Illegal Starlink terminals from the American company SpaceX are contributing to Russia’s advance on the battlefield in Ukraine, particularly during the seizure of Vuhledar, Donetsk Oblast.
There are definitely solutions but they all involve giving a Russian agent direct knowledge of troop movements.
Starlink terminals are activated using a unique identifier. It’s how billing works.
SpaceX knows which terminals have been provided to Ukraine. We know they can geofence service. Geofencing the Ukrainian theater to terminals that were provided to Ukraine shouldn’t be a massive technical leap and doesn’t provide any information they don’t already have.
SpaceX knows which terminals have been provided to Ukraine.
They know which ones they’ve provided to Ukraine. Hardware like that has been and is still being donated through third parties daily.
Now, they could have Ukraine tell them which terminals are in use, including anything they’ve gotten from elsewhere, including stolen back from Russia, and use that to manage, but that would require the CEO of the company to actually want to help honestly.
Hardware like that has been and is still being donated through third parties daily.
It’s more in Ukraine’s interest to limit the use of Starlink to only those terminals that have been vetted through official channels than to allow blanket use and try to filter out things through other means due to… the exact kinds of situations this article is talking about.
but that would require the CEO of the company to actually want to help honestly.
Sure. And part of the reason we know Starlink is entirely capable of geofencing is because Elon’s done it explicitly to stop Ukraine from being able to operate near Crimea. That whole kerfuffle lead to military usage being pushed over to Starshield and a contract with the US government that gives them explicit say on when and where Starlink works in Ukraine.
Elon is dumber than a bag of hammers but it’d be next level stupid even for him to willingly break a DOD contract, especially when people were already floating the idea of invoking the Defense Production Act last time around.
Precisely. It’s not rocket science. And SpaceX is literally doing rocket science. This is a fully solvable problem. Eel on musk just doesn’t want to solve it.
For very obvious reasons, Ukraine may not want musk to have every single units position. Let alone groups that supplemented their own resources with Amazon.
Could starlink figure this out? Yes. But it would make everyone involved uncomfortable to know the theoretical has become documented and easily searchable.
Location info shouldn’t be needed, though. (Even though they should technically be able retrieve location data from any terminal on their own already. It’s all their hardware and network.)
They should be able to geoblock traffic from Ukraine/Russia while having a kind of Allow filter for the terminals they know they provided for use by Ukraine.
It’s the same concept as blocking a country’s domains but allowing certain domains of that country through for emails. They just need to setup a “spam” filter.
Starlink terminals are activated using a unique identifier. It’s how billing works.
SpaceX knows which terminals have been provided to Ukraine. We know they can geofence service. Geofencing the Ukrainian theater to terminals that were provided to Ukraine shouldn’t be a massive technical leap and doesn’t provide any information they don’t already have.
They know which ones they’ve provided to Ukraine. Hardware like that has been and is still being donated through third parties daily.
Now, they could have Ukraine tell them which terminals are in use, including anything they’ve gotten from elsewhere, including stolen back from Russia, and use that to manage, but that would require the CEO of the company to actually want to help honestly.
It’s more in Ukraine’s interest to limit the use of Starlink to only those terminals that have been vetted through official channels than to allow blanket use and try to filter out things through other means due to… the exact kinds of situations this article is talking about.
Sure. And part of the reason we know Starlink is entirely capable of geofencing is because Elon’s done it explicitly to stop Ukraine from being able to operate near Crimea. That whole kerfuffle lead to military usage being pushed over to Starshield and a contract with the US government that gives them explicit say on when and where Starlink works in Ukraine.
Elon is dumber than a bag of hammers but it’d be next level stupid even for him to willingly break a DOD contract, especially when people were already floating the idea of invoking the Defense Production Act last time around.
Precisely. It’s not rocket science. And SpaceX is literally doing rocket science. This is a fully solvable problem. Eel on musk just doesn’t want to solve it.
For very obvious reasons, Ukraine may not want musk to have every single units position. Let alone groups that supplemented their own resources with Amazon.
Could starlink figure this out? Yes. But it would make everyone involved uncomfortable to know the theoretical has become documented and easily searchable.
I bet money Russia starts getting absurdly good. And they’ll have really good info. And it will be because of starlink.
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Location info shouldn’t be needed, though. (Even though they should technically be able retrieve location data from any terminal on their own already. It’s all their hardware and network.) They should be able to geoblock traffic from Ukraine/Russia while having a kind of Allow filter for the terminals they know they provided for use by Ukraine.
It’s the same concept as blocking a country’s domains but allowing certain domains of that country through for emails. They just need to setup a “spam” filter.
Again, that assumes that Ukraine want a company run by a Russian asset to know every single device.
But also? There is a lot of value in civilians being able to reach the outside world as well. Especially under an occupation.