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The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably

The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.

parsimo2010 1y ago
They will undoubtedly sell some aspect of Kuiper through AWS. They already have IP addresses and DNS in the AWS product list, and they have all kinds of data transport services. I don’t know if the government implication is as big as you think, as the US government has been doing secure satellite communications for decades and has already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield. So undoubtedly Kuiper would love a piece of the action but there is already competition and Kuiper is a bit late to the game.
- nine_k 1y ago
  > already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield Many key things the government buys need to have more than one independent source. This way Kuiper may be just in time.
  - parsimo2010 1y ago
    The federal acquisition regulations have fairly strict rules against acquiring duplicate systems. It totally permits buying systems from multiple vendors, but there are interoperability requirements, and these would have to be interpreted and negotiated. If Kuiper wants to provide services to the government, I’d expect that they would have to be compatible with the Starshield user equipment at a minimum. The military doesn’t want to be lugging around multiple satellite terminals to connect to both the SpaceX and Kuiper versions of Starshield. I doubt the government would go so far as to require SpaceX and Kuiper make their constellations interoperable in space, but even just requiring compatibility with the ground terminals is a pretty big hurdle. SpaceX has proprietary info in practically all of their comm layers, so interoperability is not easy. The government probably did not buy full rights to the protocols. So the first step to Kuiper getting a piece of the pie is convincing the government that it is worth paying to license SpaceX’s comm standards so Kuiper can use them. That is not an easy task. There are a dozen hypothetical ways that Kuiper might get a portion of government programs, but the fact is that SpaceX has been embedding themselves into the US government’s space infrastructure for years without competition, and has used that lack of competition to build up a bunch of technical hurdles to purchasing services from other contractors. For the past several years there has been no reason for the government to spend money and effort to prevent these hurdles because there was no other contractor that might be able to offer a similar service. So SpaceX has got a pretty sweet position right now, and Kuiper is going to have to invest heavily before the government changes course.
- Perceval 1y ago
  Space is an AWS region, just like AWS has terrestrial regions. The AWS space region is named Pigeon.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - parsimo2010 1y ago
    Currently “space” as an AWS region is only ground stations communicating with satellites the customer owns, so nothing from AWS is actually in space. But with the way AWS allows customers to configure their network configurations, I expect there will be an option to communicate between AWS data centers using Kuiper for people who have a use case and care enough to pay for it. I expect it to be pretty niche, as most customers are fine with public fiber and Amazon’s own fiber, but I’ll bet they sell it to someone, like a remote AWS Outpost with Kuiper terminal on it for people that work in the field.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- neuroelectron 1y ago
  I didn't know about Starshield. I thought Starlink was supposed to be neutral.
  - crop_rotation 1y ago
    Starshield is like a private totally separate Starlink for the US government (and controlled/operated by the US government). I am not sure what sort of neutrality you were expecting as US government is SpaceX's biggest customer and is obviously a critical infra company.
    - neuroelectron 1y ago
      I expect it not to be involved with the military, which was something they stated
      - crop_rotation 1y ago
        Why would you assume any space company anywhere can be neutral to their nations military. These companies depend on government for far too many things (projects, permits) and are much more tied to government than other industries.
      - echoangle 1y ago
        When did SpaceX claim they weren’t involved with military? They are launching military payloads all the time.
  - parsimo2010 1y ago
    Starlink is as neutral as government regulations allow (both the US regulations and those of the customer’s country). They just want to make a profit. Starshield is a separate constellation for the US government and select allies only, and is built and launched by SpaceX.
  - SEJeff 1y ago
    Starlink is neutral. Starshield is not. Starshield runs on different satellites with potential for custom additional payloads as well.
dboreham 1y ago
Quick note that post-Snowden: no it doesn't. There's no such thing as "secure private communication" from magic wires.
- XorNot 1y ago
  End to end encryption has not been broken.
  - lxgr 1y ago
    Yes, which makes the point of dedicated connectivity moot from a data security point of view. Metadata security and availability are different concerns.
    - fulafel 1y ago
      Traffic analysis tells your adversaries who you communicate with, and what apps you're using, inferring what communication was caused by what preceding communication, etc which lets your adversary guess what the communication was about. Esp when compared against what other people is communicating about just then.
      - lxgr 1y ago
        Yes, which makes it a particularly bad idea to run unencrypted metadata over satellite connections if it can be avoided – and that's the case for communication between data centers, arguably. That might change once lasers or extremely tight radio beams can be used for ground stations, but for the latter you'd still need to make sure that nobody can get reasonably close to your ground stations, which might be possible for remote military bases, but probably not for AWS data centers.
    - gruez 1y ago
      >Metadata security If you have a dedicated circuit, you can send dummy data 24/7 to mitigate any traffic analysis. Even if you don't, you configure each link to send dummy data, so eavesdroppers can't do any traffic analysis without compromising the node itself.
lxgr 1y ago
> This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers How so? I'd imagine the datacenter terminal side downlink to be much more easily tappable than fiberoptics. There are advantages in latency and potentially availability, but even there I would imagine fiber to win in an adversarial active jamming scenario.
- nine_k 1y ago
  > easily tappable I suppose in any realistic scenario we should assume that the enemy may be listening to all our communication at all times. This is the assumption behind such daily things as WPA3, SSH, TLS. Jamming is a much more serious concern.
  - lxgr 1y ago
    Yes, so all in all for satellite vs. fiber in backbone applications, I'd say that it's a wash (or slight win for fiber) when it comes to security, and a definitive win for fiber when it comes to jamming resistance. In the field it's a completely different story, of course – you can't always pull fiber (although it does appear in unexpected scenarios, such as fiber-operated UAVs or torpedoes).
    - saltcured 1y ago
      Not sure. Jamming a wireless signal is an active process that stops interfering when you stop transmitting. Destroying fiber with a backhoe or an axe doesn't stop interfering when you stop digging or chopping though.
    - pclmulqdq 1y ago
      Wire-guided drones and missiles seem to be increasingly common, probably due to the cost of instantaneous radio jamming being so low - that's a short-lived signal that is going to a vehicle near your adversary. Torpedoes make a lot of sense for other reasons because radio has a very hard time getting through water (and things like sonar have too low bandwidth as well as giving away your position). However, it's very easy to cut a fiber in a way that is hard to repair. Fishing trawlers do this all the time. In that sense, fiber can be "jammed" (sabotaged) much more easily than radio/satellite.

