutely did not read the report, you listened to Barr’s brief lie about what was in it.
I did.
> There were endless examples of collusion and people in Trump’s inner circle found guilty of collaborating with the Russian government.
For which apparently Mueller's team was incapable of using to substantiate any such charges, and apparently Adam Schiff seems to have lost all that evidence he lied about seeing.
The only reasonable explanation is obviously that Trump colluded with Putin to hack Mueller and Schiff, right?
> Let me guess, you also think Paul Manafort did nothing wrong?
A person who isn't called Donald Trump was found guilty of charges that did not include colluding with Putin to hack the election, but relating to to tax evasion and failing to register as an agent working for Ukraine, starting a decade before Trump's campaign started? No I don't think he did nothing wrong and never claimed he did. Nice strawman though, typical of conspiracy theorist rantings.
“Just left Ukraine. What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin. Let me tell you about my trip and why it’s important we stand with Ukraine.” - Mark Kelly
Musk replied directly to that post: “You are a traitor.”
Kelly fired back the next day: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”
Musk later doubled down in media appearances, stating that putting “the interests of another country above America” makes someone a traitor.
I don't see Musk making those statement about US helping the interest of other countries.
It seems like stopping Russia from being an aggressor is in the direct interest of the US. Why would Musk think otherwise?
because of the money...he puts more value on the money he can get than the interests of his adopted country
Seems like these South African tech bros have some affinity towards Russia. I don't understand it.
youll notice these tech bros from South Africa are in fact white...that, considering SA history, kind of half explains (to me) their affinity towards Russia
> It seems like stopping Russia from being an aggressor is in the direct interest of the US. Why would Musk think otherwise?
He is entitled to his own opinions.
From a business perspective Russia is a bigger market than Ukraine for Starlink. And since have no political color, it makes sense for him to not be pro-Ukraine that much.
And lastly, what is in the interest of the state is not neccesarily in the interest of people and vice-versa.
Yes. For example trump proved it wrong two days ago by /checks notes removing all russian oil sanctions https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/us/politics/trump-russia-...
That article does not say what you (and possibly the author) think it does.
> The United States on Thursday temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil that is currently at sea
This is weird phrasing, and for a reason. Oil at sea has typically already been sold! Lifting sanctions on it does practically nothing.
"30-day waiver for countries _to buy_ sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products currently stranded at sea"
with "currently stranded at sea" being one of those things nobody can prove either way with shadow fleet.
>with "currently stranded at sea" being one of those things nobody can prove either way with shadow fleet.
This is simply wrong. The shadow fleet ships still exist in the physical realm and can be observed using eyeballs and other pieces of equipment.
Aha! That must be all the ample and irrefutable proof Adam Schiff has been hiding that shows Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election.
That decision was out of self interest. The US will do whatever it can to try to stop Iran succeeding in their strategy to raise the price of oil.
So no. Not proved wrong in my opinion.
Did you collude with Putin today by not traveling to Russia to attempt to assassinate him or die trying?
Did Biden collude with Putin by not launching nuclear attack against Russia when he was President?
Did Obama collude with Putin when he secretly transmitted a promise to be "more flexible" with him after his election presumably in return for unspecified favors, then later meekly capitulating to Putin's annexation of Crimea?
Just because somebody does not take the most drastic or damaging action they possibly can against another, does not mean they are colluding with them or sympathizing with them. What an infantile worldview.
It's not great that they found starlink terminals on Russian drones (they've since tried to lock them down more).
These should be export controlled and geo-locked as they are arguably much more powerful than any missile.
Starlink recently implemented new rules for satellites that travel more than 100mph. Service is deactivated unless they have a valid government ID and an aircraft's tail number attached to the account. While both can be faked, you could arguably correlated a provided tail number with ADS-B data because anyone with a Starlink is likely also broadcasting ADS-B. But it also provides a bit of 1:1 correlation on satellites and there is a finite number of tail numbers out there.
They also jacked up the subscription price which caused thousands of actual pilots to cancel their service. So expect a flood of used Starlink Minis to enter the market soon.
I thought Starlink doesn't allow you to move your terminal at all with the basic plan, and there's a premium plan where you can move it, but still can't use it, unless you stop?
You aren’t supposed to move the terminal on a residential plan, but there are plans for RVs, boats and planes that allow you to change location and/or use while in motion.
I had the RV plan when they said it would not work in motion, but it worked pretty well on the highway anyway.
SpaceX already does geo-lock them to an extend. But the terminals are exported to so many countries that any meaningful controls are impossible.
Terminals in Ukraine are whitelisted (with whitelist being supplied by the Ukrainian MoD). Meaningful controls are possible, it's what led to the ukrainian forces advancing and liberating territory recently.
You missed my point. It's impossible to meaningfully control the export of physical terminals. But as I pointed out above, SpaceX has already been doing some geo-locking.
I did not. Whitelisting means Russia can not buy terminals in UAE and use them in Ukraine. Because the terminals in UAE are not whitelisted to be used in Ukraine. Therefore, it's possible to control the export of terminals.
I suspect nradov argues that this type of geofencing + allow-listing is not typically what people mean when they talk about "export control", which I agree with.
