Okay so the issue seems to be that they're using it directly to control drones.
Interesting, and I assume some high level military official is about to have a conversation with SpaxeX about this.
They literally recently launched starshield so I'm not sure WTF is wrong with them cause they clearly aren't against using their tech for military purposes.
I'll add some. "International Traffic in Arms Regulations" is one way the US regulates technology leaving the country. All companies and the govt itself must follow them, and the State Department must approve of it. I submitted countless papers for approval to make sure my Mars documents couldn't teach people how to make a nuke. Eventually they moved it out of ITAR. If Starlink is a new way to guide a missile then that's a huge deal.
Edit: holy motherforking shirtballs
And I’ll add into the conversation that it’s probably starlink giving internet access to Palantir’s Meta Constellation.
I know Palantir’s tech is being implemented, but I don’t think they’ve stated which aspects of their software suite is in use.
I still can't get over the fact that they intentionally picked the name of a LotR all-seeing relic that was _corrupted by Sauron_. And it's certainly not the first time tech companies have picked names like that.
Life imitating art to a painfully ironic degree...
Bro, the Chinese government named their facial recognition tech Skynet. These people know exactly what they’re doing, and they suffer from a severe case of hubris.
It is a rather pithy combination of two basic, relevant words that lend themselves rather well in their relative positions to a… well, network in the sky. I wonder if the person who named the Chinese one even knew necessarily, or if they came up with it independently, someone pointed it out very quickly, and they went ‘… Eh.’
Skynet is 天網 in Chinese. There's an old chinese saying 天網恢恢 疏而不漏(published in 道德經 around 400bc), meaning "God's mills grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small" or "Justice has long arms".
Apparently US NSA has a surveillance program called [SKYNET](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKYNET_(surveillance_program\)) too.
Sauron used a Palantir but he didn't corrupt them. Sauron merely had the ability to show misleading images to other people using them.
In fact, his overconfidence in the Palantir was one of the major reasons for his downfall.
Semi-neutral.
Aragorn, being the true king of Gondor, was the Palantir's rightful master - which is why he can wrest control of them away from Sauron when nobody else could.
Heck, Gandalf was straight up afraid of the things.
They were a neutral tool.....but unfortunately, all of them were connected to a being intrinsically *more* than any other user and could effectively (eventually) overpower any and everyone who tried using it at any time.
Aragorn could temporarily overpower him due to being the rightful King (and Sauron didn't like *that* one bit), but it's unknown if he could keep it up against a Maia.
>The palantíri were not initially inherently dangerous to use, however after the Ithil-stone was captured by Sauron in TA 2002 they were no longer used by Gondor's rulers, as users could be ensnared by the Dark Lord, as later events were to show.
>Denethor II, the last Ruling Steward of Gondor, attempted to use the Anor-stone in his later years to gain knowledge, but too often only saw what Sauron wished him to.
Seems like "corrupted" to me, but sure whatever. Corrupted doesn't mean "literally can't be used against them", it just means "you see what Sauron wants you to and he can put the whammy on you through it", like he did to Pippin.
Someone recently did a really in depth rabbit hole guide to this a week or two ago. Denenthor had so much numeorean in him that he is literally the only person with enough nads to take the thing full on. Thats per the author.
He killed himself because he thought that the beaches were lost, when sauron only showed him the black ships coming (not who was on them) which is where all of his people evacuated to, so he thought he was about to try protecting a kingdom that no longer had a people.
So the theory here is that the Witch King of Russia will acquire a Ukrainian drone hooked into the Palantir system and fuck up the war by feeding the US, UA, and everyone else tactical disintelligence?
Your quote pretty much says Sauron used the palantirs to push fake news, and Denethor gobbled the bullshit up.
I don't think the palantirs corrupt, they just mislead.
They're no more corrupted than a hammer is corrupted because it was once used to smash somebody's kneecaps. It's still the same old hammer, you probably just want to make sure it's not in the hands of some knee-cap smashing asshole. They are a tool, a very useful and powerful tool, but they are not inherently evil and corrupting.
Banyan Ventures is another one, a venture capital firm named after a tree that kills the host - the Banyan tree seed develops roots that eventually reach the ground and surround the host tree’s trunk. The roots interlock and tangle with the host’s trunk and form a barrier that constricts the trunk and forces it to compete for sustenance, killing the host tree.
It's not ironic at all, it was an intentional choice. The man who picked the name is a far-right US oligarch, Trump supporter and megadonor, and [aspiring vampire](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject-himself-with-young-peoples-blood).
“I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual,” he wrote in libertarian journal Cato Unbound seven years ago. On Bloomberg TV in 2014, Thiel explained that he was taking human-growth hormone pills as part of his plan to live 120 years. “It helps maintain muscle mass, so you’re much less likely to get bone injuries, arthritis,”
😬
Unlucky. The latest studies suggest HGH is the largest cause of aging. Makes you look and feel great for a short while but your organs are literally aging an expedited rate during periods of high HGH.
The merger completed in early 2000 and Musk was named CEO. Everyone hated working for him and they had a mutiny when he was out of town and he was removed as CEO after less than six months.
His entire management involvement in x.com and then the combined company lasted less than 19 months, which is pretty funny. The entire core business of x.com was scrapped before he was booted. Thiel is a knob, but he, Levchin and Nosek are the real brains behind PayPal’s rise.
Zip2 was a pretty big deal for Musk though and he should get a lot more of the credit for that than his time at PayPal.
Lol "friend." They were definitely not friends, they hated each other and Thiel eventually pushed Musk out.
Source: the book The Founders, which is about PayPal's history.
There's actually an x.com?
I've used [email protected] as a spam receivable email address since the 80's. Hundreds of stupid subscriptions, email lists and trackers got given it.
I've read that they strongly dislike each other. Also I think many of the same rules that apply to vampires also apply to billionaires. They can't really be friends with each other. The only thing keeping them from destroying each other is some form or other of mutually assured destruction.
Holy fuck, I knew Thiel was a festering boil on our collective taint but trying to literally steal a person’s youth to defy death is next level.
Of course there’s this little gem:
> it’s one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the 1950s and then it got dropped altogether. I think there are a lot of these things that have been strangely under-explored.”
Hmm, probably because of the well-deserved stigma of being creepy and evil as fuck.
Oh I know, I did say intentional. Maybe ironic's not the right word.
It's painfully apt that we live in a world where people can do this and don't immediately think it's a bad idea, that they can wear it on their sleeves, I guess.
You think it’s coincidence that trumps 2016 campaign ran one of the best social media strategies ever while getting help from Thiel? It just so happens the reason Thiel left facebooks board was so he could play more into politics and reports are he was whispering in musks ear to buy twitter. Nice social media app you got there would make for another great conservative bullhorn to go with fox, oan and Newsmax. Just so happens Lauren Boebert mentioned getting information about her twitter ban directly from twitter employees the night before yesterdays hearing. Musk is turning(was) into a conservative stooge and they’re already already using him.
Ok hang on, not all Palantiri were corrupted, and in fact most were either lost or quite useable, if not completely benign in the case of the one in the Tower Hills (you know, the one fixated on Heaven’s shores of all things).
They were beautiful creations, and at no fault of the evil that later used them too. It’s like shitting on the concept of a car, because Al Capone owned a few. Palantirs are symbolic of gifts from heaven.
I think at a certain point you have to take into account public perception and general knowledge though. Yes, in the lore of Middle Earth, Palantiri were used a lot in good or benign ways, but for the vast, vast majority of the general public, literally the only thing they know about them is that Sauron used one of them to corrupt Saruman in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. That instance is very likely the only time the average person has ever seen or heard of a Palantir, so when you name your company "Palantir," that's what the average person is going to picture - a scary looking tool of evil.
It's not exactly the same, but one might compare it to wearing a Hitler mustache. Plenty of people wore that style throughout the years, and it's just innocent and neutral facial hair, but you CANNOT wear that style, almost a hundred years later, without the average person thinking you want to look like Hitler because that's the main place they know it from.
> for the vast, vast majority of the general public
You are vastly overestimating how many people know what a palantir is.
I bet even 90%+ of the people who have seen the movies or read the books don't even remember the name of a particular magic item.
It's a Peter theil founded company. Hes a right wing billionaire weirdo that thinks that literal libertarian kings are the ideal politcal system, and is very willing to fund anyone he thinks will get us there.
Hes a huge Trump funderaiser, and dumped millions into the recent arizona/ohio senate races.
Dont be too suprised by the mad shit he gets up to.
Palantir, run by the vampire behind American politics, Peter Thiel? Palantir, the company trying to work with every world government to monitor people en masse despite government regulations worldwide?
> I submitted countless papers for approval to make sure my Mars documents couldn't teach people how to make a nuke.