parsimo2010 1y ago

They will undoubtedly sell some aspect of Kuiper through AWS. They already have IP addresses and DNS in the AWS product list, and they have all kinds of data transport services. I don’t know if the government implication is as big as you think, as the US government has been doing secure satellite communications for decades and has already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield. So undoubtedly Kuiper would love a piece of the action but there is already competition and Kuiper is a bit late to the game.

nine_k 1y ago
> already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield Many key things the government buys need to have more than one independent source. This way Kuiper may be just in time.
- parsimo2010 1y ago
  The federal acquisition regulations have fairly strict rules against acquiring duplicate systems. It totally permits buying systems from multiple vendors, but there are interoperability requirements, and these would have to be interpreted and negotiated. If Kuiper wants to provide services to the government, I’d expect that they would have to be compatible with the Starshield user equipment at a minimum. The military doesn’t want to be lugging around multiple satellite terminals to connect to both the SpaceX and Kuiper versions of Starshield. I doubt the government would go so far as to require SpaceX and Kuiper make their constellations interoperable in space, but even just requiring compatibility with the ground terminals is a pretty big hurdle. SpaceX has proprietary info in practically all of their comm layers, so interoperability is not easy. The government probably did not buy full rights to the protocols. So the first step to Kuiper getting a piece of the pie is convincing the government that it is worth paying to license SpaceX’s comm standards so Kuiper can use them. That is not an easy task. There are a dozen hypothetical ways that Kuiper might get a portion of government programs, but the fact is that SpaceX has been embedding themselves into the US government’s space infrastructure for years without competition, and has used that lack of competition to build up a bunch of technical hurdles to purchasing services from other contractors. For the past several years there has been no reason for the government to spend money and effort to prevent these hurdles because there was no other contractor that might be able to offer a similar service. So SpaceX has got a pretty sweet position right now, and Kuiper is going to have to invest heavily before the government changes course.
Perceval 1y ago
Space is an AWS region, just like AWS has terrestrial regions. The AWS space region is named Pigeon.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- parsimo2010 1y ago
  Currently “space” as an AWS region is only ground stations communicating with satellites the customer owns, so nothing from AWS is actually in space. But with the way AWS allows customers to configure their network configurations, I expect there will be an option to communicate between AWS data centers using Kuiper for people who have a use case and care enough to pay for it. I expect it to be pretty niche, as most customers are fine with public fiber and Amazon’s own fiber, but I’ll bet they sell it to someone, like a remote AWS Outpost with Kuiper terminal on it for people that work in the field.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
neuroelectron 1y ago
I didn't know about Starshield. I thought Starlink was supposed to be neutral.
- crop_rotation 1y ago
  Starshield is like a private totally separate Starlink for the US government (and controlled/operated by the US government). I am not sure what sort of neutrality you were expecting as US government is SpaceX's biggest customer and is obviously a critical infra company.
  - neuroelectron 1y ago
    I expect it not to be involved with the military, which was something they stated
    - crop_rotation 1y ago
      Why would you assume any space company anywhere can be neutral to their nations military. These companies depend on government for far too many things (projects, permits) and are much more tied to government than other industries.
    - echoangle 1y ago
      When did SpaceX claim they weren’t involved with military? They are launching military payloads all the time.
- parsimo2010 1y ago
  Starlink is as neutral as government regulations allow (both the US regulations and those of the customer’s country). They just want to make a profit. Starshield is a separate constellation for the US government and select allies only, and is built and launched by SpaceX.
- SEJeff 1y ago
  Starlink is neutral. Starshield is not. Starshield runs on different satellites with potential for custom additional payloads as well.