And while geofencing + allow-listing for sure provide value in e.g the Ukrainian conflict, it's a weak protection compared to goods that are actually under strict export control (e.g ITAR), and will always have to be done after the fact. Russia could for example put Starlink on drones launched from the Baltic Ocean targeting Poland or whatever.
The terminal knows where it is at all times.
The Starlink terminal can't know based on only its position which side it's being used by. Equipment is often used in enemy territory.
That is a tiny minority of the use. The vast majority of Russian use has been on Russian controlled land.
Sure. But if you geoblock all use on Russian controlled land, you're also blocking Ukrainian use on Russian controlled land. I have no idea if that would cause issues or not, but it's not that far fetched to imagine it might.
I know this is a meme but for those at home the whole point of a war is to cross over the front line into the opponent's territory and capture it. If your comms are disabled when you cross the front you can't really fight. So "just disable Starlink within Russian territory" does not solve anything.
You can have a hybrid approach - deny access in that area by default but have a secure way to whitelist specific terminals for short periods (mission duration)
So Starlink ‘Offence’ could be an upsell on a basic ‘Defence’ plan.
Simple solutions: block all Starlink terminals that aren’t whitelisted upon entering Russian territory or Ukrainian conflict zones.
This will prevent Russians importing Starlink terminals and then deploying them in Ukraine.
Work with Ukrainians to whitelist all their terminals.
Which is exactly what they are doing.
https://unn.ua/en/news/ukraine-launches-starlink-whitelist-i...
It’s missing the part that any non-whitelisted Starlink terminal entering Russian territory should automatically be blocked.
This would deny all Russians the use of Starlink.
The issue isn't Russians using Starlink inside Russia (they have other option, e.g. wired system, etc. there); the issue was their using it for drones and other combat operations inside Ukraine (including Ukrainian territory presently held by Russia).
It's beyond sickening what none of you even bother with the idea what a civilian service should not be used by the military, especially in the zone of the conflict - by any side.
"Civilian service" - lol.
SpaceX is a privately-owned defense services company. Their #1 client is the United States. Their launches out of Vandenberg occur because the United States Space Force allows them to happen.
Are you on their board? Who are you to make the call that the product they are offering is a "civilian" (only?) service?
Why not? Assuming you want one of the sides to win, why would you not want your side to use every (ethical) means available to do that?
War is not ethical.
Starting a war is not ethical. Defending your territory from aggressors is 100% ethical.
Starting a war maybe not (depending on circumstances), but how is getting attacked and fighting a war to prevent invasion not ethical?
This line of thinking would lead to the world being led by bastards. There are ethical uses of war and violence.
Of course it is.
[flagged]
Yes but the problem is that the battle lines are fluid and the drones are obviously aiming for the Ukrainian side.
It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't
That all depends on what the meaning of is is.
I understand this reference
It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.
This makes it a very, very dirty terminal.
I think what's actually funnier is that the satellite shooting the laser has to know where the terminal is with pin point accuracy too. So it's pretty easy to cut off targeting to a vast chunk of the planet.
The sats don't use lasers to communicate with terminals, just regular radio waves, they only use lasers for inter-satellite communication
Starlink cells are ~15 miles wide BTW.
How would they geolock terminals on active conflict zone where conflict line changes in realtime. Terminals also cross miles across the line on drones etc. regularly. There was also pushback from Ukraine forces, when they are asked to register their terminals to be whitelisted a while back.
Cappy army on YouTube had an interesting analysis on the starlink usage in russia.
https://youtu.be/Fpt8dYAwK7c?si=x5pp9vfKdwXM947c
The usage is in Ukraine
Right i meant to say by Russians in Ukraine
Nowadays Starlink terminals to operate in Ukraine they have to be approved so right now Russians cannot waste them anymore on drones as it's much harder getting one working (in the past they have been).
The theory is the US let some Russians use it as a trap to get them dependent on it and then pulled the rug which gave Ukraine a big advantage to clear some areas and generally disrupted Russian operations.
The DoD has always been deeply involved in running Starlink there
How does radio transmission with fast moving targets work (including LTE on phone), doesnt the doppler effect shift the frequencies of all radio waves?
Yup, it shifts but it's a minor shift and easily handled in the receiver. Receivers already need a little ability to tune the carrier frequency to account for ordinary variations in the circuits. From memory GPS's doppler shift is on the scale of a single digit khz, so Starlink's probably double that. A few khz of shift is no big deal for ghz carriers.
How does the receiver know how to shift?!
All RF protocols have some provision for signal acquisition. It can take a bunch of forms but what it nets out to is the oscillator in the receiver can acquire the signal from the sender. A simple example of this is "pilot" signals or prefixes that have an easily recognizable structure and allow the receiver to align to the sender in the clock recovery sense. So the receiver needs a little extra tunable bandwidth and to run the messy intermediates through something like a convolution filter, but it can latch on easily. This is early days of radio technology, like mid century post war.
Not only that. It seems to have been more Russian starlink terminals than Ukrainian ones.
.gov allowed Russian military to become reliant on Starlink, then cut it off.
That was a deliberate tactic; Government is not leaving the fate of nations in the hands of Elon Musk alone.
Yes. Their brilliant 5D chess moves I can see at the gas station every day. Their long term plan is clearly to drive everyone away from the fossil industry and towards renewables.
