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Here's an example: What if a chinese Starlink provides services in Afghanistan and the Taliban use it while the Americans attempt to control the country? Woul
by Tepix 5y ago
Here's an example:
What if a chinese Starlink provides services in Afghanistan and the Taliban use it while the Americans attempt to control the country?
Would you be ok with it?
- chasd00 5y agoif the Taliban militants were using it then it's a legitimate target and I would take out the antennas. I assume the same holds for Ukraine. If Starlink is being used by Ukraine military then I think Russia is perfectly within the rules of war to target the antennas. If a software update makes them harder to target then does that make SpaceX HQ a military target? idk, probably, but in the same way FedEx is a military target. I don't see it very feasible nor advisable to launch a cruise missile targeting Hawthorne CA...
- mcv 5y agoI'm no fan of the Taliban, but I'm not a big fan of the US trying to control other countries either. But I am a fan of regular Afghani people being able to communicate. He's the thing with these services: if they're controlled by a single government with the intend of using them as leverage over others, that means that at some point they're going to be denied to the people. I would strongly prefer redundancy in such systems to increase their reliability. Take GPS, for example. The US controls it, and at least initially, their goal was to be able to reduce the accuracy of GPS for other parties. Europe has its own competing Galileo satellites to increase reliability for ordinary citizens. I'm strongly in favour of that. I don't see military applications as a higher purpose than civilian use.