• RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s one thing to be a capitalistic shitbag, it’s another to be a traitor. Governments like capitalistic shitbags

      • Dayroom7485@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        They’re clearly not all on the same team. Some are decent human beings that choose to use their money for the betterment of humankind.

        It’s just that a couple, e.g. Musk, Thiel, David Sachs and others, decided to be huge assholes. They would end democracy any day to become richer and more powerful.

        • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          I legitimately don’t know any of those good hearted oligarchs, who would you say they are ?

          • Dayroom7485@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Carnegie chose to do good things with his money, as did Gates and Boros. Now, it’s easy to criticize all three of them for an arbitrary number of bad things they are responsible for. Which is entirely beside the point:

            There is obviously a scale of good and bad things oligarchs decide to do with their money. Musk, Thiel, Sachs and the likes are on the “huge asshole” end of that scale. And other oligarchs are not. Assuming Gates was as bad as Musk because somereason fails to see this and ultimately leads to letting the true assholes off the hook.

            • NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works
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              2 months ago

              Gates was (and arguably still is) an enormous asshole and has only recently started spending money on “charity” and PR to improve his public image (similar to Carnegie). That you’re willing to let him off the hook for all of his past evils only shows that spending a tiny fraction of their ill-earned gains on PR will wipe their slate clean and people like you will let them off the hook.

              If you let Gates, Carnegie, etc off the hook for their rotten past, expect future generations to let Musk et al. off the hook once they buy back their reputation when they get old.

                • NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 months ago

                  I’m not going to give you a list, because I have other things to do, but you can read for yourself under Controversies here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates.

                  I was mostly thinking of the decades of anti-trust and “embrace, extend, extinguish”, as well as his sexual harassment of his employees. But I had forgotten that he was besties with Epstein and his wife divorced him after the extent of his endeavors there came out. So I guess child-raping may be on his list too.

                  Pretty swell guy.

        • sandbox@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Some are decent human beings that choose to use their money for the betterment of humankind.

    • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I had this idea that the US was very hard on treason especially after Snowden but apparently it’s selective treason

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        the problem is Snowden wasn’t selling products to the US military, which is apparently a get out of jail free card

  • Hegar@fedia.io
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    2 months ago

    Didnt we already know that elon opened starlink to the russians? I thought he announced after that call with putin?

    • 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      This article was amended on 14 September 2023 to add an update to the subheading. As the Guardian reported on 12 September 2023, following the publication of this article, Walter Isaacson retracted the claim in his biography of Elon Musk that the SpaceX CEO had secretly told engineers to switch off Starlink coverage of the Crimean coast.

      IIRC Musk didn’t switch it off, it wasn’t turned on in the first place and Musk refused to turn it on when the Ukrainian military reqeusted it.

      Musk is a shithead but not for this reason.

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Isn’t that a massive security risk?

    Like, what if the U.S was using Roscosmos satellite links in drones? I’d certainly be raising an eyebrow.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, but it’s not a government satellite system, it’s an independent Internet provider. It is always possible that the US government/military has access on the back end, but that’s not guaranteed. And since Ukraine is using Starlink, they can’t exactly just disable all access in the region.

      Kind of makes sense for Russia to try and use Starlink at least a bit to test the waters and see what sort of Intel the US has access to directly through it.

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          A wiretap is different than having something like backdoor access at will for military use.

          • Dioxid3@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Don me a tinfoil hat, but I think it is absolutely within the realm of possible that half my networked electronics has a backdoor to one or another governmentsl agency. Or that my ”encrypted” WhatsApp conversations are available to US officials if need be.

            Luckily I am as interesting as a slice of bread gone stale

            • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Oh I’m sure that’s the case for nearly all large social media and network systems based on the US. I’m also willing to bet that for some of these companies, almost no one even knows it’s there, either because a 3 letter agency put it there themselves without being noticed, or an employee implemented it for them without corporate approval.