Especially in light of that early war elon confession about disabling terminals mid Ukraine op.
Another not great data point is https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukraine-starlink-data-traffic...
"Starlink satellite traffic in Ukraine fell by about 75% after SpaceX shut down its terminals in the occupied territories of the country."
By now it came to light russians for example had starlinks on every assaulting tank in addition to long range drones.
That story keeps being spun by people who don’t read articles (or don’t expect people to). What SpaceX did there was limit the use of Starlink in Russian controlled territory. The very same new pattern of Ukraine whitelisting and geofencing access which is what everyone is praising today.
The only reason Ukraine complained was their special ops were running drone boats deep in Russian territory. After they asked for permission (following this controversy) SpaceX did a deal with DoD to let them manage those special cases allowing its use behind enemy lines.
Starlink has been nothing but positive for Ukraine
While there is a massive US advantage in space launch, it should be used to the maximum. It's not going to last forever (while perhaps, sufficiently long that China fizzles out demographically before it's gone).
The American advantage in launches would get narrowed within ten years. China only needs to be able to get their own constellation up; they don't need to keep SpaceX levels of launch cadence.
American technological superiority is overblown. The only reason we’re ahead is because of immigration. As China/other countries get wealthier and the US gets less friendly, smart people stay home. One generation later and the best scientists will in those countries, not here.
To be honest, I think US demographic trends are a lot worse than whatever is going on with China.
Oh my goodness, this is deeply untrue. China is facing a massive population implosion. A lot of their global strategy can be understood through that lens: they are racing to accumulate power, standing, and wealth before the implosion starts to kick in.
Everyone is seeing a population implosion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_world#/med... we are already past peak child.
Some are doing worse than others, and China is doing close to the worst.
China is doing much better than the West. The only thing keeping populations from imploding here is the constant migration from the third world.
I don't understand. You say China is doing better than the West, and then explain why the West is doing so much better than China.
The West isn't doing better.
The West is destroying third world countries to take their human resources. Blowing up the middle east created more uber eats drivers than defunding all the schools in Detroit ever did.
I think you haven't been following the news. US demographics is by far the healthiest of all halfway developed countries, with the exception of Israel. China has third low TFR in the world after South Korea and Taiwan, and is facing extinction within two generations whereas society and the economy will simply cease because all available labor will be consumed by caring hundreds of millions of extremely elderly people.
By 2100, US will look about the same as Western Europe looks today: ageing, but still OK. China will be no more.
Why is Chinese army propaganda on this site? It's not news that the PLA will oppose technology that gives the US military an advantage.
CSIS is republishing work from PLA affiliated writers from PLA affiliated think tanks, published an a PLA affiliated journal because it does in fact capture aspects of internal PLA thinking. This article is from 2023, it's not written in the context of the current administrations policies and rhteroic. While we can always be certain that there are aspects of external facing PR/propaganda, we also should consider "how does China view the militarization of Starlink and Space".
And to that end, we can clearly see that the PLA sees Space Dominance as being strategically destabilizing. They see threats to their ability to disperse and hide their nuclear launch systems.
In fact, from a 2026 lens, the best way to read this paper would be "the PLA has mapped out its vulnerabilities, and all of its risk control and escalation options (basically its suggestions in the conclusions) are basically off the table. Therefore, it's very obvious that the PLA will attempt to compensate through simultaneously achieving its own space based capability similar to Starlink, develop additional ways to hold US strategic assets (read nuclear strike platforms) at risk, and find asymmetric means of deterrence".
EDIT: Just made a connection in my head - there's been a lot of news about Chinese nuclear arsenal increases in recent years, with a uptick starting around 2023, and the DoD estimating a rough tripling from 2025-2035. I suspect these developments might be connected.
EDIT2: I think to summarize what I think would be important take away from reading this paper is that while the most immediate examples of militarized Starlink use are all very tactical level (thinking about drones in Ukraine), this piece clearly signals that the PLA also believes that Starlink militarization poses treats at the strategic (read nuclear) level. And therefore, if we think purely in terms of tactical/operational capabilities, we may be caught off guard by certain reactions by the PLA/China.
I don't think that Starlink affects nuclear deterrence / the MAD doctrine in any meaningful way. But it does seriously affect "conventional" warfare. And China is rather visibly preparing for a conventional war.
I believe it's exactly that thinking that CSIS was trying to check when they chose to translate and publish this specific article. They are trying to get analysts and policy makers to think through, and make an active decision on if they believe that China will treat military/militarized mega constellations as destabilizing in a nuclear/strategic sense.
It's fair to decide that that is not major factor, but it should be an informed decision. It requires looking at the nuclear risk issues that the piece raises, and finding reasons to dismiss them.
Even the best space comms system does not make your ICBMs invisible to your adversary, and does not allow you to shoot down your adversary's return salvo of ICBMs. Hence the mutually assured destruction is not going away, and the side starting an all-out nuclear war still cannot win. I don't see how anything what's available now changes this; do you?
What might be destabilizing would be long-range hypersonic missiles that fly relatively low (30 km above the surface, not 1000 km), so they can't be easily detected until it's pretty late, and can arrive from multiple directions. This is exactly the kind of weapon that is China apparently developing, BTW.