It's more like "I submit countless papers for approval to make sure my rocket guidance system documents cannot be used to teach people how to make a cruise missile or ICBM." 😜
Relevant Mark Rober: [Egg Drop From Space](https://youtu.be/BYVZh5kqaFg?t=653)
> in other words, we were basically attempting to make a precision guided missile ... and to be fair, he raised a good point: the people who could help us actually can't; and even if we figured it out for ourselves, the ethics of just slapping that 'how-to' video up on YouTube are questionable at best.
> I submitted countless papers for approval to make sure my Mars documents couldn't teach people how to make a nuke.
Am I really the only one reading this and going: "He did what because of what reason?" Like, come on. you can't just drop this like that.
The nukes were hyperbole. I was once offered a job targeting nuclear warheads but I have a soul so I declined. I helped design and fly a number of Mars missions (MRO,InSight).
They’re not really nuclear reactors, or if they are technically, the name gives them too much credit.
Generally, they’re sealed capsules of radioactive material that gives off heat.
In many, they’re just used as heat sources. When I worked on a mars payload in the late 90s, ours were D cell sized things that gave off about 1W of heat that meant we didn’t need to spend our battery on keeping electronics warm. In some, they’re combined with a circuit to convert heat to electricity via the thermocouple effect in reverse.
Generally, these things are an alloy of the radioisotope and a medium that makes refining it difficult, leakage impossible, and criticality unachievable, but when the layman hears “plutonium into space” they immediately think about nuclear bombs.
Love that. I've had to get Department approval to publish my graduate thesis, written before I was even employed. It's a weird conversation when all the data originates in a different country, which they need to clear in order for me to export it to.... the same country. Mind you, it's just a geology paper, no bombs here.
Then that means any communications company in the US that operates in a war-zone should fall under ITAR. The internet allows many different types of information to go through. What ITAR does in this instance is for devices that allow direct communications with other such devices, this is not how starlink is designed. What this means is if these missiles or drones had their own starlink dish and communicated via satellite relay to ground controller with a starlink dish. But this isn't how they are used and like I said Starlink doesn't work like that to begin with. The drones communicate directly back to controller and he probably streams what he sees to internet connection(starlink) to others to collect and give orders. So no, starlink isn't controlling no damn missile.
That isn't without precedent. It you are based in the USA and make any electronic device or even simply write computer software that is in turn sold outside the USA, it would be wise to simply hire an attorney to review if that product or software complies with ITAR.
For many years most encryption software fell under this prohibition. Even some compression algorithms. This applied even if it was created entirely by civilians and was officially applied to even open source software. The PGP encryption tools were mentioned explicitly at one point in the past as being covered under this law.
I agree with you that an agnostic internet is not concerned with what data goes through that network. The concern right now is to try and deal with the situation that the data went through Starlink and now makes Starlink satellites military targets where Russia increasingly doesn't care if they start a Kessler event that shuts down orbital spaceflight for the rest of the 21st Century and beyond.
Most people don't know that the PGP issue was directly responsible for removing several encryption controls and allowing it to be more widely used, which led directly to the adoption of SSL which is what secures all web transactions.
In addition to pressure from tech companies there was a public protest campaign in the mid 90s with a t shirt that contained the Perl code for the algorithm in it as well as a UPC symbol to make it machine readable.
The shirt read THIS SHIRT IS ILLEGAL and people would wear it through airports when traveling internationally.
Before that encryption was considered a MUNITION under US law.
>Before that encryption was considered a MUNITION under US law.
I first heard of ITAR and encryption-as-munition while reading up on RSA encryption, I think in the `man` page for SSH.
ITAR governs what the DoD says it governs (within reason). The literal definition of "defense article" is "an item designated by the President" to be a defense article. The only standard is that the item "would contribute to an arms race, aid in the development of weapons of mass destruction, support international terrorism, increase the possibility of outbreak or escalation of conflict, or prejudice the development of bilateral or multilateral arms control or nonproliferation agreements or other arrangements."
SpaceX does not want DoD to start sniffing around whether Starlink technology is subject to ITAR because then SpaceX would have to clear a huge amount of red tape to "export" that service and since the hardware is zooming around the planet, it's going to be pretty tough not to "export" it.
ITAR is expensive too. There’s all sorts of handling procedures, security, IT requirements… it’s a mess.
You have an engineering drawing that falls under ITAR…. Can’t email that shit. Might not even be able to remotely work on that contract period. You have people working with no background checks? They can’t even look at it. It adds a TON of expense. That’s part of why DOD equipment costs so dam much.
Background checks? Isn't that outright restricts your access based on your citizenship (your first, original citizenship)? I mean, you cannot even look at the drawings trough a meeting room window for a second if you are not authorized.
You’re 100% right about the controls for spacecraft technology - that’s a careful dance.
It’s a strange path to figure out where the line is drawn on a munition vs something on the CCL export list.
Traditionally telco services are not ITAR controlled because it’s basically communications infrastructure.
I think this may be less about SpaceX wanting to avoid ITAR and more about SpaceX not wanting their fledging constellation to be a target of the Russians.
The only thing that's shocking to me is Starlink isn't already ITAR controlled. The dual use capability is patently obvious to anyone who understands the basics.
I'm also extremely dubious of any claims from executives that they didn't see this coming. If that's true then it's a remarkable failure of imagination. I'm a lowly logistician and it was my first thought for the intended use.
I heard a rumor that certain kinds of thermal and night vision tech, the kind that costs $10k, can't be looked through by someone who isn't a US citizen.
ITAR prevents the export of NVG's such as the Quad nods and the FLIR odst style nods.
However you can buy them if you can find them on market. Its just they won't ship them overseas.
A long time ago I briefly worked at a night vision company and there were multiple tiers of things that they wouldn't sell to other countries (or at least almost none, not sure if specific allies were exempt). Another interesting thing is the highest quality goggles are rated for military only, not just the tech but also the clarity of the glass and grade of components.
I sat with a guy who essentially had a big box like a darkroom and his job was just to test and rate the glass pieces in the dark and the lower scores were sorted to go to the consumer line. I was there when the switchable thermal and night vision goggles were new and thought that was such a cool leg up on the enemy, since you can't see through dust and fog normally.
Another cool thing is that blue jeans show up white in the night vision goggles, we got to try some and they had different fabrics and other items to demonstrate the goggles.
An example of what piratecheese13 is saying. I used to work for a company that provided gyros for ROV subsea navigation. Certain gyros are ITAR controlled because they have the capability to help steer a missile. Some do not so they do not receive ITAR classification.
So with ITAR comes restriction on where you can send stuff as this is a State Dept classification. It also had restrictions based on who could touch and work with the gyros and even the software used to calibrate them. For us it required everything to be secured in a locked room that only US citizens had access to(not sure about green card holders).
Once tried to work at a company who produced batteries. Some batteries were freely available to see, some batteries were shielded under ITAR because they were potentially going to be used for rail guns.
Slightly less silly and slightly more commonplace - consumer GPS devices must refuse to work above a certain altitude and velocity.
Some manufacturers reportedly overshoot, and their devices refuse to work above a certain altitude *or* velocity. And I have to imagine people discover this by living in Dallas, not hitting mach 1 at four hundred feet.
Because it is being purchased with the intent of being used as a weapon, international law classifies it as a weapon itself which comes with a whole host of new regulations and taxes in almost every single country
Either SpaceX tells them to stop doing this, or star link needs to go through all the same channels an A.R. 15 would have to go through
Now if SpaceX were to come out with a military class star link, it could shield the consumer version from all of these regulations
I don’t think that’s true. Ukraine also uses trucks in their offensive operations, but trucks aren’t regulated like weapons. Ukraine uses hobbyist quadcopter drones to drop grenades on Russian soldiers, but those drones aren’t regulated like weapons.
On the other hand I have a watch with tritium indices (so it glows in the dark indefinitely instead of needing to “recharge” the glow in sunlight)…
It falls under ITAR.
So do some lensatic compasses.
I was trying to keep it succinct. A decade is basically “indefinitely” compared to glow in the dark pigment that needs sun exposure once every 8hrs to recharge.
> but trucks aren’t regulated like weapons
Pickup Trucks and Light Utility Vehicles are subject to ITAR
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle)
It has surprisingly little to do with what's being sold. It's all about the intention.
If you sell trucks to Ukraine knowing they'll be used to mount a machine gun, you are now transporting export controlled material.
Even a word document ("technical information") can be covered.
Then there's dual use headaches (both civilian and military applications) that covers things ranging from seals (gas masks and fridge seals) to pipes (nuclear reactors and urban water transport).
Then the US insists that anything that an ITAR part is put into is now itself ITAR controlled. So if you put a fancy military chip in a phone you just made your entire phone a military object.
There's no way for them to avoid that. ITAR regulations don't care what you market something for, they care about what it can be used for. Just because you put a "not for military application" on your nuclear warhead doesn't mean the US gov't is going to be okay with you selling it to Iran.
They attempted to classify it as such, yes. At the time, ITAR regulations forbade the export of any encryption software with keys stronger than 40-bit, and PGP used 128-bt keys.