              The US is worried about other countries doing this because we 100% are doing it ourselves. From a national security perspective, it’s basically common sense. Ensure you have access to everything, even if you don’t use it now, you might in the future and it will save time.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, sure, if it was an adversary like the U.S. government and not a Russian ally like Elon Musk…

  • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    If the item is indeed Starlink hardware, it should be possible to prove its origins – perhaps even where it was bought, and by whom.

    sheeeeeeeeeeeit. Starlink isn’t going to say shit, maybe someone else controls the database of serial numbers?

    Has Tesla even identified that TX CyberFuck that killed it’s unidentified (?) driver in early August? I can’t find any followup on that, except that the wreck was going to be auctioned at the end of August. It’s the one truck that has gone dark in all of TX that month… easy to figure it out on Tesla’s end.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Remember they fired their corporate communications and even municipalities mid-project can’t get anyone on the phone. It’s burning down.

      That said, I would not be shocked at all to find Elmo with his fascist oligarch mitts on this. That fucker needs a serious regulatory beatdown. (Not an actual, like, punching him in the head beatdown.)

  • resetbypeer@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    As much as I hate Elon for all the shit he says and does, but it also shows the sanctioning for stuff like this is not waterproof. These units can be bought by company X in country X and sells it to company Y in country Y who is friendly with Russia. Also depending where they get launched from (for example from occupied Ukraine) it makes it also difficult to tell “friend” from “foe”. Can that be prevented ? Probably, but it’s not as straightforward as armchair generals may make it sound.

    Now, could spaceX do something more about this ? Most likely. But that is resources you need to put on this, which is not profitable. So long story short. It’s more than Elon bad here.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      They could probably prevent 99.999% of this with a list of starlink devices in ukraine, a list devices geolocated to the vicinity, and a single part time employee.

      • TechAnon@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Couldn’t these easily triangulate a location since there’s a long string of satellites?

    • piecat@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Look at this article from March 2024: https://robertgarcia.house.gov/media/in-the-news/cnbc-house-democrats-probe-spacex-over-alleged-illegal-export-and-use-starlink

      In a statement on Thursday, the congressmen wrote, “Russia’s use of Starlink satellite terminals would be in contravention of U.S. export controls that prohibit Russia from acquiring and utilizing U.S.-produced technology.”

      So the equipment has to fall into the wrong hands, through a somehow compromised supply chain. Maybe that could happen without starlink knowing, but they really should have figured that out in march. They should have very easily identified the units that were potentially compromised by auditing shipping logs.

      Not only did the supply chain have to be compromised, but also the subscription and payments system… How did they not catch it on the subscription payment side? Now in addition to a compromised supply chain, a financial institution was compromised? At the least, they didn’t do their due dilligance in customer verification.

      How could russia have set up the equipment without some level of development and testing? Geolocation should have given that development away.

      Now, could spaceX do something more about this ? Most likely. But that is resources you need to put on this, which is not profitable.

      Yeah good point, that’s called “negligence”. Not doing due dilligance or taking the necessary steps to avoid breaking the law, because it isn’t profitable, isn’t a valid legal defense.

      It really would have been as simple as geofencing against devices that weren’t preauthorized or whitelisted.

      • resetbypeer@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Yepp those are for sure valid points. Seems that it’s not such a “high” prio for our Trump lover.

  • SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Ukraine has been an enthusiastic adopter of Starlink after Elon Musk responded to Russia’s invasion by shipping antennas valued at over $80 million to the country

    For some reason, I’m reminded of the Trojan Horse.

  • IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    But Moscow has ways of avoiding bans – as does Iran – and could have found a way to build Starlink-equipped kit that only becomes active once it crosses the border into Ukraine where SpaceX’s service is allowed.

  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 months ago

    Typical dual-use problem. The best you can do is try and close any black import routes you find, and try to disable or disconnect base stations moving faster than 150 km/h.

    Similar to how commercial civilian GPS clients shut off when moving at high speeds, except even better if you can do it from the satellite, so the client can’t be modded as a workaround.

  • MobileDecay@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    With my extensive knowledge about starlink satellites I uh… Ooh look at the pretty bird! 😍