I was recently in a country that strictly controls internet communications. Like, total lockdown absolutely forbidden levels of control. I spent my time there constantly wondering about the inevitable advent of ubiquitous wireless communication via things like Starlink and what the effects would be on these totalitarian regimes.
Edit: I didn't mean to focus on Starlink specifically. Eventually it won't just be Starlink up there, and likely our mobile devices will need less and less power to communicate with those satellites. So I'm less interested in the effects of Starlink and more on satellite communications generally.
Starlink blocks access to specific countries that it doesn't have approval to work in, so I presume they'll just be blocked while the totalitarian regimes are in power.
I don't think this is the case. They don't sell hardware/service in countries they don't have approval to operate in, but their global roam service operates in places they don't have an operation license for, which is why south Africa is pissed off [1]
Isn't that's how Ukraine got fucked. Sent their submarine drones towards Crimea but as soon they crossed the "border" they lost signal. They tried to contact Musk and the rest is history...
Yes, morally Ukraine is in the right, although it's understandable why Musk wants his globally operating businesses to at least appear to be neutral. Despite being obviously US-based.
Maybe more interesting is the question why they need Starlink at all? Why are they dealing with a private for profit company when the US military could provide them with satellite communications?
They were using Starlink to get live video from small maritime drones. As in, things that you can only fit a tiny non-directional antenna onto. I can't imagine trying to talk to WGS with one of those would go well.
Meanwhile, US military contracts Starlink for some of its communications. Private contractors are very much the standard for military logistics these days.
To be clear, Starlink is fine with defensive use, including Ukraine's cross-border counteroffensives that the US government sees as having a defensive purpose. They are very much already a military contractor, and Ukraine has gone through the proper avenues to receive the service for military purposes.^1
The problem is that the consequences of accidentally providing service to Russia, a country that is both sanctioned by the US (so Starlink would face headache-inducing legal problems in the US) and is conducting an offensive invasion (which matters because it's against Starlink policy), are considered far too high for the Pentagon to approve it without the use of hexagon geofencing. This hexagon geofencing means it's not as useful for crossing over the Russia-Ukraine front line. It is updated frequently to reflect the situation on the ground, but they can only provide service to a hexagon if all of that land has been taken back from Russia, so it will never quite satisfy how fast Ukrainian soldiers would prefer the geo-fencing to update.
It's likely that Starlink wants to refine this geofencing to be useful for Ukraine's cross-border counteroffensives, or to use some other measures to ensure the captured equipment and signals are not useful for Russia, but as long as the US Government says no, it won't happen.
---
^1: There was some usage of the service before it was properly approved, which was around the time Elon Musk was publicly saying Starlink wouldn't support counteroffensives and blocked off access in Crimea. But this is history now as Starlink is obligated by the Pentagon to support Ukraine, Musk's opinions do not appear to be guiding Starlink's current policies. Unfortunately this series of events has spawned some really confused news articles, angry Ukrainian soldiers on social media, and various partisan nonsense... the publicity and drama of it all pretty much overshadowed what actually ended up happening, which could have been much more interesting to investigate by anyone who is pro- or anti-ukraine, or pro- or anti-Musk -- or just anyone who is interested in how these military contracts work.
given how few starlink units are available and how ubiquitous wifi mesh network technology is this is likely a non issue. One starlink unit will likely be providing backhaul for a large portion of front line from a rear station.
And the ethnic Russian majority on it.
Of course the west and the neocons don't recognize it and their propaganda organs will make sure people think otherwise, after all Crimea is strategic for controlling the Black Sea.
enlighten yourself a bit on recent Crimea history:
You mean Russian speakers like Zelensky? And of course Crimea has less crimean tatars and Ukrainians now after Russian ethnic cleansing. Russians has always engaged in that.
I'm pretty sure the reason there was the free internet access being give to Ukraine was conditional on it being used for defence only and not offence. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
What is the difference between defense and offense when you are fighting against an invading army occupying ~20% of your country? Is it "offense" if you attempt to push them out?
