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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30073 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-elon-musk-spacex-technology-business-c79c81ff4e6a09f4a185e627dad858fa

About the same time, Starlink terminals stopped working in newly liberated territories at the Ukraine-Russia front lines in the Kherson region. Ukrainian officials later said that was because the speed of their reconquest had pushed forces into areas Starlink that had “geo-fenced” to prevent Russia from using the service.

It was remarkably difficult to find this. Most of the news coverage, especially more recent news coverage, presents it as implicitly nefarious and either doesn't know or doesn't bother to mention that Ukrainian officials have stated what the issue was. Other than this Associated Press article the only other one I saw mentioning the actual reason was this Financial Times article quoting a third party.

My guess would've been that access would've been controlled by some method of authentication, so that the Ukrainian terminals would work anywhere but anything held by Russians wouldn't work at all, making such a geofence unnecessary.

Starlink was made free throughout Ukraine so I think it just works if you have a terminal without needing an account. Doing authentication separate from owning the device seems impractical, for many military purposes you want it running continuously and it's not like you want it to start demanding a password (that soldiers have to memorize) any time it loses power. By comparison apparently Ukraine has been supplied with some SINCGARS encrypted radios, they work like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SINCGARS

When hailing a network, a user outside the network contacts the network control station (NCS) on the cue frequency. In the active FH mode, the SINCGARS radio gives audible and visual signals to the operator that an external subscriber wants to communicate with the FH network. The SINCGARS operator must change to the cue frequency to communicate with the outside radio system. The network can be set to a manual frequency for initial network activation. The manual frequency provides a common frequency for all members of the network to verify that the equipment is operational.

But something like that doesn't work for Starlink, you can't have someone at SpaceX talk to the user and confirm he's Ukrainian every time a Starlink terminal is turned on.

Thanks! That's interesting, and is enough to make one doubt the original story.

Although, at the top of that article is the following:

Onstage at a conference in Washington, D.C., Shotwell [SpaceX President] said: “We were really pleased to be able to provide Ukraine connectivity and help them in their fight for freedom. It was never intended to be weaponized. However, Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement.”

Speaking separately to reporters from The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations afterward, Shotwell said SpaceX has worked to restrict Ukraine’s use of Starlink for military purposes.

“There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that,” they quoted her as saying without offering details. “There are things that we can do, and have done.”

That drew the ire of a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In a tweet, Mykhailo Podolyak said SpaceX needs to decide whether it is on the side of Ukraine’s right to freedom or Russia’s “‘right’ to kill & seize territories.”

Which is also odd.

... It's very weird, in a grand sense, that we're trying to draw all of these conclusions from a few paragraphs of text scattered across a few small news articles, right? It seems easy for misunderstandings, intentional or not, to emerge from that. And that's not just a problem for this, but the whole project of 'understanding politics and the world via news'.

Speaking separately to reporters from The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations afterward, Shotwell said SpaceX has worked to restrict Ukraine’s use of Starlink for military purposes.

“There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that,” they quoted her as saying without offering details. “There are things that we can do, and have done.”

That quote was specifically about not allowing them to directly control drones via Starlink, not "use of Starlink for military purposes" in general. They're fine with allowing them to be used for military communication but apparently not with drones carrying Starlink terminals so that they can be controlled by satellite without worrying about range and with less concern about jamming.

Reuters: SpaceX curbed Ukraine's use of Starlink internet for drones -company president

Speaking later with reporters, Shotwell referred to reports that the Ukrainian military had used the Starlink service to control drones.

Ukraine has made effective use of unmanned aircraft for spotting enemy positions, targeting long-range fires and dropping bombs.

"There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that," she said, referring to Starlink's use with drones. "There are things that we can do, and have done."

Shotwell declined to say what measures SpaceX had taken.

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.

"We know the military is using them for comms, and that's ok," she said. "But our intent was never to have them use it for offensive purposes."

Asked if SpaceX had anticipated Starlink's use for offensive purposes in Ukraine when deciding to ship terminals into conflict zones, Shotwell said: "We didn't think about it. I didn't think about it. Our starlink team may have, I don't know. But we learned pretty quickly."

The Economist: Ukraine is betting on drones to strike deep into Russia

At an early stage the Ukrainians appeared to pin hopes for controlling drones behind Russian lines on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, which work at frequencies and in numbers that Russian systems struggle to jam. A naval-drone attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet in October reportedly made good use of this gap. But Mr Musk, apparently worried about the escalatory effect of such moves, has stepped in where Russian technology proved unable to. Starlink now uses geofencing to block the use of its terminals—not only above Russian-occupied territory inside Ukraine, but also, according to a Ukrainian military intelligence source, over water and when the receiver is moving at speeds above 100km per hour. “You put it on a boat at sea and it will simply stop working,” he says. So Ukraine’s drone developers now use a range of other, more expensive communication systems, with multiple systems often on the same vehicle. The success of the attack on February 28th in getting so close to Moscow suggests that Ukraine may be getting close to a solution that works.

Aside from Starlink's apparent desire to not directly serve as the command and control system for drones and Musk's stated fears about escalation, I wonder if the U.S. government played some part in that decision, like how the U.S. has been reluctant to provide Ukraine with long-range missile systems capable of striking inside Russia.

Washington Post: U.S. in no hurry to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles

Since last year, the administration has cited several reasons for holding back. Refusal initially centered on concerns that Ukraine might fire the long-range missiles into Russian territory, escalating the conflict into a U.S.-Russia confrontation. Even supplying the weapons, Moscow has said publicly, would cross a red line.

Whatever Moscow’s threats, those worries seem to have abated. The Biden administration has said it is satisfied with public statements and written pledges from Kyiv not to use U.S.-supplied weapons to target Russians beyond the border. Although officials privately concede there have been some breaches, Ukraine is said to have largely complied with those promises.

You should have doubted the original story from the beginning. The fact is that it's easy for trained, intelligent journalists to create 'misunderstandings' without actually lying. Musk was never accused directly of sabotaging the Ukrainians - he was just 'appearing to'. His presumed sympathy to Russia becomes an assumed fact. The actual explanation is omitted.

Journalists are not idiots. They write exactly what they want to. Take the phrase 'Musk seemed to embrace COVID denialism'. Elon Musk is one of the most famous and public figures in the world who makes a habit of running his mouth on Twitter, but this trained journalist apparently can't figure out whether he believes that COVID exists.

I like Musk. What he’s doing for Ukraine is uniquely valuable, and the article is an obvious hit piece with a tenuous grasp on reality.

But reversed stupidity is still not intelligence. The OP could have defended Musk, even excoriated the New Yorker, without stretching the facts. It doesn’t take a partisan hack to reveal other hackery. Instead, OP reduced the story down to the parts he found most favorable. Is that really any better?

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