This is the best summary I could come up with:
SpaceX’s Starshield unit has had a classified contract with the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) since 2021 to build a network of “hundreds” of spy satellites for the agency, Reuters reports today, citing unnamed sources “familiar with the program.”
A Wall Street Journal report in February listed a classified $1.8 billion SpaceX contract with a then-unnamed government agency.
Now Reuters has attached a name, and that it’s to build a network of “hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits.”
SpaceX describes Starshield as a government-focused secure satellite network, and Elon Musk tweeted it “will be owned by the US government and controlled by DoD Space Force.” Last fall, the business unit signed a US Space Force contract to provide satellite communications for the military via Starlink.
According to Reuters, if the NRO contract is a success, it would “significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.
While an NRO spokesperson reportedly declined to comment on Reuters findings about SpaceX’s involvement, it confirmed to the outlet that it’s working to develop “the most capable, diverse, and resilient space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system the world has ever seen.”
The original article contains 255 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 19%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
" . . . for U.S. intelligence."
Yeah. Sure. Right. Musk will sell Intelligence to ANYONE who pays for it and US taxpayers will foot the entire bill for constructing the satellite network.
And then all the contractors and politicians will all pretend to be surprised by this and Musk will get the finger-wagging of a lifetime.
Sounds like this is a tack on to starlink. Could make sense to put low quality cameras on starlink to prevent a-sat shoot downs since there are so many starlink sats. You’d need to do a complete Kessler syndrome leo denial to economically knock them all out.
He’s already selling to both side with Starlink. Who is to say Musk won’t be doing the same with this? He’s really playing up the Bond Villain stereotype.
Would you rather he, as a non-government affiliated citizen, pick a side? War is stupid. Communication is great. Maybe this is naive of me, but I think the world would be better, and maybe require less war, if everyone had equal access to communication.
Musk is a massive POS that cannot be trusted to maintain equal access to that communication.
What don’t you grasp about that?
Maybe this is naive of me
It really is. We’re not discussing the philosophy of free and open communication, we’re talking about a single narcissist who has been given money and power and how that’s a problem.
Science fiction of the 90s was the time to discuss philosophy. We didn’t come to a conclusion then. The future is now. A global low latency, highly available communications network is technologically inevitable. In our timeline, a rich narcissist has gathered enough support and competence around himself to start building that network. So now we have a real, concrete questions that needs an answer: who should have access to that network, and who should decide?
The way I see it, the options are (besides opening the network for everyone globally):
- limit access to non-military purposes: practically impossible
- limit access to the country of which Elon calls himself a citizen: what happens if he moves?
- destroy the network: everyone is worse off
- have the government take over control of the network: I don’t think we want this precedence
Do you have another suggestion?
Communications are important, which is why they’re one of the number one things an invader disrupts upon invasion: communications systems. Disrupting your enemies communications is incredibly common and to act like simply because Musk is “offering communications” means he’s a good guy is such a simplistic fucking take I want to blow my brains out.
Maybe you should read some McLuhan or some Debord.
Do you have any particular pieces of theirs you can recommend I read?
I don’t consider Musk, by any means, to be “a good guy”. Ideally, I’d just rather let SpaceX keep building out starlink for the good of the world and have it be a medium for communication that is difficult to disable.
Why do we need to kill our enemies at this point in our civilization even? it’s barbaric and ridiculous. The state of the art of weaponry right now is trending towards remote operations. How long until it just becomes BattleBots but with collateral damage? When do we get to world leaders settling disputes in a game of Worms?
The fuck are you talking about? These are surveillance satellites, not some unity communications empowering satellites or something.
Surveillance is a usecase for communication. I can’t think of a communications technology that hasn’t been (ab)used for surveillance… Books even! Historically people have been prosecuted due to the books they possess! Should our target of ire be the entity building the network? Or the entity wanting to use it for surveillance? The vibe I’m getting from this thread is that folks would prefer the US government, via NASA or otherwise, have control of the whole thing instead.
You have no idea how a spy satellite works, do you?
They take pictures.
With really, really fancy cameras.
Cameras that are very carefully, and secretly, designed to be very good at their jobs.
No, you can’t just let some third party decide to use your fancy spy satellite, that means they now know what your satellite can and can’t do, which means they can hide things from it, which means it’s now just a very expensive lump in orbit.
And need I remind you that SpaceX is not some magical self funded space ferry service. They’re a US Government contractor, that’s where most of their money comes from. The satellites are made by other contractors. There’s not a government satellite factory somewhere in the desert, they pay companies like Boeing and Honeywell to make them the parts for the satellite, and then SpaceX gets money to launch it.
When the government pays for something, the contractor is legally required to keep their mouth shut about it, hand over the keys, and be available if it breaks. The contractor cannot just decide to let someone else play with the government’s toys, that’s called espionage.
Ypu sounds like a shit head
Dumb ass thing to say
I would rather they fund NASA to the fullest, and nationalize SpaceX under them.