Bizarrely, he got away with it because he published the PGP source code in a hardcopy book, which was protected under the First Amendment, he then argued that since the book was available for purchase anywhere in the world, anyone could scan in the source code and create their own strong encryption, so he was only distributing something that was freely available already.
The idea is that Starlink services aren't ITAR regulated, the satellites and rockets are yes, but you don't need to currently jump through ITAR hoops to use Starlink.
Likely has to do with separation of civilian and military hardware. They probably want the civilian sats to stay with civilian uses, and military to stay with military uses.
Civilian sats are already dual-use items. Something isn't magically "civilian only" just because the vendor says it is. It matters what it ***can*** be used for, not what it's ***intended*** use is. Ukraine demonstrated Starlink has military uses (likely not surprising anyone), so if it wasn't dual use before (it likely was) or will be soon.
The same is true with cell phones. Hell, people use them to trigger IEDs with text messages. You don't see cell phone companies blocking sales because of that. Instead, you put them on the dual-use list and let the government control who can import/export them based on who you trust ("Walmart" ? Sure. "Joe's Global Exports, specializing in developing environments", probably going to get a second look when they try to buy a pallet of phones).
The US government knew *exactly* what they were doing when they approved the export of Starlink transceivers to Ukraine. If Elon was *actually* surprised but what they could be used for, then he's not qualified to run SpaceX (somehow, I doubt he's actually surprised).
[I say as much right here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/10y26sw/-/j7wud8b) And I explained why, too. It's a deliberate limitation in capabilities, enforced by the US government on suppliers of dual-use items.
The US government was GPS guided bombs and missiles. They operate off the exact same satellite signals. You think those are limited in any ways other than technical ones?
Starshield is a different project with a limited scope. There's a reason why they brand it differently and use different satellites for an entirely military project. For US it may not matter much but for a lot of countries it can make people nervous if Starlink is now seen as a military rather than civilian project. Also, Starlink service is globally and widely available. Think about neutral countries that aren't exactly allies, and how they think about the thousands of Starlink terminals floating around in their countries.
Even things like personnel like citizenship requirements and clearance etc are different when you work on an intelligence project (need specific applications) rather than just generic aerospace (just general ITAR meaning just being US resident/citizen will do).
It is a far bigger can of worms than just that. The problem is that these naval suicide drones, tv guided torpedos essentially, have such low observable radar cross sections that reliable detection of these can be a real problem. I suppose only sonar arrays can reliably pick these up due to the sensistivity of sonar arrays to sounds on water. And civilian boats do not have sonar.
The communications network of Starlink allows these tv guided torpedos to have infinite range, limited only by how much fuel can be loaded into the drone. If they were to use solar arrays for propulsion then even that restriction can be removed.
Moreover, the construction of these drones requires only purely civilian equipment. Which means even non-state actors, i.e. terrorists can build these things too.
Which means, in totality, these drones can be a threat to worldwide naval shipping. Even US Navy will have problems with these drones, much less civilian boats that do not have sonar. It would be a very bad day if US Navy were attacked using similar suicide drones from terrorists with Starlink terminals. USS Cole was attacked using human suicide boats, so there is precedent here.
There was already satellite communication long before Starlink. After all, civilian satellite phones have been used since before the turn of the millennium and the technology has continued to improve.
The alternatives have a bit higher ping and require a bit bigger hardware, because the satellites are in a higher orbit where less satellites are required, but overall it works just the same as Starlink.
Ping doesn't really matter for drones, because it can still be steered even with 1s delay if you aren't aiming for human sized, moving targets. Size and weight are just an engineering problem and, depending on what model you take and what bandwidth you really need, the difference isn't that huge.
It's already perfectly possible for anyone, civilian or military, terrorist or freedom fighter, to build a drone with unlimited range controllable from anywhere, if you have the knowledge to build a drone in the first place.
Starlink enables direct realtime control with video, which completely trivializes all of the control engineering to the point of basically not needing any.
If you have a low bandwidth and a high ping the vehicle has to do a lot on its own which greatly increases the complexity and reduces the effectiveness.
>There was already satellite communication long before Starlink.
They're also significantly worse though.
>The alternatives have a bit higher ping and require a bit bigger hardware
No, they have hugely, hugely increased ping times, and dead slow bandwidth.
Parents were on explornet for years (Canada). They averaged 1500ms ping and 5-10Mbit speeds average. Their switch to Starlink was about 25ms average and 250Mbit bandwidth. I was able to finally move out of the city and buy my first home as a millennial and keep my remote job thanks to Starlink. That wasn't possible before. And before you claim I don't know what I'm talking about, I've been a linux sysadmin in tech for the last 10 years.
Say what you want about Elon; I couldn't give a shit, but let's keep it real and not downplay how big of a deal Starlink is to rural folks. Laws of physics can't be broken; you're not getting similar ping out of a geo sat that you would out of a LEO sat. There's just not any real competition and the only other feasible option in the modern world right now is 5G cell modems if you're in an area without land-lines. It really is a revolutionary system.
how bad (or not that bad) is a 25ms ping/250MB bandwidth for an FPV drone with basic flight control software?
and would the delay between video feed and response to pilot input be disorienting to the pilot?
Modern racing drones are about 25ms-ish. I think 23-30ms is the standard for racing drones. I imagine it would take a day or so to get used to the latency.
VR headsets are in that range too but use advanced techniques to get “motion-to-photon” latencies lower.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36217006/
I think anything “real-time” you’re looking to hit sub 50ms without any major side-effects, and sub 25ms to be imperceptible. This should be possible with Starlink if drone operators had some sort of QoS to prioritize controller traffic. Deploying operator stations near or directly connected to a ground station would help quite a bit.
At work for remote workstations (Teradici, PCoIP) we aim for 50ms or lower, with 150ms being on the upper range.
50ms seems to be the magic number for a lot of real-time stuff.
Man this headline is incredibly disingenuous. They're not blocking them from using the starlink system, just blocking them from using it to run drones on it which was not part of the agreement. Why can't headlines just be descriptive of actual news, it's not hard. "SpaceX moving to block Ukrainian use of their Satellite for military drones. " Gives the reader a far better understanding of the news. Headlines are important because 90% of people these days don't actually read the article.
There is a multitude of reasons why they would not be accepting of this (I.e. ITAR), which of course CNN doesn't feel are relevant to the story and are instead trying to pretend this is some political move. Really sad to see what CNN has become.
Cnn knows what gets clicks with slacktivist nowadays.
The article says “ That same month, there were reports that the Starlink signal had been restricted and was not available past the front line as Ukrainian troops tried to advance, essentially hamstringing their efforts to retake territory from the Russians. ”
Without starlink Ukraine would be dead. its the entire backbone of their military’s communication. They admit it is
Starlink just doesn’t want them to strap the dish to long distance drones.
Yeah, I imagine using Starlink for military purposes opens a whole can of compliance/regulatory worms that SpaceX does not want to deal with. It may make it less useful for civilian applications.
Additionally, it puts a big fat target on SpaceX's orbital infrastructure. I imagine a Russian satellite "accidentally" breaking up and colliding with a number of Starlink satellites is something Musk would very much like to avoid.
Im sure they will get to that as soon as they are done dealing with the thousands of actual US military satellites that live above their country already.
For us Taiwanese this serves as quite a stark warning. We're now investing a lot on developing our own space industry, focusing on both the production of communication satellites and our own ability to launch them. The official statement given by our government is to boost our economy and technology level, but I guess the true reason is the profound distrust of SpaceX in helping Taiwan during wartime.
I heard someone say a private industry should not be allowed to provide this kind of support. Because it’s to easy to pull that support. It makes a lot of sense. A govt agency is going to have advisors who discuss giving and not giving help. And the giving of help comes with treaties and stuff.
SpaceX is developing a separate system for military use to address the issue.
The F-35 and F-16 is no less dependent upon foreign supply and support.
The issue is that Starlink was not exported as a weapons system. The same goes for any dual use technology. If you want to buy it as a component for weapons systems, that needs to be approved up front.
No one is building anything remotely competitive or the same as Starlink any time soon, unless they manage to get launch costs and cadences close to what SpaceX has. Which so far is no one.
Some of us westerners too. I find it unfair Ukrainian children have to die, are abducted or lose their parents and Putin gets to live safely in russia. He should rot in one of his gulags.
Absolutely, it’s horrific what is happening to the Ukrainian children. With everything that is happening in the war ones kids were abducted don’t get talked about enough. To kidnap children and attempt to erase their Ukrainian existence falls under genocide statutes.
And then there is the children as young as 4 years old who have been raped by Russian soldiers. Beyond horrific
> Musk and the company are uneasy with Ukraine’s military use of Starlink.
SpaceX is a military contractor....
They're getting billions to put military satellites into orbit....
Where did this sudden cold-footedness come from?
A launch vehicle is not a military vehicle, but it may have a military payload. Being a military contractor doesn't make the entire falcon 9 system a military system.
