Elon's been on quite the information suppression run this week. Adding a dislike button, telling his followers to bury left content, and stories about his attempts to "win at nuclear war"
I don’t know about the first two, but if we could build a missile defense system using American space capability that’s decades ahead of the rest of the world, is there any reason that isn’t an excellent idea?
No amount of wishful thinking is going to un-exist the thousands of Russian ICBMs. Personally, I like the idea of my existence not hinging on the mood of a dictator half a world away.
Because submarines. Submarines provide the sneaky vertex of the nuclear triad, and essentially serve as both the "dead man's switch" and first strike capabilities. We may be able to account for most ICBMs, but there is no effective technological deterrent for all possible attack vectors.
In the end, diplomacy (and the power to back it up) is truly the best way to go.
Great podcast, also Russia will just stage nukes in orbit so they can't be intercepted during their vulnerable boost phase. In fact they recently built this capability to do so.
There used to be a Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between US and USSR. Then Donald Rumsfeld pushed for a withdrawal from the treaty, and the US did so in 2002.
Then China had an anti satellite test in 2007.
Basically what I am saying is that your idea is not new, and it is not getting anywhere either. Trying to weaponize space is just more war-mongering.
>is there any reason that isn’t an excellent idea?
yes. Missile shields threaten the ability of an enemy to retaliate, they're first strike enablers (so despite the name, effectively offensive weapons). The only rational choice for an opponent would then be to strike immediately before they're rendered defenseless. You would have effectively bought yourself an immediate nuclear war once Russia perceived that threat to be imminent.
Your existence hinging on a dictators mood isn't nice, but what's worse is making it game theoretically necessary for them to glass you immediately.
I'd like this to be built by the US government, not a person who turned off Ukraine's starlink access on a whim based on his personal opinion of an international event.
> not a person who turned off Ukraine's starlink access on a whim based on his personal opinion of an international event
I marked this story to follow up on when it broke, because it interested me.
I'm no Musk fan, but I did find his telling of this story credible: Starlink was initially disabled in Crimea due to sanctions, the Ukrainian uncrewed surface vehicle team assumed coverage would be available all the way to their target, and Musk declined to extend coverage when they asked at the last minute, in the context of a specific, planned military operation. I happen to be a lawyer familiar with those sanctions---and how businesses tend to address them---but you could cross-reference stories about GitHub and others freezing accounts of people logging in from Crimean IPs for a sense.
Either way, I'd be careful with words here. I don't recall any reports of Starlink being shut down for Ukraine or Ukrainian forces overall. There was another news arc some time before about Musk insisting the government pick up the tab for continued service. But as far as I know that never resulted in any major service disruption. I vaguely recall it's now on Department of Defense contract, but you'd want to check that.
> not a person who turned off Ukraine's starlink access
That never happened. SpaceX was giving Ukraine Starlink access for free to the tune of 100 million dollars during the war while it was unprofitable to help against Russia and for that crime Musk has been demonized by false information and propaganda. Sad to see this misinformation even on HN.
Starlink was never active in Crimea because it's an occupied Russian territory and Starlink was enabled only in Ukraine controlled territories for obvious reasons.
SpaceX got an emergency request from Ukraine to enable Starlink over Crimea so they can bomb Russian warships, SpaceX refused since Musk was afraid of nuclear escalation. They can't turn off something that was never turned on.
Recently the Pentagon praised SpaceX for blocking Russians' illicit use of Starlink.
Wasn't it more like, "Here's some hardware don't use it as a weapon system", "Hey can we use this to blow up some russian ships?", "No", internet goes on collective Musk hates Ukraine and loves Putin tirade even though his company is actively enabling Ukrainian battlefield communications since day 1.
He’s gone on multiple Pro-Putin screeds in the past, and said in the past Ukraine should just give up and let Russia have the land they previously seized in the war in the interest of ‘peace’.
> Ukraine should just give up and let Russia have the land they previously seized in the war in the interest of ‘peace’.
Is it really that wild of a take though? The argument as a I understood it was, there's almost no progress being made for Ukraine in taking back that territory. Prolonging the war causes suffering to the young men who have to fight it. So exchange land for peace while still in a strong position instead of current policy of no peace unless a return to original borders.
I don't really see a realistic argument that a Ukrainian counterattack will recover that land.
It’s an incredibly bad argument, and anyone making it has no business opining on the situation in a public forum. To understand why, you need to read some history. Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement
Its Russia's collapse that will give Ukraine its land back and make it safe from further predations. Russia has a tendency to hide its weaknesses especially from itself and all those corrupt government officials and militaries are robbing Peter to pay Paul and make everything look hunky-dory. And then somebody invades Kursk.
Putin has one tactic and one tactic only. Double or nothing and push painful consequences down the road. Well, there is an end to this road and it is mighty foggy.
I don't disagree and I don't think anyone is making the argument that Russia and Putin will be great neighbors from now on.
But no one ever seems to propose that there's still a possibility Ukraine can retake that land. I would definitely like to hear it, but for the most part the border has very slowly been moving in the wrong direction.
They’ll retake it at the current pace, but it takes time.
Part of the reason why it isn’t discussed though is 1) Russia gets really freaked out about it, and 2) it’s (somewhat) in Western interests for Ukraine to not ‘win’.
The longer this drags out, the more fucked Russia is. (Also Ukraine long term, but eggs need to be broken to make an omelette!). And from a western perspective, this is a remarkably cheap proxy war.
If we don’t count the damage Russia is doing to us through propaganda and social media manipulation anyway.
Yeah, that's basically how it went. And they wanted to use it to strike a location that the US was, at that time, still not letting Ukraine hit with US supplied weapons.
SDI was super destabilizing the last time ICBM interception was a serious discussion item is my understanding: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative Deploying a defense system creates a closing window that encourages a 'now or never' first strike.
The problem is that it's total nonsense. Even a cursory look at the problem will show you how futile attempting to build a missile defense system against Russia is.
The US has wasted over 350 billion dollars on this with nothing to show for it. And that's an attempt to stop one ICBM with one reentry vehicle.
Russian missiles are far more sophisticated and their launchers are all over the place. You can't stop them on the ascent phase where this would be feasible.
After that stopping a modern ICBM is impossible. A single missile contains up to a dozen warheads (MIRV) plus decoys all moving at several miles per second! There's no hope.
No amount of wishful thinking is going to overcome basic physics.
If we don't like the dictator we should depose them and support democracy everywhere. Instead we worked with Putin, we helped install him, Europe helped legitimize him. It's on us that we're in mortal danger again.
The titan missile museum in Tucson has a good poster illustrating this. Soviet rockets were less reliable but they had so many more of them that they had a 99.9% probability of reaching the target. The USA had/have less but they were/are more reliable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1eu994l/mus...