It's offence when you leave your border on go over into another country. But either way, doesn't matter what I think, it's what Elon Musk thinks as he was giving them the starlink access for free.
Consensus doesn’t change the fact the enemy has occupied that territory. Isn’t so hard to grok why you Musk wouldn’t open internet on there, esp without explicit DOD authorization.
The enemy is ALWAYS occupying any territory that they are on. It isnt like they are on vaccation. So with that logic it couldnt be used for any defence purposes that kills the invaders.
HIMARS can be used in Crimea because Crimea is part of Ukraine. US govt recognise Crimea as Ukraine. It is only Elon that denies that Crimea is part of Ukraine.
Offensive operations are integral to achieving military strategy, including defenses. Passively defending has always been used to create conditions favorable to resuming offensive operations because only offensive operations get things done. Militarily, "defensive operations" include attacking the enemy
It used to be called the Department of War. The "Department of Defense" name came about in 1949 for PR reasons. Also, "PR" is an American propaganda term which means "propaganda".
PR expands to public relations, which is a euphemism for propaganda. Propaganda was rebranded in America after WW2 because people associated the term with Nazis.
Let's take China for instance. They can prosecute the the customers, interfere with the communications, prevent the building of or seize the ground stations (eventually the laser links could get around that), can blow the satelites up with missiles (though that is not likely), and in general prevent any future authorized business that Starlink might want to do.
If I were in charge, I'd try to get licensed and be able to collect money from customers there.
> I wonder what will happen now that every phone will become a sat phone.
Governments that don't want that will disallow the sale of such phones inside their country unless the manufacturer disables the satellite features for customers there.
Sure, some will get through via illegal imports, but largely this will be effective.
The difference with these new satellite systems (if they can deliver what they promise) is that every phone sold within the past few years is essentially compatible.
At that point, you could only request that phone manufacturers retroactively provide firmware updates that ban these networks, or maybe make it hard to get SIMs allowed to connect to them (but then there's eSIMs too).
I think in practice we'll see a combination of these countries applying legal/economical pressure on the operators and jamming, with larger/less isolated countries leaning on the former, and the others on the latter.
That's what they did up to now but that doesn't work anymore. Starlink direct to cell works with any unmodified smartphone. They can't ban all of those and throw their country back 20 years :)
Can’t enforce laws? Nerds will look for any opening for a techno-anarchist utopia. Most people are going to give up their phone when even remotely threatened. Before things even get to that point, there are lots of other levers to pull to stop people from getting access to an (esp. paid) service.
Hypothetically, in the event of a war or similar unrest, the US could use satellite cell 'towers' to give an entire country limited connectivity with old devices people have stashed away in some drawer or closet without otherwise active cell plans, which are therefore off the local government's radar. People could be coerced to turn over the phones the government knows about but still retain some connectivity.
If you don't have enough things to worry about: the US has exactly the same legal powers—in fact they're national security powers the President can invoke unilaterally,
> If you don't have enough things to worry about: the US has exactly the same legal powers—in fact they're national security powers the President can invoke unilaterally,
I'm not in the US so I don't worry about that. But the US doesn't seem to actually use it as India does.
And besides I have other communications options if that would happen.
Theoretically speaking, could you use high power lasers to overheat the satellites to the point that they break and permanently stop working?
I've had this idea on my mind for quite a while now, because some time ago I heard something about Starlink painting their satellites black, which reminded me of the "it's hotter in a black car" thing.
There is a known threat in using lasers to damage the solar cells which would lead to the batteries fully discharging and the satellite becoming useless for lack of electrical power.
They can make SpaceX life hell through the ITU. Eventually SpaceX can only operate if they get the licences to operate, and if they bypass this, they would show that they have a disregard of RF regulations and this will be used against them the next time they need to get/renew a licence.