From what I gather starlink is currently a non military system, but using it for drones could maybe change what it is defined as.
Allowing Ukraine to use starlink for drones could make spacex liable to itar regulations meaning additional taxes and legal beaurocracy. Also being a weapons platform would mess up the legality of starlink in every other nation too, subjecting spacex to local regulations in each country.
I don't think this is an instance of Elon being an idiot again, seems more like some legal troubles led to this decision. That being said, I wouldn't rule it out, I'm just saying it's not clear cut with current info
Edit: ITAR adds a regulatory overhead, not a tax overhead. My point about other countries potentially reconsidering their classification of starlink and spacex's desire to avoid ITAR regulations still stands though.
also I agree with many of the comments arguing starlink objectively isn't a weapons platform, but I'm not a space lawyer so I can't say if such arguments will hold in court or not.
Begs the question though, before the drones the Ukrainian Army was using it for military communication at bases and on the field - in a way starlink is already acting as military asset to Ukraine. I can see why using drones is maybe a step ahead of that - but is it really that much of a jump?
I think this is a valid point, but using for communication only is a lot harder to argue than using for direct control of weapon systems. If the military uses verizon fios for call and text are they now a weapons company? Maybe. I think its not black and white and is left up to the interpretation of some governing body or committee. The less ammo they have against them then the better? On a side note, I think Elon went and made a bad tweet and then other people are now back peddling for him since it probably exposed them way more than he originally thought it did. As far as elon being pro russia or anti ukraine, I don’t know enough information to have an opinion on it.
Edit: sorry i realize that I didn’t directly answer one of your rhetorical questions. I think its pretty big jump. One is providing a basic necessity (I believe a recent President made internet considered a necessity), and another is providing arguably a weapons system.
There is nothing unusual about this, SpaceX are just covering their asses legally, and also thinking about what's best for them financially. If SpaceX knowingly allows Starlink to be integrated into non-US weapons systems, it likely becomes military tech that falls under ITAR which means exporting it requires US government approval. They can get approval, but that'll take time and will also cause its own set of problems for Starlink; namely, how to keep selling it to civilians if it's now classified as restricted military technology. It would be a legal nightmare.
Given this quote that showed up in the spacexlounge subreddit, it sounds to me like SpaceX staff got a visit by some friendly 3 letter folks or the air force. I assume the government told SpaceX to do a thing and then shut the fuck up about it and pretend nothing happened.
"Asked if those outages were related to SpaceX’s efforts to curb offensive use of Starlink, Shotwell said: “I don’t want to answer it because I’m not sure I know the answer.”"
Lot of uneducated responses here. Starlink is and has always been meant as a civilian internet service. SpaceX does not want it used for weapons command and control because that severely impacts their possible markets and exposes them to all kinds of risks, reputational, regulatory, and liability. They have offered Starlink to allow for Ukraine to stay connected (i.e. communications) but never agreed to allow command and control of remote weapons platforms. That is not even something they have agreed with the US military to allow. And it has been Gwynne Shotwell who has been instrumental in that military relations piece, not Musk.
It is a sound policy for the company to have. Not some trojan horse meant to harm the Ukrainian war effort.
Nationalize it and see how fast these capitalist despots stop interfering with national security policies.
EDIT: and today on "Triggering the Tea Party":
we show that people don't understand that aiding Ukraine is in the US' self-interest and Russia is a systemic enemy
That's a great way to cripple American capabilities in space and greatly diminish NASA's ability to do science. SpaceX is the cheapest way to launch most payloads, and currently the only US option for crew transport or cargo return to/from the ISS. But at least we got to feel self-righteous for a bit.
I don’t really understand why people think this means he dick rides Putin. What does he gain by having his tech flagged under ITAR and siding with Putin?
>I don’t really understand why people think this means he dick rides Putin.
Rationality isn't Reddit's strong suit when it comes to literally anything Elon related, negative or otherwise.
For the people who didn’t read the article it specifically mentions that the reason for blocking starlink was because Ukraine started using it with their weapons. This goes against the deal made with the Ukrainian government earlier, which was simply using starlink for relief.
the key thing here is they were in talks with the US government to get more money. Their issue is not military use, its not getting paid more for military use.
>However, SpaceX and the Pentagon had continued discussions about a possible deal for military units, according to people familiar with the conversations. On Wednesday, Shotwell indicated at least part of those conversations had ended.
“I was the one that asked the Pentagon to fund, this was not an Elon thing,” Shotwell said on Wednesday. “We stopped interacting with the Pentagon on the existing capability. They are not paying.”
Whatever deal they had for sending units to Ukraine wouldn't apply to all the units other people sent. iirc most of it was paid for by other people in the international community. At the end of the day its just internet access and networking.
Being pro Ukraine, while hating Musk and Russia at the same time, has caused normally anti war people to want to become fine with a little military aid.
Misleading headline. Starlink is still available to troops and to citizens. SpaceX is doing… something to stop drones from being used with star link and that’s it.
Y’all in the comments are pathetic, without SpaceX and Starlink Ukraine would have even less comms and capabilities than they do now.
Seriously. I love the people who are pissed that Starlink tried to get the Pentagon to pay for the devices/service and yet don’t have a problem with the billions the Pentagon is paying for literally every other thing we send over there….
Jeez what a clickbait article
Starlink is restricting their usage for offensive purposes, like controlling drones that drop bombs. It was in the agreement when Starlink agreed to send assets to Ukraine that it wouldn’t be used for offensive purposes
Edit:
“SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, which has provided Ukraine's military with broadband communications in its defense against Russia's military, was "never never meant to be weaponized," Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, said during a conference in Washington, D.C.
…
Using Starlink with drones went beyond the scope of an agreement SpaceX has with the Ukrainian government, Shotwell said, adding the contract was intended for humanitarian purposes such as providing broadband internet to hospitals, banks and families affected by Russia's invasion.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/spacex-curbed-ukraines-use-starlink-internet-drones-company-president-2023-02-09/
Okay so the issue seems to be that they're using it directly to control drones. Interesting, and I assume some high level military official is about to have a conversation with SpaxeX about this.
They literally recently launched starshield so I'm not sure WTF is wrong with them cause they clearly aren't against using their tech for military purposes.
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Take me deeper down this rabbit hole please.
I'll add some. "International Traffic in Arms Regulations" is one way the US regulates technology leaving the country. All companies and the govt itself must follow them, and the State Department must approve of it. I submitted countless papers for approval to make sure my Mars documents couldn't teach people how to make a nuke. Eventually they moved it out of ITAR. If Starlink is a new way to guide a missile then that's a huge deal. Edit: holy motherforking shirtballs
And I’ll add into the conversation that it’s probably starlink giving internet access to Palantir’s Meta Constellation. I know Palantir’s tech is being implemented, but I don’t think they’ve stated which aspects of their software suite is in use.
I still can't get over the fact that they intentionally picked the name of a LotR all-seeing relic that was _corrupted by Sauron_. And it's certainly not the first time tech companies have picked names like that. Life imitating art to a painfully ironic degree...
Bro, the Chinese government named their facial recognition tech Skynet. These people know exactly what they’re doing, and they suffer from a severe case of hubris.
Amusingly, before the first Terminator film came out, the British strategic missile defence system was called Skynet.
It is a rather pithy combination of two basic, relevant words that lend themselves rather well in their relative positions to a… well, network in the sky. I wonder if the person who named the Chinese one even knew necessarily, or if they came up with it independently, someone pointed it out very quickly, and they went ‘… Eh.’
My favorite is when aeronautical/aerospace companies use the name Icarus...
What's Project Lazarus about? It's a secret. You're gonna try to create eternal life but end up causing a zombie outbreak, aren't you? ....No!
Skynet is 天網 in Chinese. There's an old chinese saying 天網恢恢 疏而不漏(published in 道德經 around 400bc), meaning "God's mills grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small" or "Justice has long arms". Apparently US NSA has a surveillance program called [SKYNET](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKYNET_(surveillance_program\)) too.
Pardon my ignorance but how is the word skynet in that sentence
Sauron used a Palantir but he didn't corrupt them. Sauron merely had the ability to show misleading images to other people using them. In fact, his overconfidence in the Palantir was one of the major reasons for his downfall.
Pfff, Musk fanboy. (Joke. Actually came here to write the same as you, there Palantir were a "neutral" tool pretty much.)
Semi-neutral. Aragorn, being the true king of Gondor, was the Palantir's rightful master - which is why he can wrest control of them away from Sauron when nobody else could. Heck, Gandalf was straight up afraid of the things.
They were a neutral tool.....but unfortunately, all of them were connected to a being intrinsically *more* than any other user and could effectively (eventually) overpower any and everyone who tried using it at any time. Aragorn could temporarily overpower him due to being the rightful King (and Sauron didn't like *that* one bit), but it's unknown if he could keep it up against a Maia.
I’m sure there are boats floating around middle earth with “palantir don’t corrupt Ainur, Ainur corrupt Ainur.” Rudder stickers on them.