The article argues that space and AI dominance meaningfully threatens China's second strike (mobile land based ICBMs) survivability, which would bias China to act more proactively (ie, more hair trigger) in escalation scenarios.
Chinese and Russian developments (HGVs, FOBs, the Russian "superweapons" like Poseidon) are all destabilizing to an extent. But as long as none them challenge/hold at risk the US second strike capability (a robust C2 network and the SSBN fleet), they won't be massively destabilizing.
For what it's worth, HGVs that could strike the US from China still need to be launched off what are effectively ICBM class rockets. The launch signatures would almost certainly be detected.
And finally, let's not even get started with what Golden Dome would do to strategic stability.
There's simply no need to go pointing fingers right now. The reality is that all sides are taking various self-interested actions that in the absence of communication or coordination will lead towards less stable environments. No side has the ability to compel the others to not take these actions, and so the best we can do is try to anticipate the new operating environments and be ready for them as best we can.
I think the issue is that one side having an overwhelming non-nuclear, conventional advantage might push the other to a nuclear response in the event of a catastrophic loss in a conventional conflict. Imagine Chine tries to invade Taiwan and they are defeated so badly that the CCP might fall -- then perhaps a nuclear response becomes more likely.
However, I think this is not the case. In the end no one wants to reduce the world to ashes over losing power. But... well, I suppose there are people crazy enough to want that.
> The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.
Sorry, may I get more information on why this is considered Chinese army propaganda?
My understanding is that CSIS (https://www.csis.org/about) is an US based organisation that provides analysis on topics which include Chinese organisations/military.
Not specific to this article, but I generally like to find third party sources to confirm or deny the "bipartisan" and "nonprofit" parts of their about page. I've seen too many where that turned out to be false.
Just today I tried an experiment asking the YouTube Ai question bot "where on the political compass are the opinions expressed in this video?"
The chatbot couldn't get past the fact that the video said it was non-partisan and if they said it it must be true.
Csis is everything but neutral.
Did you read the first sentence?
> In this piece, two researchers from PLA-affiliated National University of Defense Technology argue that
When you were a kid, did you stop listening when your parents said “Santa”, or did you keep listening in order to glean useful information from their propoganda, even knowing that Santa isn't real?
Were you under the impression the Chinese Communist Party has been telling you sweet lies only because they find joy in seeing your childlike naivety and wonder?
The general principle of extracting useful information from the scenario “(party a) tells lies because (ulterior motive b)” transcends the particular values of party a and motive b
That’s it, you’re on my naughty list! —Santa
Thanks; I missed that and almost sullied my mind reading an argument formulated by a potential adversary to the United States of America.
Isn't sully your mind a bit harsh?
As long as you read with the article's authorship in mind, it's useful to learn what thoughts your adversary wishes to influence and why.
Did you stop reading at the first sentence??
Yes. It is the equivalent of reading a technical review of a product by the product owner
It makes a change from the US Military propaganda I suppose.
No no, American media corporations are virtuous courageous freedom fighters intent on "speaking truth to power" and "standing up for democracy" and "science". To suggest otherwise makes you a something something denier, a dangerous conspiracy theorist, a puppet of fascism, etc.
Last I attended a CSIS event, it was filled with US intelligentsia (including the famed Zbigniew Brzezinsky, Polish spellings be damned).
Interpret: China is a CSIS project aimed at facilitating a more nuanced understanding of global strategic issues through a library of translated materials matched with expert commentary.
Americans are so propagandized and paranoid that they see a DC blob foreign policy think tank translating Chinese PLA source documents and start wondering if there's a nefarious plot afoot. "Understanding the enemy?! That sounds like an axis of evil conspiracy!"
Americans propaganda has completely brainwashed you
But does that mean they are wrong?
Certainly not. Some propaganda is made up, some just highlights some convenient truth.
Trouble is it's hard to tell the difference.
From whose perspective?
Usually yes.
I haven't read it fully but it doesn't seem to be promoting any sort of falsehoods. As an American I consider any reliance on Starlink and the thoroughly compromised Elon Musk to be a weakness rather than a strength.
So, you disagree with the paper and think what the Pentagon did with Anthropic is right.
It really is that simple. Straight up CCP propaganda translated from a Chinese journal, written by Chinese professors worried about Chinese national security.
Starlink was never about giving people untethered access to the internet.
Musk started SpaceX with Michael D. Griffin, the guy who invented large constellations of military satellites to win a nuclear war. And then he funded Starlink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin
Starlink project began after Musk and Greg Wyler parted their ways. Wyler approached SpaceX in 2014 with a proposal to build OneWeb (then called WorldVu), and initially they worked on the project together. But then they started to accuse each other of doing various underhanded things, and split. After that, Musk decided that he could do a similar and even better system without Wyler, and that's how Starlink was born in 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
I noticed this the other day with the Anthropic upholding its redline. I think this is the first time in history where consumer tech exceeds military tech. Historically, it was always military tech trickles down to consumer.
Consumer tech "exceeded" military tech when the first consumer-grade FPV drones started destroying tanks and bombing trenches in 2022.
Exactly as cyberpunk books predicted, the technology is so advanced that all you need to create a weapon is sold in a toy store.
Afghani terrorists were using weaponized consumer drones back in 2020.
https://www.twz.com/37398/deadly-taliban-attack-on-governors...
weren't the first instances of that. you could argue that places like /r/combatfootage are the consumer 'tech' that leads some of this, but it wasn't 2022.