dboreham 1y ago

Quick note that post-Snowden: no it doesn't. There's no such thing as "secure private communication" from magic wires.

XorNot 1y ago
End to end encryption has not been broken.
- lxgr 1y ago
  Yes, which makes the point of dedicated connectivity moot from a data security point of view. Metadata security and availability are different concerns.
  - fulafel 1y ago
    Traffic analysis tells your adversaries who you communicate with, and what apps you're using, inferring what communication was caused by what preceding communication, etc which lets your adversary guess what the communication was about. Esp when compared against what other people is communicating about just then.
    - lxgr 1y ago
      Yes, which makes it a particularly bad idea to run unencrypted metadata over satellite connections if it can be avoided – and that's the case for communication between data centers, arguably. That might change once lasers or extremely tight radio beams can be used for ground stations, but for the latter you'd still need to make sure that nobody can get reasonably close to your ground stations, which might be possible for remote military bases, but probably not for AWS data centers.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >Metadata security If you have a dedicated circuit, you can send dummy data 24/7 to mitigate any traffic analysis. Even if you don't, you configure each link to send dummy data, so eavesdroppers can't do any traffic analysis without compromising the node itself.

lxgr 1y ago

> This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers How so? I'd imagine the datacenter terminal side downlink to be much more easily tappable than fiberoptics. There are advantages in latency and potentially availability, but even there I would imagine fiber to win in an adversarial active jamming scenario.

nine_k 1y ago
> easily tappable I suppose in any realistic scenario we should assume that the enemy may be listening to all our communication at all times. This is the assumption behind such daily things as WPA3, SSH, TLS. Jamming is a much more serious concern.
- lxgr 1y ago
  Yes, so all in all for satellite vs. fiber in backbone applications, I'd say that it's a wash (or slight win for fiber) when it comes to security, and a definitive win for fiber when it comes to jamming resistance. In the field it's a completely different story, of course – you can't always pull fiber (although it does appear in unexpected scenarios, such as fiber-operated UAVs or torpedoes).
  - saltcured 1y ago
    Not sure. Jamming a wireless signal is an active process that stops interfering when you stop transmitting. Destroying fiber with a backhoe or an axe doesn't stop interfering when you stop digging or chopping though.
  - pclmulqdq 1y ago
    Wire-guided drones and missiles seem to be increasingly common, probably due to the cost of instantaneous radio jamming being so low - that's a short-lived signal that is going to a vehicle near your adversary. Torpedoes make a lot of sense for other reasons because radio has a very hard time getting through water (and things like sonar have too low bandwidth as well as giving away your position). However, it's very easy to cut a fiber in a way that is hard to repair. Fishing trawlers do this all the time. In that sense, fiber can be "jammed" (sabotaged) much more easily than radio/satellite.