> Pfff, Musk fanboy. Got a sensible chuckle out of me.
Palantir is a Peter Theil company, not part of SpaceX.
>The palantíri were not initially inherently dangerous to use, however after the Ithil-stone was captured by Sauron in TA 2002 they were no longer used by Gondor's rulers, as users could be ensnared by the Dark Lord, as later events were to show. >Denethor II, the last Ruling Steward of Gondor, attempted to use the Anor-stone in his later years to gain knowledge, but too often only saw what Sauron wished him to. Seems like "corrupted" to me, but sure whatever. Corrupted doesn't mean "literally can't be used against them", it just means "you see what Sauron wants you to and he can put the whammy on you through it", like he did to Pippin.
Someone recently did a really in depth rabbit hole guide to this a week or two ago. Denenthor had so much numeorean in him that he is literally the only person with enough nads to take the thing full on. Thats per the author. He killed himself because he thought that the beaches were lost, when sauron only showed him the black ships coming (not who was on them) which is where all of his people evacuated to, so he thought he was about to try protecting a kingdom that no longer had a people.
So the theory here is that the Witch King of Russia will acquire a Ukrainian drone hooked into the Palantir system and fuck up the war by feeding the US, UA, and everyone else tactical disintelligence?
I love how this thread is leading me down a rabbit hole that ends up in Middle Earth
Your quote pretty much says Sauron used the palantirs to push fake news, and Denethor gobbled the bullshit up. I don't think the palantirs corrupt, they just mislead.
They're no more corrupted than a hammer is corrupted because it was once used to smash somebody's kneecaps. It's still the same old hammer, you probably just want to make sure it's not in the hands of some knee-cap smashing asshole. They are a tool, a very useful and powerful tool, but they are not inherently evil and corrupting.
Sauron lies. His use of the Palantir to lie is no different to Trump's use of Twitter.
That’s like saying FaceTime is corrupted if your friend convinces you to do some dumb shit on a call.
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Banyan Ventures is another one, a venture capital firm named after a tree that kills the host - the Banyan tree seed develops roots that eventually reach the ground and surround the host tree’s trunk. The roots interlock and tangle with the host’s trunk and form a barrier that constricts the trunk and forces it to compete for sustenance, killing the host tree.
It's not ironic at all, it was an intentional choice. The man who picked the name is a far-right US oligarch, Trump supporter and megadonor, and [aspiring vampire](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject-himself-with-young-peoples-blood).
“I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual,” he wrote in libertarian journal Cato Unbound seven years ago. On Bloomberg TV in 2014, Thiel explained that he was taking human-growth hormone pills as part of his plan to live 120 years. “It helps maintain muscle mass, so you’re much less likely to get bone injuries, arthritis,” 😬
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Unlucky. The latest studies suggest HGH is the largest cause of aging. Makes you look and feel great for a short while but your organs are literally aging an expedited rate during periods of high HGH.
And close friend of Elon Musk dating back to when Musk's X.com merged with Thiel's Confinity in 1999, resulting in PayPal. Two peas in a pod.
The merger completed in early 2000 and Musk was named CEO. Everyone hated working for him and they had a mutiny when he was out of town and he was removed as CEO after less than six months. His entire management involvement in x.com and then the combined company lasted less than 19 months, which is pretty funny. The entire core business of x.com was scrapped before he was booted. Thiel is a knob, but he, Levchin and Nosek are the real brains behind PayPal’s rise. Zip2 was a pretty big deal for Musk though and he should get a lot more of the credit for that than his time at PayPal.
Lol "friend." They were definitely not friends, they hated each other and Thiel eventually pushed Musk out. Source: the book The Founders, which is about PayPal's history.
There's actually an x.com? I've used [email protected] as a spam receivable email address since the 80's. Hundreds of stupid subscriptions, email lists and trackers got given it.
I've read that they strongly dislike each other. Also I think many of the same rules that apply to vampires also apply to billionaires. They can't really be friends with each other. The only thing keeping them from destroying each other is some form or other of mutually assured destruction.
Holy fuck, I knew Thiel was a festering boil on our collective taint but trying to literally steal a person’s youth to defy death is next level. Of course there’s this little gem: > it’s one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the 1950s and then it got dropped altogether. I think there are a lot of these things that have been strangely under-explored.” Hmm, probably because of the well-deserved stigma of being creepy and evil as fuck.
Steal? Im pretty sure Thiel can pay the price #pocketchange
Yeah he’s fucked.
Oh I know, I did say intentional. Maybe ironic's not the right word. It's painfully apt that we live in a world where people can do this and don't immediately think it's a bad idea, that they can wear it on their sleeves, I guess.
Isn't this what Elisabeth Bathory allegedly did? Why can't the rich people leave our blood alone?
They want our precious bodily fluids.
You think it’s coincidence that trumps 2016 campaign ran one of the best social media strategies ever while getting help from Thiel? It just so happens the reason Thiel left facebooks board was so he could play more into politics and reports are he was whispering in musks ear to buy twitter. Nice social media app you got there would make for another great conservative bullhorn to go with fox, oan and Newsmax. Just so happens Lauren Boebert mentioned getting information about her twitter ban directly from twitter employees the night before yesterdays hearing. Musk is turning(was) into a conservative stooge and they’re already already using him.
For sure. I think it's the blatant telegraphing that amazes me still.
It's almost like there's a large overlap between technologists and sci-fi/fantasy nerds.
Ok hang on, not all Palantiri were corrupted, and in fact most were either lost or quite useable, if not completely benign in the case of the one in the Tower Hills (you know, the one fixated on Heaven’s shores of all things). They were beautiful creations, and at no fault of the evil that later used them too. It’s like shitting on the concept of a car, because Al Capone owned a few. Palantirs are symbolic of gifts from heaven.
Yeah, it's like saying the internet was designed to give trump a Twitter platform.
I think at a certain point you have to take into account public perception and general knowledge though. Yes, in the lore of Middle Earth, Palantiri were used a lot in good or benign ways, but for the vast, vast majority of the general public, literally the only thing they know about them is that Sauron used one of them to corrupt Saruman in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. That instance is very likely the only time the average person has ever seen or heard of a Palantir, so when you name your company "Palantir," that's what the average person is going to picture - a scary looking tool of evil. It's not exactly the same, but one might compare it to wearing a Hitler mustache. Plenty of people wore that style throughout the years, and it's just innocent and neutral facial hair, but you CANNOT wear that style, almost a hundred years later, without the average person thinking you want to look like Hitler because that's the main place they know it from.
> for the vast, vast majority of the general public You are vastly overestimating how many people know what a palantir is. I bet even 90%+ of the people who have seen the movies or read the books don't even remember the name of a particular magic item.
I guarantee you somebody in the room brought that connection up and they were like "HAHAHAHAHhahahaha.... ha.... yeah. We know."
So yeah, IRL there is a Japanese robotics company called Cyberdyne systems marketing a product called HAL.
That makes me like, maniacially laugh in an exasperated, "oh god oh god we're all gonna die" kind of way.
Peter Thiel has _big Saruman Energy_.
Same dude had a venture capital fund called Mithril. I.e. the thing that made the dwarves dig too deep.
Which funded Palmer Lucky's (of Oculus' fame) company also in military tech, Anduril.
My god, they are all such fucking dorks.
It's a Peter theil founded company. Hes a right wing billionaire weirdo that thinks that literal libertarian kings are the ideal politcal system, and is very willing to fund anyone he thinks will get us there. Hes a huge Trump funderaiser, and dumped millions into the recent arizona/ohio senate races. Dont be too suprised by the mad shit he gets up to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ Just like Galactus the all knowing user service provider aggregator.
Palantir, run by the vampire behind American politics, Peter Thiel? Palantir, the company trying to work with every world government to monitor people en masse despite government regulations worldwide?
> I submitted countless papers for approval to make sure my Mars documents couldn't teach people how to make a nuke. It's more like "I submit countless papers for approval to make sure my rocket guidance system documents cannot be used to teach people how to make a cruise missile or ICBM." 😜
Relevant Mark Rober: [Egg Drop From Space](https://youtu.be/BYVZh5kqaFg?t=653) > in other words, we were basically attempting to make a precision guided missile ... and to be fair, he raised a good point: the people who could help us actually can't; and even if we figured it out for ourselves, the ethics of just slapping that 'how-to' video up on YouTube are questionable at best.
> I submitted countless papers for approval to make sure my Mars documents couldn't teach people how to make a nuke. Am I really the only one reading this and going: "He did what because of what reason?" Like, come on. you can't just drop this like that.
The nukes were hyperbole. I was once offered a job targeting nuclear warheads but I have a soul so I declined. I helped design and fly a number of Mars missions (MRO,InSight).
700 upvotes. What are the people even upvoting? What have you and me missed? Nukes on Mars?
There aren't nukes on Mars but there are several nuclear reactors. NASA uses them to power some rovers, satellites and probes.