ISIS was dropping mortar rounds from consumer drones back in 2017 already
This is footage of a drone strike against personnel in a building from July 2022: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wbb1yh/ua_su...
This apparently has more footage from 2022: https://www.reddit.com/r/UADroneArchive/comments/11nxhh4/ua_...
I argue that it’s different. Ukrainian military needed this to adapt to the warfare. The US has plenty of means to bomb people (look at Iran) with or without consumer drones. Our military does not have any native LLM capabilities.
> I think this is the first time in history where consumer tech exceeds military tech
Never mind airplanes, telephones, steel, cars, trucks, photography, steam engines, gasoline engines, light bulbs, electric power generation, ...
Indeed for once data volume >>> other concerns
This is a completely unfounded conspiracy theory, but I think it’s a fun one. I think Elon Musk is running these companies the same way that he is a top ranked Diablo player. He just plays one on TV. The decision makers in the military industrial complex pushed black programs into a group of private company so they could scale and cut red tape while shedding contractors with really serious performance problems. So now a faction of “the insiders“ control space launches, social media, and have a backup AI company. There are less successful programs like Tesla for getting cattle like me to drive an electric car that can be remotely driven into a median or disabled if someone in Bethesda decides that they don’t like you. Also there is a not so successful attempt to revolutionize tunnel logistics for defense. So what I’m saying is that this is military tech, they just pretend these are private companies run by a Tony Stark showman. I can’t support this with evidence, but it makes for a good story.
Conspiracy theories aren't very productive. But the one thing that continues to bother me is how there is no great explanation for why TSLA is still worth much. It's a shrinking car company that is failing to execute at FSD and says it's going to make humanoid robots instead of cars.
There is no good reason TSLA should be valued any more than 10% of its current valuation, and even that would be rich. There is a fine argument it should be worth 3-4% of what it currently is.
It is almost like there's a connection between PayPal, Elon Musks fortunes, and crypto.
I still wonder who Satoshi really was. I wonder how Microstrategy remains solvent.
The vision for the future elon gives us (exploring the stars, human augmentation, advanced AI likely leading to elimination of suffering) is a heaven-like vision in a western world where most people don’t believe in anything much, and many of our leaders and intellectuals are misanthropes who think having kids is selfish.
I don’t care what tesla’s quarterly sales are, I’m supporting elon’s vision.
That vision is a lie, and it's a distraction. It is taking advantage of the emptiness that they themselves created, and now they are making you angry to distract you while they rob you. I sincerely wish you well in life, don't pick the wrong heroes.
Who is your hero, and why?
It is just a bet on Elon’s vision, nothing more, you put a little money there, many people do the same, price go up. Just that.
There are no other companies in the same position as Tesla, time will tell if it succeeds or not.
There are many such mysteries, right? How does Oracle make money when every product of theirs sucks and is worse than free alternatives? How is it that Google and Meta seem to have more revenue from “advertising“ than everyone spends on advertising? Where are the product sales that can be traced to this massive amount of spending? I don’t think you could even articulate a plausible business plan around what Google claims to do, especially when they were hot in the early 2000s. How do large financial institutions, like JP Morgan, get fined for financial crimes yet still operate with total public trust? Just as strange as Bigfoot and aliens but in plain sight.
Again, I’m going to qualify this with the disclaimer that this is my own baseless conspiracy theory presented purely for its entertainment value. I suspect that the United States has many effectively state owned enterprises just like the PRC, but there are elaborate obfuscation techniques used to make that seem as if that were not the case. In part that is because a large criminal network is wearing the dead US government like a skin suit.
Most insightful HN comment in recent memory.
Whomever it is, was, there are a handful of individuals still holding block controls on the ORIGINAL chain... that could topple ANY valuation. Those who sold around $0.32/USD would be happy to know that chasing the dragon would have made them as mad as the leads on TV shows.
I think the notion of a cryptocurrency treasury company is idiotic but Strategy (MicroStrategy) is an audited public company. If you want to know how they're solvent then you can literally just read their financial statements.
https://www.strategy.com/financial-documents
hahaha, the conspiracy i always joke about is when the first time a starlink satellite deorbiting is going to kill someone 'accidentally'.
This comes across as whining.
I mean most of us knew from day 1 this would get militarized as soon as possibly can... the same goes for spacehip (large payloads delivery to battlefields) as well and neuralink (during interrogations).
same for "save the whales" PlanetLabs
I was early at Planet (and fresh out of college) and the transition internally towards govt money was very painful for the bright eyed save-the-world hackers internally.
The initial technical architecture was aligned with broad good (low res, global, daily, openly available), but the shift towards selling high res satellite capabilities directly to governments has been tough to see.
Their role of providing a public ledger is still a net good thing IMO, and i doubt Planet is adding much increased capability to the US war fighter (they have way better stuff). Harder to say for their deals with other governments that have fewer native space capabilities.
Please elaborate, this sounds like a fun weekend rabbit-hole.
this is very difficult to address with intellectual honesty.
It seems obvious to me that people of conscience and standing have built plenty of the most cutting edge tech of this age. Yet those people are structurally embedded within business and government. Far-reaching technology is one thing, but satellite networks are especially impactful in many ways for both real time intelligence gathering and also building a record of analytic data over time.
