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Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

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Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#111

Post by GorbachevyChase »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #74
GorbachevyChase wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

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…

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.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#112

Post by Herring »

santiago-pl wrote: post #104

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.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#113

Post by cushychicken »

Herring wrote: post #112
santiago-pl wrote: post #104

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.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#114

Post by dev1ycan »

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.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#115

Post by fny »

wmf wrote: post #109
redgridtactical wrote: post #101

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…

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.

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.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#117

Post by cushychicken »

blondie9x wrote: post #6

[flagged]

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.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#118

Post by justsomehnguy »

ftth_finland wrote: post #66
wmf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#119

Post by icegreentea2 »

nine_k wrote: post #94
icegreentea2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#120

Post by echoangle »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #118
ftth_finland wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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?
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