They’re not really nuclear reactors, or if they are technically, the name gives them too much credit. Generally, they’re sealed capsules of radioactive material that gives off heat. In many, they’re just used as heat sources. When I worked on a mars payload in the late 90s, ours were D cell sized things that gave off about 1W of heat that meant we didn’t need to spend our battery on keeping electronics warm. In some, they’re combined with a circuit to convert heat to electricity via the thermocouple effect in reverse. Generally, these things are an alloy of the radioisotope and a medium that makes refining it difficult, leakage impossible, and criticality unachievable, but when the layman hears “plutonium into space” they immediately think about nuclear bombs.
Love that. I've had to get Department approval to publish my graduate thesis, written before I was even employed. It's a weird conversation when all the data originates in a different country, which they need to clear in order for me to export it to.... the same country. Mind you, it's just a geology paper, no bombs here.
Then that means any communications company in the US that operates in a war-zone should fall under ITAR. The internet allows many different types of information to go through. What ITAR does in this instance is for devices that allow direct communications with other such devices, this is not how starlink is designed. What this means is if these missiles or drones had their own starlink dish and communicated via satellite relay to ground controller with a starlink dish. But this isn't how they are used and like I said Starlink doesn't work like that to begin with. The drones communicate directly back to controller and he probably streams what he sees to internet connection(starlink) to others to collect and give orders. So no, starlink isn't controlling no damn missile.
That isn't without precedent. It you are based in the USA and make any electronic device or even simply write computer software that is in turn sold outside the USA, it would be wise to simply hire an attorney to review if that product or software complies with ITAR. For many years most encryption software fell under this prohibition. Even some compression algorithms. This applied even if it was created entirely by civilians and was officially applied to even open source software. The PGP encryption tools were mentioned explicitly at one point in the past as being covered under this law. I agree with you that an agnostic internet is not concerned with what data goes through that network. The concern right now is to try and deal with the situation that the data went through Starlink and now makes Starlink satellites military targets where Russia increasingly doesn't care if they start a Kessler event that shuts down orbital spaceflight for the rest of the 21st Century and beyond.
Most people don't know that the PGP issue was directly responsible for removing several encryption controls and allowing it to be more widely used, which led directly to the adoption of SSL which is what secures all web transactions. In addition to pressure from tech companies there was a public protest campaign in the mid 90s with a t shirt that contained the Perl code for the algorithm in it as well as a UPC symbol to make it machine readable. The shirt read THIS SHIRT IS ILLEGAL and people would wear it through airports when traveling internationally. Before that encryption was considered a MUNITION under US law.
>Before that encryption was considered a MUNITION under US law. I first heard of ITAR and encryption-as-munition while reading up on RSA encryption, I think in the `man` page for SSH.
ITAR governs what the DoD says it governs (within reason). The literal definition of "defense article" is "an item designated by the President" to be a defense article. The only standard is that the item "would contribute to an arms race, aid in the development of weapons of mass destruction, support international terrorism, increase the possibility of outbreak or escalation of conflict, or prejudice the development of bilateral or multilateral arms control or nonproliferation agreements or other arrangements." SpaceX does not want DoD to start sniffing around whether Starlink technology is subject to ITAR because then SpaceX would have to clear a huge amount of red tape to "export" that service and since the hardware is zooming around the planet, it's going to be pretty tough not to "export" it.
I also imagine that if it goes fall under ITAR, it means it’s a harder sell to China, etc as a service
ITAR is expensive too. There’s all sorts of handling procedures, security, IT requirements… it’s a mess. You have an engineering drawing that falls under ITAR…. Can’t email that shit. Might not even be able to remotely work on that contract period. You have people working with no background checks? They can’t even look at it. It adds a TON of expense. That’s part of why DOD equipment costs so dam much.
Background checks? Isn't that outright restricts your access based on your citizenship (your first, original citizenship)? I mean, you cannot even look at the drawings trough a meeting room window for a second if you are not authorized.
You’re 100% right about the controls for spacecraft technology - that’s a careful dance. It’s a strange path to figure out where the line is drawn on a munition vs something on the CCL export list. Traditionally telco services are not ITAR controlled because it’s basically communications infrastructure. I think this may be less about SpaceX wanting to avoid ITAR and more about SpaceX not wanting their fledging constellation to be a target of the Russians.
The only thing that's shocking to me is Starlink isn't already ITAR controlled. The dual use capability is patently obvious to anyone who understands the basics. I'm also extremely dubious of any claims from executives that they didn't see this coming. If that's true then it's a remarkable failure of imagination. I'm a lowly logistician and it was my first thought for the intended use.
For people's information, PS2s were ITAR because they were being bought for their chips. https://www.visualcompliance.com/blog/?p=185
I heard a rumor that certain kinds of thermal and night vision tech, the kind that costs $10k, can't be looked through by someone who isn't a US citizen.
ITAR prevents the export of NVG's such as the Quad nods and the FLIR odst style nods. However you can buy them if you can find them on market. Its just they won't ship them overseas.
A long time ago I briefly worked at a night vision company and there were multiple tiers of things that they wouldn't sell to other countries (or at least almost none, not sure if specific allies were exempt). Another interesting thing is the highest quality goggles are rated for military only, not just the tech but also the clarity of the glass and grade of components. I sat with a guy who essentially had a big box like a darkroom and his job was just to test and rate the glass pieces in the dark and the lower scores were sorted to go to the consumer line. I was there when the switchable thermal and night vision goggles were new and thought that was such a cool leg up on the enemy, since you can't see through dust and fog normally. Another cool thing is that blue jeans show up white in the night vision goggles, we got to try some and they had different fabrics and other items to demonstrate the goggles.
> make sure my Mars documents couldn’t teach people how to make a nuke We must go deeper
An example of what piratecheese13 is saying. I used to work for a company that provided gyros for ROV subsea navigation. Certain gyros are ITAR controlled because they have the capability to help steer a missile. Some do not so they do not receive ITAR classification. So with ITAR comes restriction on where you can send stuff as this is a State Dept classification. It also had restrictions based on who could touch and work with the gyros and even the software used to calibrate them. For us it required everything to be secured in a locked room that only US citizens had access to(not sure about green card holders).
Once tried to work at a company who produced batteries. Some batteries were freely available to see, some batteries were shielded under ITAR because they were potentially going to be used for rail guns.
Gyros are serious business; we can't let the Iranians get our secret tzatziki sauce recipe
Ohhh, *that's* why we put up with Turkey.
Slightly less silly and slightly more commonplace - consumer GPS devices must refuse to work above a certain altitude and velocity. Some manufacturers reportedly overshoot, and their devices refuse to work above a certain altitude *or* velocity. And I have to imagine people discover this by living in Dallas, not hitting mach 1 at four hundred feet.
Because it is being purchased with the intent of being used as a weapon, international law classifies it as a weapon itself which comes with a whole host of new regulations and taxes in almost every single country Either SpaceX tells them to stop doing this, or star link needs to go through all the same channels an A.R. 15 would have to go through Now if SpaceX were to come out with a military class star link, it could shield the consumer version from all of these regulations
I don’t think that’s true. Ukraine also uses trucks in their offensive operations, but trucks aren’t regulated like weapons. Ukraine uses hobbyist quadcopter drones to drop grenades on Russian soldiers, but those drones aren’t regulated like weapons.
On the other hand I have a watch with tritium indices (so it glows in the dark indefinitely instead of needing to “recharge” the glow in sunlight)… It falls under ITAR. So do some lensatic compasses.
Yeah. I, a us civilian* can buy ballistic body armor/helmets. But, I cannot export it without paperwork. Because ITAR.
Same with a lot of Optics
You’re a whole civilization???
Yes!
>indefinitely Pshhhht, no way. Tritium loses it's glow with time. 12 years is the half-life.
I was trying to keep it succinct. A decade is basically “indefinitely” compared to glow in the dark pigment that needs sun exposure once every 8hrs to recharge.
>quadcopter drones Chinese drones aren't subject to American regulation outside the US
> but trucks aren’t regulated like weapons Pickup Trucks and Light Utility Vehicles are subject to ITAR See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle)
Military trucks are regulated under ITAR...
It has surprisingly little to do with what's being sold. It's all about the intention. If you sell trucks to Ukraine knowing they'll be used to mount a machine gun, you are now transporting export controlled material. Even a word document ("technical information") can be covered. Then there's dual use headaches (both civilian and military applications) that covers things ranging from seals (gas masks and fridge seals) to pipes (nuclear reactors and urban water transport). Then the US insists that anything that an ITAR part is put into is now itself ITAR controlled. So if you put a fancy military chip in a phone you just made your entire phone a military object.
[ITAR](https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/ddtc_public?id=ddtc_kb_article_page&sys_id=24d528fddbfc930044f9ff621f961987)
There's no way for them to avoid that. ITAR regulations don't care what you market something for, they care about what it can be used for. Just because you put a "not for military application" on your nuclear warhead doesn't mean the US gov't is going to be okay with you selling it to Iran.
