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Sorry I can't resist but put my hacker hat on: How would effective prohibition work? Beams are directed enough to make them hard to find from a frequency persp

by jupp0r 6y ago

Sorry I can't resist but put my hacker hat on: How would effective prohibition work? Beams are directed enough to make them hard to find from a frequency perspective. Payments will probably be possible in BitCoins at some point given Teslas move in that direction. Controlling the import of hardware seems like a way to do it, but I bet it would still show up everywhere.

aurelianito 6y ago
That's easy. If spacex does not respect the ban, China will fire anti-satellite missiles to the spacex constellation.
- modeless 6y ago
  That's not easy. There will be tens of thousands of satellites. It would be prohibitively expensive to hit them all with missiles. Not to mention the debris cloud which, while temporary, would cause real problems for everyone in space for a few years. More feasible attacks would be hacking the satellites or ground systems, RF jamming, or just locating users on the ground by their RF emissions and throwing them in the gulag. Or how about holding the Shanghai Tesla factory hostage? Less fancifully, China can put pressure on SpaceX via the ITU. There are plenty of options for China and there is zero chance SpaceX will try to break Chinese law.
  - justaguy88 6y ago
    Hitting one satellite is a hell of a warning shot though. Literally no one wants the debris clouds. Every country, US included, would pressure SpaceX to stop operating in countries that don't want it if it were to result in any debris.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  no no no no no no please. if you want to make Starlink illegal what you do is state Starlink is illegal and maybe make it illegal to pay Starlink. that's a lot cheaper and doesn't piss off the international community.
morei 6y ago
It's easy: Just make it illegal, and put make it incumbent on starlink to enforce it. Violations are met with (eg) sanctions on Tesla and other related parties. This has played out many, many times in history and it's generally successful. Yes, it's often not perfect. There are small numbers that slip through the cracks. But as soon as it's any significant number the crack will get closed. c.f. great firewall of china, north korea anything, various European data location requirements, russian internet payments and search, etc etc etc etc.

by jupp0r 6y ago

aurelianito 6y ago

That's easy. If spacex does not respect the ban, China will fire anti-satellite missiles to the spacex constellation.

modeless 6y ago
That's not easy. There will be tens of thousands of satellites. It would be prohibitively expensive to hit them all with missiles. Not to mention the debris cloud which, while temporary, would cause real problems for everyone in space for a few years. More feasible attacks would be hacking the satellites or ground systems, RF jamming, or just locating users on the ground by their RF emissions and throwing them in the gulag. Or how about holding the Shanghai Tesla factory hostage? Less fancifully, China can put pressure on SpaceX via the ITU. There are plenty of options for China and there is zero chance SpaceX will try to break Chinese law.
- justaguy88 6y ago
  Hitting one satellite is a hell of a warning shot though. Literally no one wants the debris clouds. Every country, US included, would pressure SpaceX to stop operating in countries that don't want it if it were to result in any debris.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
no no no no no no please. if you want to make Starlink illegal what you do is state Starlink is illegal and maybe make it illegal to pay Starlink. that's a lot cheaper and doesn't piss off the international community.

morei 6y ago

It's easy: Just make it illegal, and put make it incumbent on starlink to enforce it. Violations are met with (eg) sanctions on Tesla and other related parties. This has played out many, many times in history and it's generally successful. Yes, it's often not perfect. There are small numbers that slip through the cracks. But as soon as it's any significant number the crack will get closed. c.f. great firewall of china, north korea anything, various European data location requirements, russian internet payments and search, etc etc etc etc.