So, PlanetLabs.. without a doubt, completely sincere in Doves reading save-the-whales data over the entire Earth. And also, connected "at the hip" to the US Federal Government. Does the US Federal Government work diligently to save-the-whales? You be the judge.
PlanetLabs is business, with investors. That is the horse that brought the endeavor to its current state. Larry Ellison seems to run a very stable business, in the same locales, and that seems to be just fine with investors. Is there any way that PlanetLabs would not be subject to the same investor pressures and direction, lawsuits and governance letters, that Oracle is subject to? seems likely that lots of the same actors are close at hand, from the beginning.
SO there is tragedy and comedy, stock price and hiring practices, technical capacity and brilliance. The mission is the message ? feedback here seems likely to escalate, so let's set a tone of informed debate, and recall that after the typing, almost nothing will actually change in practice.. just an educated guess.
The US Federal government has done a lot to save the whales.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/marine-mammal-protec...
Krill baby krill?
The current administration is openly extractive without the fig leaves of old.
I don’t think we can look forward to nature - whether it’s national parks or marine parks or just being a non polluting neighbor - getting any priority or protection from now onwards.
Canada will continue to casually choose the pro-nature option when presented.
Yeah, they are using this tech 'round the backside to track subs.
"StarShield"
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They're hardly a voice of reason, they criticize the US so everyone rallies around them, but they're just taking advantage of the situation like anyone else would. It's all optics. I think the era of the superpower is already over.
They can't build a peaceful relationship with taiwan, it would hurt the PRC if they did that. They need an point of contention for political reasons there, but taiwan has seen what has become of hong kong. They have historical ties but since the 1940's much like the Koreas their culture and society has developed separately. Peace is possible, if the PRC can accept a separate independent Taiwan, but they won't for the same reason putin doesn't like countries like ukraine nearby, that have a significant military and economic advantage to be outside its sphere of influence.
China is like a carefully crafted house of cards, long term planning means they will likely establish a long lasting prosperous nation, but that's only possible if contemporary situations don't force them into desperate actions, like invading taiwan, a military conflict with the US,etc.. right now their sources of oil from iran and venezuela are being cut off, they've been heavily investing in renewables predicting this exact situation, and that's what I mean by long term, they're a few decades away from the fruition of most of their longterm plans. Xi won't be alive to see it, but he needs to make a mark in their history too. The fate of china depends on Xi's patience, and the ability of China to endure temporary economic hardship.
They've been building alliances like BRICS for the same reasons, they're grandstanding now also to avoid a direct confrontation with the US.
The US isn't increasingly being radicalized, it is beyond that. it is right a strange mix of kakistocracy and kleptocracy. On one hand, the US's hegemony is practically over, on the other hand who will fill in the void? certainly not China. Even things like the UN are not a given anymore. The best outcome is one that avoids conflict between countries with large economies and militaries.
BRICS isn't an alliance. They have never agreed on anything significant or taken any meaningful coordinated action.
It is similar to G8, and like I said, they're been building one, I didn't say they're completed the building. But current events are helping with that effort.
Nah, they're not building anything. China and India will never agree on substantive issues. South Africa is a failed state and Russia may be headed in the direction. BRICS is a total joke.
> China and India will never agree on substantive issues.
And the US and Russia do? (G8)
South Afica is the largest economy in Africa, 13% of the continent's GDP. Your views on its political state doesn't change that. And honestly, as an American, I can't say my country is doing better than SA. Sure they have more crime, but at least they don't have a military force dedicated to ethnic-cleansing migrants . Lol, sad times.
You missed the point. The G8 isn't an alliance either.
depends on what you call an alliance. obviously i wasn't alluding to a military alliance. these are economic forums, where economically allied countries get together to discuss policy. What is a better term that describes their relationship? frenemies? I would insist BRICS is certainly an economic alliance, their one common goal is to resist the western lead economic order of things, even if they can't agree on specifics they agree and are allied over that one goal.
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Are you new to this site? I ask because your comment is entirely against the decorum we try to maintain here. This is a place for meaningful discussion (on topics pertaining to engineering and science in particular), it is not like Reddit where we hurl insults on one another in some apparent attempt to ratio people we disagree with.
Meaningful discussion. Bike shedding, mostly. And illiterates hiding behind llm-generated content. I’m new to this site, sure. Stop impeding my „freedom of speech”.
This is a common attitude among Americans, to see other countries as a beacon of reason and even contemplate moving there, when theirs is moderately frustrating and has plenty of constructive reform available to do at the person’s level of influence. It was popular during the Cold War to fantasize about living in the USSR, and today, the fantasy is typically Canada, Europe, Russia or China depending on politics and level of interest in technology.
> If they can build a peaceful relationship with Taiwan without military involvement
Xi fucked this up because he’s a dictator.
Taiwanese polling on national identity was mixed until the 2010s [1]. Left at peace, it would have probably voted for reintegration in our lifetimes. But then Xi decided the post-Mao system of political competition within the CCP was inconvenient, launched his wolf warriors on all of China’s neighbors, annexed Hong Kong prematurely and started warmongering with Taiwan, all of which has lead to an avoidable but now-permanent polarization across the strait.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_Taiwanese_i...