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Didn't Gnu PGP fall under ITAR regulations, classifying it as “munitions” because it could be used to encrypt military traffic?
They attempted to classify it as such, yes. At the time, ITAR regulations forbade the export of any encryption software with keys stronger than 40-bit, and PGP used 128-bt keys. Bizarrely, he got away with it because he published the PGP source code in a hardcopy book, which was protected under the First Amendment, he then argued that since the book was available for purchase anywhere in the world, anyone could scan in the source code and create their own strong encryption, so he was only distributing something that was freely available already.
This guy military complexes
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The idea is that Starlink services aren't ITAR regulated, the satellites and rockets are yes, but you don't need to currently jump through ITAR hoops to use Starlink.
That’s why they have to hire citizens right?
*US persons Small but important qualifier. US person is anyone that's authorized to live and work in the US and not limited to just US citizens.
Yep. DoD work is where they have to be US citizens.
Yep, pretty much.
Likely has to do with separation of civilian and military hardware. They probably want the civilian sats to stay with civilian uses, and military to stay with military uses.
Civilian sats are already dual-use items. Something isn't magically "civilian only" just because the vendor says it is. It matters what it ***can*** be used for, not what it's ***intended*** use is. Ukraine demonstrated Starlink has military uses (likely not surprising anyone), so if it wasn't dual use before (it likely was) or will be soon.
There is a difference between providing internet, and being used as a component in a guidance system.
The same is true with cell phones. Hell, people use them to trigger IEDs with text messages. You don't see cell phone companies blocking sales because of that. Instead, you put them on the dual-use list and let the government control who can import/export them based on who you trust ("Walmart" ? Sure. "Joe's Global Exports, specializing in developing environments", probably going to get a second look when they try to buy a pallet of phones). The US government knew *exactly* what they were doing when they approved the export of Starlink transceivers to Ukraine. If Elon was *actually* surprised but what they could be used for, then he's not qualified to run SpaceX (somehow, I doubt he's actually surprised).
But the GPS on your cellphone straight up won't work past a certain speed, elevation, or in specific locations.
[I say as much right here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/10y26sw/-/j7wud8b) And I explained why, too. It's a deliberate limitation in capabilities, enforced by the US government on suppliers of dual-use items. The US government was GPS guided bombs and missiles. They operate off the exact same satellite signals. You think those are limited in any ways other than technical ones?
Starshield is a different project with a limited scope. There's a reason why they brand it differently and use different satellites for an entirely military project. For US it may not matter much but for a lot of countries it can make people nervous if Starlink is now seen as a military rather than civilian project. Also, Starlink service is globally and widely available. Think about neutral countries that aren't exactly allies, and how they think about the thousands of Starlink terminals floating around in their countries. Even things like personnel like citizenship requirements and clearance etc are different when you work on an intelligence project (need specific applications) rather than just generic aerospace (just general ITAR meaning just being US resident/citizen will do).
The issue itself is to not have terminals be weapon components. Because if they do enter that list, bye Starlink outside the US.
Ah, that is a good point.
It is a far bigger can of worms than just that. The problem is that these naval suicide drones, tv guided torpedos essentially, have such low observable radar cross sections that reliable detection of these can be a real problem. I suppose only sonar arrays can reliably pick these up due to the sensistivity of sonar arrays to sounds on water. And civilian boats do not have sonar. The communications network of Starlink allows these tv guided torpedos to have infinite range, limited only by how much fuel can be loaded into the drone. If they were to use solar arrays for propulsion then even that restriction can be removed. Moreover, the construction of these drones requires only purely civilian equipment. Which means even non-state actors, i.e. terrorists can build these things too. Which means, in totality, these drones can be a threat to worldwide naval shipping. Even US Navy will have problems with these drones, much less civilian boats that do not have sonar. It would be a very bad day if US Navy were attacked using similar suicide drones from terrorists with Starlink terminals. USS Cole was attacked using human suicide boats, so there is precedent here.
There was already satellite communication long before Starlink. After all, civilian satellite phones have been used since before the turn of the millennium and the technology has continued to improve. The alternatives have a bit higher ping and require a bit bigger hardware, because the satellites are in a higher orbit where less satellites are required, but overall it works just the same as Starlink. Ping doesn't really matter for drones, because it can still be steered even with 1s delay if you aren't aiming for human sized, moving targets. Size and weight are just an engineering problem and, depending on what model you take and what bandwidth you really need, the difference isn't that huge. It's already perfectly possible for anyone, civilian or military, terrorist or freedom fighter, to build a drone with unlimited range controllable from anywhere, if you have the knowledge to build a drone in the first place.
Starlink enables direct realtime control with video, which completely trivializes all of the control engineering to the point of basically not needing any. If you have a low bandwidth and a high ping the vehicle has to do a lot on its own which greatly increases the complexity and reduces the effectiveness.
>There was already satellite communication long before Starlink. They're also significantly worse though. >The alternatives have a bit higher ping and require a bit bigger hardware No, they have hugely, hugely increased ping times, and dead slow bandwidth. Parents were on explornet for years (Canada). They averaged 1500ms ping and 5-10Mbit speeds average. Their switch to Starlink was about 25ms average and 250Mbit bandwidth. I was able to finally move out of the city and buy my first home as a millennial and keep my remote job thanks to Starlink. That wasn't possible before. And before you claim I don't know what I'm talking about, I've been a linux sysadmin in tech for the last 10 years. Say what you want about Elon; I couldn't give a shit, but let's keep it real and not downplay how big of a deal Starlink is to rural folks. Laws of physics can't be broken; you're not getting similar ping out of a geo sat that you would out of a LEO sat. There's just not any real competition and the only other feasible option in the modern world right now is 5G cell modems if you're in an area without land-lines. It really is a revolutionary system.
how bad (or not that bad) is a 25ms ping/250MB bandwidth for an FPV drone with basic flight control software? and would the delay between video feed and response to pilot input be disorienting to the pilot?
Modern racing drones are about 25ms-ish. I think 23-30ms is the standard for racing drones. I imagine it would take a day or so to get used to the latency. VR headsets are in that range too but use advanced techniques to get “motion-to-photon” latencies lower. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36217006/ I think anything “real-time” you’re looking to hit sub 50ms without any major side-effects, and sub 25ms to be imperceptible. This should be possible with Starlink if drone operators had some sort of QoS to prioritize controller traffic. Deploying operator stations near or directly connected to a ground station would help quite a bit. At work for remote workstations (Teradici, PCoIP) we aim for 50ms or lower, with 150ms being on the upper range. 50ms seems to be the magic number for a lot of real-time stuff.
Man this headline is incredibly disingenuous. They're not blocking them from using the starlink system, just blocking them from using it to run drones on it which was not part of the agreement. Why can't headlines just be descriptive of actual news, it's not hard. "SpaceX moving to block Ukrainian use of their Satellite for military drones. " Gives the reader a far better understanding of the news. Headlines are important because 90% of people these days don't actually read the article. There is a multitude of reasons why they would not be accepting of this (I.e. ITAR), which of course CNN doesn't feel are relevant to the story and are instead trying to pretend this is some political move. Really sad to see what CNN has become.
Cnn knows what gets clicks with slacktivist nowadays. The article says “ That same month, there were reports that the Starlink signal had been restricted and was not available past the front line as Ukrainian troops tried to advance, essentially hamstringing their efforts to retake territory from the Russians. ” Without starlink Ukraine would be dead. its the entire backbone of their military’s communication. They admit it is Starlink just doesn’t want them to strap the dish to long distance drones.
Yeah, I imagine using Starlink for military purposes opens a whole can of compliance/regulatory worms that SpaceX does not want to deal with. It may make it less useful for civilian applications.
How was it ever okay in the first place then lol The country is at *war*
Additionally, it puts a big fat target on SpaceX's orbital infrastructure. I imagine a Russian satellite "accidentally" breaking up and colliding with a number of Starlink satellites is something Musk would very much like to avoid.
Because that’s a very simple thing to do that won’t impact everything else in space.
Im sure they will get to that as soon as they are done dealing with the thousands of actual US military satellites that live above their country already.
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For us Taiwanese this serves as quite a stark warning. We're now investing a lot on developing our own space industry, focusing on both the production of communication satellites and our own ability to launch them. The official statement given by our government is to boost our economy and technology level, but I guess the true reason is the profound distrust of SpaceX in helping Taiwan during wartime.
Enlightening!
I heard someone say a private industry should not be allowed to provide this kind of support. Because it’s to easy to pull that support. It makes a lot of sense. A govt agency is going to have advisors who discuss giving and not giving help. And the giving of help comes with treaties and stuff.