If only the government could control the companies like 3M and the people behind it, that have been releasing toxic chemicals into the environment and killing people. How can these companies get away with murder while paying (relative) pocket change for their crimes?
You mean the government requiring militaries train with too much pfas (for missile explosion control) and no effort towards mitigation decades before the technology existed to even detect the presence of trace amounts (due to pfas being a ww2 classified technology)?
Sounds like standard live and learn tech development, like nuclear.
It's not a feature, though. It looks like a regular old 4G/5G network to the phone.
I could see such a regulation be implemented for new phones (Apple's Globalstar functionality is already deactivated in software based on geolocation in non-supported countries and maybe even in hardware for models sold in some regions), but it won't help with existing devices.
Another avenue would be restricting access to SIMs capable of logging on to these networks. SIMs have supported mutual authentication since (I believe) 3G, so it's not possible for a satellite 4G service to provide "unilateral roaming".
Like the US does with Beidou GNSS receivers. Know how pretty much every flagship phone advertises support for it? Can't use in the US, blocked by geofence set at firmware level. Take the device outside of the geofence and it'll see them.
Really? Why? What's the problem with using multiple GNSS constellations? They're receive-only. My phone definitely supports GLONASS but I hadn't checked Beidou.
(sorry for late response, maybe you'll still catch it) There's not a technical problem using multiple GNSS constellations. Officially the US had some treaty with Russia to allow use of GLONASS as a second constellation. Later on Galileo became the next constellation approved through a civil route, not a treaty.
China's BeiDou would have to probably be approved through a treaty since it's run by their military, it's not going to happen. I've been told by someone who used to work at space force that beidou can be used to track users, but that's bullshit with how our receivers use it. Here's a US gov report on the matter, if it's receive only (no messaging component) tracking isn't going to happen https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Staff%20Re...
Finally, the way at least Qualcomm receivers work is they will only lock to GPS first and then mix in the other constellations (at least while in CONUS).
Thank you for the response anyway! I do review my comments every so often to catch these. How do you know so much about GPS and how can I learn more? :)
Also, is there any hope for "authenticated GPS" to prevent spoofing? Is that even technically possible for non-secret codes like C/A or L5?
An advantage to a law which is widely flauted is that it gives arbitrary pretext to apprehend or detain any given person.
Those who are, at least for now, within good graces are of course exempted. Those who are systematically repressed can be systematically, specifically, and/or arbitrarily detained, investigated, and/or prosecuted, as suits political needs.
And the fact that the actions are based on at least nominal basis in law and procedure means that the practice is defensible both to those tasked with enacting it and with the institutions and general public. Even tyrants find that power is best and most readily exerted through cooperating and existing channels.
China, Russia and India have successfully tested anti-satellite weapons. Considering that Iran and North Korea have recently been able to acquire some pretty advanced Russian missiles, it might not be that hard for other countries to obtain them.
I am not sure that is so relevant everywhere. I think I have read about Tesla having problems staying competitive in the Chinese EV market, for example.
Assuming Starlink is really willing to violate local frequency licensing requirements (which I doubt they'd dare for all but the most internationally isolated countries without anti-satellite weapons), given the low transmit powers, local wireless jammers should be relatively easy to implement.
> given the low transmit powers, local wireless jammers should be relatively easy to implement.
Not true. Both the transmitter and receiver (in both directions) utilize phased arrays. This means the receiver is very good at rejecting noise angularly separated from the expected location of the transmitter. Geometry dictates that jamming could be somewhat effective against upload (i.e. if the jammer is located roughly within the size of a spot beam from the transmitting dish), but is almost completely ineffective in the download direction.
This is all fairly theoretical since much of the details aren't publicly available; but as evidence I point to the fact that Russia has poured a huge amount of money into EW and, despite having considerable motivation to deny Starlink access, has consistently failed to prevent its widespread use by Ukrainian troops on frontlines mere kilometers from its own forces.