So that the US government can more directly use starlink for surveillance?
Sure, they won’t sell it to Russia at least
Would you rather he, as a non-government affiliated citizen, pick a side? War is stupid. Communication is great. Maybe this is naive of me, but I think the world would be better, and maybe require less war, if everyone had equal access to communication.
I recently read about Ted Hall who shared nuclear secrets with the Soviet Union because he thought everyone should have equal access to nuclear weapons and this would prevent another world war.
Your logic is similar and it’s not a good thing.
root password: “putin6969”
In the recent Musk biography it was said that at some point after a meeting with NASA he changed his laptop password to “ilovenasa” so you’re not far off in terms of terrible password security if the story is accurate.
I’m getting Deus Ex vibes
I spill my drink!
You’re (probably knowingly) spreading disinformation if you’re implying SpaceX is selling Starlink terminals to Russia. You have no moral standing to criticize them if you yourself are spreading lies.
Eat shit bootlicker
It’s not disinformation at all. Russians are using Starlink on the battlefield. SpaceX knew, and didn’t report it. Russians continue to use it without any remediation from SpaceX yet. That sure as shit meets the bare minimum in my book as complicity.
Why are you on here being a fence or fact checker for Russia and SpaceX anyway? Fuck Russia, and Fuck Elon Musk.
We will find out soon enough. https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-russia-elon-musk-democrats-2024-3
why are you fact checking anyway?
Showing our true feelings now, are we?
And people laugh when I say both sides are idiots. bothsides lmao! yeah? but they do X while I sit here and do X! so you can see how dumb and stupid they are right guise!
That’s enough Lemmy for me today.
The accusation being made here is not about Russia using Starlink but about SpaceX selling them to both sides for which I haven’t seen any evidence for. You can not like Musk all you want but making statements like that as if it’s an established fact is dishonest. It implies malice when the most likely explanation is that these terminals simply just were obtained via 3rd parties. Starlink doesn’t work in Russia or in the occupied territories but it does work near the front lines because Ukraine is using them there so if Russians are able to obtain an active terminal somehow then there’s a good chance it will work.
You also seem to be implying that SpaceX isn’t doing anything about it. What are you basing this on? How could you know? They’ve said that they’re going to disable all terminals found out to be used by sanctioned parties and I don’t see any reason to assume they’re not doing this. For all we know they could have disabled hundreds if not thousands terminals by now. Ofcourse if you have evidence to the contrary then I’m interested in seeing it.
Why are you on here being a fence or fact checker for Russia and SpaceX anyway?
Because I have no dog in the fight and I only care about the truth. I have zero interest in the anti-Elon circlejerk - I’m just trying to figure out what’s actually going on.
Fucking bootlicking lap dogs.
A lot wrong here, I’m sorry to say, and I’m really not a fan of Musk. He is absolutely not selling Starlink to be used by Russia. That would be shut down real quick. (They may be using black-market terminals, but that’s a different question.) And this new constellation will, as I understand it, be owned and operated by the US govt. Think like every single spy satellite ever: govt finds a contractor and asks them to do a thing.
Oh, right. Hey could t possibly make another and sell that to someone else, oh wait…
Making boatloads of money
or
Making far less money along with loss of freedom for decades, or fleeing and sanctions while having your every shart logged…
Seems problematic, considering what a fuckwad musk is.
straight up supervillain shit, as always
Just spitballing here, but it will get hacked and cause a major problem, if not a crisis.
They’ll probably all drop out of orbit before that happens though. I give it a week from launch.
The more ridiculous, the more plausible, because it has happened. 😂
There are numerous spy satellites up there already from many nations, any of them being hacked would be just as bad.
The DoD is going to be involved in how they are secured.
Seems like after his satellite shenanigans in Ukraine, the US would be more… cautious.
Or there is more to that story than we know as the general public.
That this whole war is orchestrated by the deep state which has private corporations as a branch of government just like every other war waged since WWII (the last real war)?
Literally why is anybody shocked?
This. Musk disabled Starlink to fark over the Ukrainians. He should not be trusted with any military contracts. Ever.
I bet this leads to Musk getting outed by more of his own companies, lol.
Having mega corporations design space networks for you sounds like a great idea until they decide to lock you out and hold your government hostage. Or sell intel… Or sell access to other actors….
Just admit it—the corporations run the world at this point.
Nah, part of this is specifically that the US government owns it. This isn’t SpaceX just providing access. Think of the US government buying an F-35 or something.
I imagine that might be because they want to do things with it that’d be riskier than what SpaceX does with SpaceX’s constellation – i.e. adversaries might aim to dick it up.
Really just sounds like they are deploying government equipment. There is no report of it being hardware built by spaceX. That is all speculation and clickbait m.
The company makes money by delivering payloads to space. In the end they are a delivery company moving packages from point A to point B.
That the US government would use this service seems obvious. SpaceX is well known for profiting off government funds.
Naw, I remember reading about this earlier in several articles. This isn’t just a launch service contract.
