Starlink kit found amid wreckage of Russian drone

It is almost like Elon is a really bad person.
- It's one thing to be a capitalistic shitbag, it's another to be a traitor. Governments like capitalistic shitbags
  
  Is it possible to be a traitor when you're a capitalist shitbag?
  They only have loyalty to themselves and their bank account. Quite literally the world could burn (due to their business) for all they care.
  
  Some, like Donny, are both. Or the right wing AfD cunts in Germany. Or any other country
  
  Seem like governments also love traitors, look at amount of deals and collaborations between starlink and the US government
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_applications
  
  Corrupt governments like capitalistic shitbags.
- they could also have stolen it though. gotta wait what an investigation of the serial numbers finds
  
  They are most likely stolen or imported through a third party.
- It's almost like the Oligarchs of the world are all on the same team.
  
  They’re clearly not all on the same team. Some are decent human beings that choose to use their money for the betterment of humankind.
  It’s just that a couple, e.g. Musk, Thiel, David Sachs and others, decided to be huge assholes. They would end democracy any day to become richer and more powerful.

DOJ and Pentagon are you listening?

- I had this idea that the US was very hard on treason especially after Snowden but apparently it's selective treason
  
  the problem is Snowden wasn't selling products to the US military, which is apparently a get out of jail free card

Didnt we already know that elon opened starlink to the russians? I thought he announced after that call with putin?

FYI: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk-ordered-starlink-turned-off-ukraine-offensive-biography
- This article was amended on 14 September 2023 to add an update to the subheading. As the Guardian reported on 12 September 2023, following the publication of this article, Walter Isaacson retracted the claim in his biography of Elon Musk that the SpaceX CEO had secretly told engineers to switch off Starlink coverage of the Crimean coast.
  IIRC Musk didn't switch it off, it wasn't turned on in the first place and Musk refused to turn it on when the Ukrainian military reqeusted it.
  Musk is a shithead but not for this reason.

Isn't that a massive security risk?
Like, what if the U.S was using Roscosmos satellite links in drones? I'd certainly be raising an eyebrow.
- Yeah, but it's not a government satellite system, it's an independent Internet provider. It is always possible that the US government/military has access on the back end, but that's not guaranteed. And since Ukraine is using Starlink, they can't exactly just disable all access in the region.
  Kind of makes sense for Russia to try and use Starlink at least a bit to test the waters and see what sort of Intel the US has access to directly through it.
  
  It is guaranteed, actually. US law imposes requirements on telecoms providers to support wire taps

If the item is indeed Starlink hardware, it should be possible to prove its origins – perhaps even where it was bought, and by whom.
sheeeeeeeeeeeit. Starlink isn't going to say shit, maybe someone else controls the database of serial numbers?
Has Tesla even identified that TX CyberFuck that killed it's unidentified (?) driver in early August? I can't find any followup on that, except that the wreck was going to be auctioned at the end of August. It's the one truck that has gone dark in all of TX that month... easy to figure it out on Tesla's end.
- Remember they fired their corporate communications and even municipalities mid-project can’t get anyone on the phone. It’s burning down.
  That said, I would not be shocked at all to find Elmo with his fascist oligarch mitts on this. That fucker needs a serious regulatory beatdown. (Not an actual, like, punching him in the head beatdown.)
  
  (Not an actual, like, punching him in the head beatdown.)
  Look, let's not be picky here
  
  so they are basically saying "nanana, I can't here you! you can't oblige me to do anything!", and getting away with it?

Elon is probably proud of it.

As much as I hate Elon for all the shit he says and does, but it also shows the sanctioning for stuff like this is not waterproof. These units can be bought by company X in country X and sells it to company Y in country Y who is friendly with Russia. Also depending where they get launched from (for example from occupied Ukraine) it makes it also difficult to tell "friend" from "foe". Can that be prevented ? Probably, but it's not as straightforward as armchair generals may make it sound.
Now, could spaceX do something more about this ? Most likely. But that is resources you need to put on this, which is not profitable. So long story short. It's more than Elon bad here.
- They could probably prevent 99.999% of this with a list of starlink devices in ukraine, a list devices geolocated to the vicinity, and a single part time employee.
  
  Sure, but then he wouldn't have an excuse to hide behind while supporting Russia.
  
  Couldn't these easily triangulate a location since there's a long string of satellites?
- Look at this article from March 2024: https://robertgarcia.house.gov/media/in-the-news/cnbc-house-democrats-probe-spacex-over-alleged-illegal-export-and-use-starlink
  In a statement on Thursday, the congressmen wrote, “Russia’s use of Starlink satellite terminals would be in contravention of U.S. export controls that prohibit Russia from acquiring and utilizing U.S.-produced technology.”
  So the equipment has to fall into the wrong hands, through a somehow compromised supply chain. Maybe that could happen without starlink knowing, but they really should have figured that out in march. They should have very easily identified the units that were potentially compromised by auditing shipping logs.
  Not only did the supply chain have to be compromised, but also the subscription and payments system... How did they not catch it on the subscription payment side? Now in addition to a compromised supply chain, a financial institution was compromised? At the least, they didn't do their due dilligance in customer verification.
  How could russia have set up the equipment without some level of development and testing? Geolocation should have given that development away.
  Now, could spaceX do something more about this ? Most likely. But that is resources you need to put on this, which is not profitable.
  Yeah good point, that's called "negligence". Not doing due dilligance or taking the necessary steps to avoid breaking the law, because it isn't profitable, isn't a valid legal defense.
  It really would have been as simple as geofencing against devices that weren't preauthorized or whitelisted.
  
  Yepp those are for sure valid points. Seems that it's not such a "high" prio for our Trump lover.
  
  I’m curious on how you envision they identify these units? If they don’t activate until they are near the Ukrainian border, how do they know what is Russian controlled vs Ukrainian controlled?
  As for the payment side, YouTube can’t even get a proper handle on users getting region pricing at a fraction of the cost, by simply using a VPN, and they have skin in the game for preventing cross region abuse. Starlink has no reason outside sanctions to give a fuck where their payments are coming from, and you’re talking about state actors that can literally provide a real bank and address owned by a shell individual that passes any check you can think of beyond highly invasive levels no one would accept.
  Geolocation is extremely unreliable. Let’s look at one aspect, GPS: In North America you don’t normally deal with it beyond being in between buildings or under a tunnel, but the moment you’re flying in airspace near Russia, GPS can and has literally shown the location being thousands of miles away.
  I get the musk hate, but you’re acting like a grandma down the road is illegally using it, and ignoring the fact that it’s a country known to have operatives worldwide, multiple hacking groups, and resources you likely can’t even imagine.

Ukraine has been an enthusiastic adopter of Starlink after Elon Musk responded to Russia's invasion by shipping antennas valued at over $80 million to the country
For some reason, I'm reminded of the Trojan Horse.

Typical dual-use problem. The best you can do is try and close any black import routes you find, and try to disable or disconnect base stations moving faster than 150 km/h.
Similar to how commercial civilian GPS clients shut off when moving at high speeds, except even better if you can do it from the satellite, so the client can't be modded as a workaround.

But Moscow has ways of avoiding bans – as does Iran – and could have found a way to build Starlink-equipped kit that only becomes active once it crosses the border into Ukraine where SpaceX's service is allowed.
- They could have, but that doesn't mean that Starlink couldn't do a lot more to catch them at it. You're making excuses for a fascist.
- Sure but if you are moving at close to Mach 1 you are probably not an RV

With my extensive knowledge about starlink satellites I uh... Ooh look at the pretty bird! 😍