I agree that jamming Starlink’s existing (dish-based) service might not be that easy, but mobile phones do not use phased arrays, and that’s what TFA is about.
They are conceptually related, and the more antennas you add ("massive MIMO"), the more you get into the "phased array" domain, especially on the base station side, which is where MU-MIMO is exploited.
But on common mobile devices, you only have two or four antennas, so the beamforming gain is much more limited. Having more than one antenna there is mostly done to leverage multipath propagation in a non-line-of-sight environment for capacity gains as far as I understand it, and in a line-of-sight environment, you only get very moderate steering gains of a few dB (and practically no steering/beamforming effect). Satellite communication is primarily line-of-sight, though.
So while the satellite can steer its beams towards a given mobile device (both for transmit and receive), and this allows for higher spectral efficiency and better use of the satellite's transmit power and better noise rejection, the mobile device can't do the same and will easily be overwhelmed by a jammer at least in the downlink path, as far as I understand.
This is in ideal condition, but how good is the rejection of other signals by the beamforming circuits in the receiver? Intuitively, I'd think that a powerful enough local jammer (I really mean local, not at some kilometers, EM fields weaken with the square of distance, so very quickly) would manage to create interferences despite the beamforming.
I have lost hope that human can fight totalitarianism, regardless the new technology been used. It is like the low energy state of society, similar to a ball tends roll down the hill, it is easier for a country to enter the totalitarian state and stays there than to get out of it by itself. Imagine a North Korean owns a such cell phone, according to rumors, it is a crime if the spouse, children, or neighbors don’t report to the authorities. Governments can also jam communication, just like they jam radio programs and censor Internet. A more likely scenario would be regimes use new technology, including direct cell phone to satellite communication, to monitor and control people.
The US State department provided specific authorization empowering telecom companies (incl. Starlink) to operate in Iran and disregard local restrictions. If you can smuggle a dish into the country, you can use it. But the signal wouldn’t be too hard to detect, so it’s risky.
What about a special reduced uplink power mode, with only 128Kb of bandwidth for example? Additionally, you can conceal the dish from terrestrial detectors, by putting it in a forest clearing for example. Those two things combined might make it a lot more difficult for the Iranian government to find a Starlink dish.
I'd also guess that China and Russia are big enough that satellites would go unused a lot while flying over them.
While Iran isn't tiny (17th largest country), the satellites have several other territories nearby by that could use up the capacity that a no-Iran rule makes available.
The situation in Iran is somewhat different. Despite being under heavy international sanctions and having a government that also exercises strict control over internet access, Iran saw the deployment of Starlink terminals following specific events, such as natural disasters or in response to certain socio-political situations. This deployment could be part of a broader strategy by the U.S. or other entities to provide uncensored internet access to the Iranian population during times of crisis. However, it's important to note that such deployments might be temporary, unofficial, or not fully sanctioned by the Iranian government.
I love when companies founded in the heart of capitalism do something incredibly capitalist, and people are surprised about it.
Sometimes it's like people don't see that radical capitalism does eventually lead to pandering to any government that has money or resources.
When will the mindless repetition of this idiocy end? Musk did not "turn off Starlink in Ukraine after talking to Putin". He refused Ukraine's request to turn Starlink on in Crimea for an attack because doing so a) would violate SpaceX's consistent policy of refusing Starlink use directly on the front lines [1] and, more importantly, b) would violate US law.
[1] The policy has existed since the beginning of Starlink service in Ukraine. SpaceX seemingly turned a blind eye to Ukrainian use of some Starlink terminals strapped to combat drones and such, but the above incident basically forced the company's hand in cracking down on such use.
Edit: I didn't mean to focus on Starlink specifically. Eventually it won't just be Starlink up there, and likely our mobile devices will need less and less power to communicate with those satellites. So I'm less interested in the effects of Starlink and more on satellite communications generally.