"annexed Hong Kong prematurely" ? I'm not sure what you mean here.
Reports I've read are that China was surprised when the UK got in touch a few years before 97, wanting to start the prep work for the handover of HK. China, it seems, just assumed the UK would call HK a historical legacy whose lease agreement was made with a now-defunct country, and leave it at that without a handover.
China may have been a voice of reason (relatively) during the Deng Xiaoping times. Under comrade Xi, China is a voice of something different, alas.
If they can build a peaceful relationship with Taiwan without military involvement where both countries can continue to prosper we really will have a new super power
Ah, if only.
Those damn intransigent Taiwanese!
It’s almost as if they don’t want to join the PRC.
…like most other independent nations.
An odd take on a regime that has known and significant human rights violations. I’m not saying the US is doing great right now, but China is not something to look up to.
The US is doing much, much worse. This is no compliment to China. The US
* murdered a political leader the were negotiating with in Iran after using the military to kidnap the leader of Venezuela.
* is credibly threatening military allies in Greenland, countries with which it has mutual protection treaties and is credibly threatening, without casus belli, to militarily invade another weaker neighbor, Cuba.
* spent months threatening to invade Canada. This wasn't trolling, it is forgotten with their strategy of constant chaos, but they really tried and Canada has made alliances with other countries as a result
* is actively murdering thousands of people in Haiti via a Republican allied private military contractor
* is actively subverting domestic elections
* is building and filling concentration camps with people who have committed no other crime than illegal residency, without due process, and giving them substandard care, leading to many deaths in custody.
* has masked secret police detaining people without due process and deporting them to foreign prison camps, frequently in violation of judicial orders
* has masked secret police arresting citizen because of their nationality and because they are not carrying "their papers"
* is using the power of government to force mergers and ownership changes of corporations to political allies
* is using the power of the government to hide an embarrassing a criminal conspiracy involving leadership in the country, in violation of the US Constitution, since it was ordered by Congress.
* has completely disregarded conflict of interest laws which the leader of the country is using to enrich himself and his family at completely unprecedented levels in US history.
I could go on, but China is a more ethical superpower by a lot of measures and that is a very painful conclusion to state.
This is not even touching on the subject of competency.
The internationally accepted US hegemony and the privileged role of the US dollar was the result of almost a century of goodwill. It is now gone, and then some. The next two decades will not be pleasant for regular Americans who have grown accustomed to, and frankly taken for granted, the level of privilege they had.
edit: and speak of the devil, and competency: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/what-happens-w... just made it to the top of the front page. Even with everything I wrote above, I had neglected to include that the US lies about embarrassing economic data now due to political intererence.
edit 2: this didn't even make the front page and would have been the biggest scandal in modern American history: https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-deal-fee-trump-administratio... "Trump Administration Set to Receive $10 Billion Fee for Brokering TikTok Deal"
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Wow, nativism from the left is wild to see. Obama was the son of an immigrant vs the grandchild of one for Trump. There’s a lot of valid criticism of Melania but claiming it’s because she “can’t” speak English is wild (she speaks with an accent but so what).
I’m tired of attacks on personal characteristics that have no bearing (or are even outside their control) rather than on legitimate things like ideas, temperament, decision making, track record. Do better.
It’s a shill/troll account. Flag and move on.
Swipe the dirt under the carpet. For what we know there’s no difference between “throwaway” and “jumping criss cross”. You’re hiding behind a nickname, too!
Power is power.
The US has due process, judicial transparency, and free speech. There are still rich people that operate above the system, but they're largely still accountable and the free press can crucify them.
Authoritarian regimes have execution vans, no freedom of the press, no free speech, and a paranoid leadership that will jail or kill anyone who threatens their power. They lock citizens inside and prohibit capital flight.
No system is perfect, but democracy is strictly better.
I love China and the Chinese people, but the CCP is a drag on both.
I'm no fan of the party in power in the US, but I can campaign and speak out against them. I can raise money to oppose them. I can band together with like minded individuals to protest. That's superior to unilateral oppression.
> No system is perfect, but democracy is strictly better
The US is probably the lowest level of pretend democracy, the next step is Russia tier theatrical democracy
"they're largely still accountable and the free press can crucify them".
Cute.
> I'm no fan of the party in power in the US, but I can campaign and speak out against them. I can raise money to oppose them. I can band together with like minded individuals to protest.
You can. Just not in any way that matters. And you won’t. Because that takes organization and all existing organizations that matter are captured by the system and novel ones would quickly be.
Perfect example: The US just launched a disastrous and illegal (both in their own and the UN system) war at the behest of a foreign power/influential minority against the will of its people and against its geopolitical interest. And the “opposition” does less than nothing. There is little anti-war protest and none of consquence.
Compare it with 2003 and earlier wars: The American public has been all but neutralized as a political force. Not that it could do much even then.
> That's superior to unilateral oppression.
You prefer the illusion of power.
> You can. Just not in any way that matters. And you won’t.
I’ve gotten language I wrote passed into state and federal law. The bottom line is a lot of people are too busy, lazy or nihilistic to call their electeds and show up to create political pressure. That’s unfortunate. But it also means that the payoff for relatively small amounts of effort are huge.