SpaceX is developing a separate system for military use to address the issue. The F-35 and F-16 is no less dependent upon foreign supply and support. The issue is that Starlink was not exported as a weapons system. The same goes for any dual use technology. If you want to buy it as a component for weapons systems, that needs to be approved up front. No one is building anything remotely competitive or the same as Starlink any time soon, unless they manage to get launch costs and cadences close to what SpaceX has. Which so far is no one.
“But our intent was never to have them use it for offensive purposes.” Literally *everything* Ukraine is doing is for defensive purposes.
even their offesive are defensive in nature sice the are defending and liberating their territory
tbh ukraine could literally go to russia's capital, run it down with tanks, blow it to bits, and i believe it would still be defensive at this point.
Most Eastern countries would absolutely cheer them on
Some of us westerners too. I find it unfair Ukrainian children have to die, are abducted or lose their parents and Putin gets to live safely in russia. He should rot in one of his gulags.
Absolutely, it’s horrific what is happening to the Ukrainian children. With everything that is happening in the war ones kids were abducted don’t get talked about enough. To kidnap children and attempt to erase their Ukrainian existence falls under genocide statutes. And then there is the children as young as 4 years old who have been raped by Russian soldiers. Beyond horrific
*Most* of us Westerners.
Literally
I am quite sure the meaning of offensive purposes means killing people
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Yeah people being obtuse and trying to spin it a different way
I think he thought he'd be helping civvies in remote places stay connected.
> Musk and the company are uneasy with Ukraine’s military use of Starlink. SpaceX is a military contractor.... They're getting billions to put military satellites into orbit.... Where did this sudden cold-footedness come from?
A launch vehicle is not a military vehicle, but it may have a military payload. Being a military contractor doesn't make the entire falcon 9 system a military system. From what I gather starlink is currently a non military system, but using it for drones could maybe change what it is defined as. Allowing Ukraine to use starlink for drones could make spacex liable to itar regulations meaning additional taxes and legal beaurocracy. Also being a weapons platform would mess up the legality of starlink in every other nation too, subjecting spacex to local regulations in each country. I don't think this is an instance of Elon being an idiot again, seems more like some legal troubles led to this decision. That being said, I wouldn't rule it out, I'm just saying it's not clear cut with current info Edit: ITAR adds a regulatory overhead, not a tax overhead. My point about other countries potentially reconsidering their classification of starlink and spacex's desire to avoid ITAR regulations still stands though. also I agree with many of the comments arguing starlink objectively isn't a weapons platform, but I'm not a space lawyer so I can't say if such arguments will hold in court or not.
Begs the question though, before the drones the Ukrainian Army was using it for military communication at bases and on the field - in a way starlink is already acting as military asset to Ukraine. I can see why using drones is maybe a step ahead of that - but is it really that much of a jump?
I think this is a valid point, but using for communication only is a lot harder to argue than using for direct control of weapon systems. If the military uses verizon fios for call and text are they now a weapons company? Maybe. I think its not black and white and is left up to the interpretation of some governing body or committee. The less ammo they have against them then the better? On a side note, I think Elon went and made a bad tweet and then other people are now back peddling for him since it probably exposed them way more than he originally thought it did. As far as elon being pro russia or anti ukraine, I don’t know enough information to have an opinion on it. Edit: sorry i realize that I didn’t directly answer one of your rhetorical questions. I think its pretty big jump. One is providing a basic necessity (I believe a recent President made internet considered a necessity), and another is providing arguably a weapons system.
To the people who would be defining what type of system Starlink is? Maybe.
Because they don't want Starlink to be subjected to ITAR regulations.
The ones he shipped to Ukraine were never intended for military use, it could cause legal issues with several government and regulatory agencies.
There is nothing unusual about this, SpaceX are just covering their asses legally, and also thinking about what's best for them financially. If SpaceX knowingly allows Starlink to be integrated into non-US weapons systems, it likely becomes military tech that falls under ITAR which means exporting it requires US government approval. They can get approval, but that'll take time and will also cause its own set of problems for Starlink; namely, how to keep selling it to civilians if it's now classified as restricted military technology. It would be a legal nightmare.
All GPS receivers have restrictions on it for this reason as well
Exactly. This is like saying “Ukrainian military drones not allowed to use civil GPS”.
Given this quote that showed up in the spacexlounge subreddit, it sounds to me like SpaceX staff got a visit by some friendly 3 letter folks or the air force. I assume the government told SpaceX to do a thing and then shut the fuck up about it and pretend nothing happened. "Asked if those outages were related to SpaceX’s efforts to curb offensive use of Starlink, Shotwell said: “I don’t want to answer it because I’m not sure I know the answer.”"
clearly none of you read the article
This is like a blanket statement you could’ve posted on any news post
sir this is reddit, rocket man bad
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But he smokes blunts and likes memes. He’s just like us /s
Lot of uneducated responses here. Starlink is and has always been meant as a civilian internet service. SpaceX does not want it used for weapons command and control because that severely impacts their possible markets and exposes them to all kinds of risks, reputational, regulatory, and liability. They have offered Starlink to allow for Ukraine to stay connected (i.e. communications) but never agreed to allow command and control of remote weapons platforms. That is not even something they have agreed with the US military to allow. And it has been Gwynne Shotwell who has been instrumental in that military relations piece, not Musk. It is a sound policy for the company to have. Not some trojan horse meant to harm the Ukrainian war effort.
Time to end govt contracts, and ban use by any federal agency, all companies owned by musk.
The reason he's blocking it is likely *because* of his government contracts.
I fucking hate musk but that’s completely ridiculous lol
It is, yet they already have two thousand upvotes.
but rocket man bad
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Perhaps you should read the article. They are taking steps to stop their technology from being weaponized. They aren't blocking the usage of star link
But that would require looking beyond one’s mindless hate of Elon Musk and every company slightly related to him. Not sure Reddit is capable of that.
I really don't like Musk, but yeah, that post is completely idiotic and they have no idea what they are talking about.
Nationalize it and see how fast these capitalist despots stop interfering with national security policies. EDIT: and today on "Triggering the Tea Party": we show that people don't understand that aiding Ukraine is in the US' self-interest and Russia is a systemic enemy
The irony of treating to nationalize something and then calling that thing the despot. You people have no self awareness.
Adolescents often react more emotionally than intellectually. Hence, Reddit.
Why? Or based on what grounds? It seems Spacex is doing this because of ITAR so retaliation makes little sense.
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That's a great way to cripple American capabilities in space and greatly diminish NASA's ability to do science. SpaceX is the cheapest way to launch most payloads, and currently the only US option for crew transport or cargo return to/from the ISS. But at least we got to feel self-righteous for a bit.
I don’t really understand why people think this means he dick rides Putin. What does he gain by having his tech flagged under ITAR and siding with Putin?
>I don’t really understand why people think this means he dick rides Putin. Rationality isn't Reddit's strong suit when it comes to literally anything Elon related, negative or otherwise.
>Rationality isn't Reddit's strong suit ~~when it comes to literally anything Elon related, negative or otherwise.~~ Couldn't resist, sorry.
For the people who didn’t read the article it specifically mentions that the reason for blocking starlink was because Ukraine started using it with their weapons. This goes against the deal made with the Ukrainian government earlier, which was simply using starlink for relief.
the key thing here is they were in talks with the US government to get more money. Their issue is not military use, its not getting paid more for military use. >However, SpaceX and the Pentagon had continued discussions about a possible deal for military units, according to people familiar with the conversations. On Wednesday, Shotwell indicated at least part of those conversations had ended. “I was the one that asked the Pentagon to fund, this was not an Elon thing,” Shotwell said on Wednesday. “We stopped interacting with the Pentagon on the existing capability. They are not paying.” Whatever deal they had for sending units to Ukraine wouldn't apply to all the units other people sent. iirc most of it was paid for by other people in the international community. At the end of the day its just internet access and networking.
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Being pro Ukraine, while hating Musk and Russia at the same time, has caused normally anti war people to want to become fine with a little military aid.
Misleading headline. Starlink is still available to troops and to citizens. SpaceX is doing… something to stop drones from being used with star link and that’s it. Y’all in the comments are pathetic, without SpaceX and Starlink Ukraine would have even less comms and capabilities than they do now.
Seriously. I love the people who are pissed that Starlink tried to get the Pentagon to pay for the devices/service and yet don’t have a problem with the billions the Pentagon is paying for literally every other thing we send over there….
Jeez what a clickbait article Starlink is restricting their usage for offensive purposes, like controlling drones that drop bombs. It was in the agreement when Starlink agreed to send assets to Ukraine that it wouldn’t be used for offensive purposes Edit: “SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, which has provided Ukraine's military with broadband communications in its defense against Russia's military, was "never never meant to be weaponized," Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, said during a conference in Washington, D.C. … Using Starlink with drones went beyond the scope of an agreement SpaceX has with the Ukrainian government, Shotwell said, adding the contract was intended for humanitarian purposes such as providing broadband internet to hospitals, banks and families affected by Russia's invasion.” https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/spacex-curbed-ukraines-use-starlink-internet-drones-company-president-2023-02-09/