Did that language imping on the interests of America’s ruling elites, its security apparatus, or the interests of a certain entity in the eastern Mediterranean? No? Then we’re talking about entirely different things.
The “opposition” attempted to assert the congressional authority the branch is supposed over war powers, and were defeated because the American public gave majority power to the current majority whom rejected that authority to the executive branch to do whatever.
The “opposition” that oversaw the Gaza genocide.
No, they are, in the words of German Chancellor Merz, perfectly happy to let Trump do their “dirty work.” All the better if it blows up in his face.
In fact, that’s the whole reason why Trump is in office and not in prison. Because after October 2023 Zionists don’t accept “no” for an answer.
They have the most economic output, the highest quality technology, and the sanest voices of reason. It's too bad they're a dictatorship. If they can fix that I might have to move there.
They are supporting and encouraging Russia’s war against Ukraine. They also provide diplomatic cover and economic support for the Iranian regime. They promote nationalist radicalism and harassment of nonconformists on foreign campuses. They ruthlessly suppress dissent, or even just non Han ethic identity and implement racist eugenic policies in their regions.
The comment you replied to referred to Taiwan as existing alongside China as a country. That’s a crime in mainland China.
> They also provide diplomatic cover and economic support for the Iranian regime
I can't believe some people can still argue in good faith the US and israel are the good guys, do you have a ounce of self reflection? You kidnap presidents, kill entire families of political leaders, talk about them like they are dogs (see the latest white house propaganda videos or Hegseth speeches), and then you come here to argue China is bad because they may one day plan to do something similar, how blind are you? Everything you accuse the others of planning you already have done it or are actively doing it right now...
I didn’t say anything about anyone being the good guys.
I didn’t say anything about what China is planning, I pointed out things they are doing right now.
The Usa does similar things across the world. Here I swapped for the Usa.
> They are supporting and encouraging Israel’s war against Iran and Palestine. They also provide diplomatic cover and economic support for the Israeli regime. They promote nationalist radicalism and harassment of nonconformists on foreign campuses (Columbia protests). They ruthlessly suppress dissent (you must support the troops, using chemical weapons on protestors), or even just non White ethic identity and implement racist policies in their regions (rounding up immigrants without due process).
I think there’s a very great difference in degree, but sure. Especially under this administration.
Do you speak Mandarin? Because upthread there’s a guy railing against Melania because she speaks English with an accent and I suspect you’ll get a similar reception in China.
Also, if you think racism in America is a problem, ooo boy do I want to see your experience as a foreigner in a largely homogenous country that has little immigration.
I think China would say the last one is the reason for the first three, and point to democracy as a root cause for the problems facing the West.
>They have the most economic output
Only because they have such a large population. Their economic output per person (GDP per capita) is only around $15k, similar to Turkey. And they've hit a severe aging population problem that other East Asian countries only hit when their GDP per capita was around $30k; they're getting old before they get rich. Unless they dramatically increase immigration or birthrates (now less than 1.0), it's likely that even by 2100 Chinese people still won't enjoy the same standard of living (GDP per capita of around $80k) that Americans enjoy today.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Just because I have a knife doesn't mean it affects the stability of my neighborhood. Even if I use my knife to kill a killer, that doesn't necessarily affect the stability of my neighborhood. It could even improve it.
All in all, I would rather live in a somewhat free America than in communist China.
> All in all, I would rather live in a somewhat free America than in communist China.
The last 15 years has significantly changed peoples' opinions on that matter. https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart
Let's see how the next 15 goes.
The last 15 years has significantly changed peoples' opinions on that matter.
I’m gonna need to see some immigration statistics on influx of foreigners into the PRC to believe that claim.
Might have more to do with language than anything else TBH
Ok, but what is China's immigration policy like?
They could be importing young people from nearby India, yet they're not. Why?
I mean, theres still a language barrier there no? I dont know much about their immigration policies though.
Get yourself a plane ticket from your """free""" America to visit """communist""" China one day, you might be surprised by what you see
I've done so. I saw a country that is a mix of third and first, full of wonderful people who the government fear so much they have to cut them off from the rest of the world and run the place as a police state.
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We are already in some sense past the threshold of sats required for a potential civlizational collapse that would be caused by the loss of access to space.
There are way too many sattelites, starlink militarizing means it's a viable target now for enemy nations, any one of them taking out a couple sats and causing debris would cause a chain reaction that would effectively turn space into a dump, let's not even mention that military = more money = more sats, making it even riskier.
Or the fact that at any moment those sats could also die from a carrington+ level event.
> any one of them taking out a couple sats and causing debris would cause a chain reaction that would effectively turn space into a dump
You may not realize how big space is relative to the size of a few sats.
Besides, SpaceX could launch more sats to even lower orbits (where they wouldn't last long just due to atmospheric drag) during a conflict -- enough to win, then we can figure out how to get all that debris cleared out.
https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/3...
You may want to read an actual study about it. And this doesn't even consider the possibility that militarization of starlink satellites may cause them to get taken out, which will trigger the KS the same way.
Interesting paper, thanks! I guess we'll find out.
...there was civilization long before satellites.
The relative impact of Kessler syndrome is honestly overblown: we're simply not that dependent on satellites for day to day activities. It would be an economic disaster, but those aren't civilization ending.