In a worst case scenario: US Invasion. What device could the US government simply force to stop working in Canada that would cause the most chaos (e.g: brick all iPhones)?
What products are most at risk. What are easiest to replace to reduce risk? Hardest to replace?
GPS. The system can be turned off in specific regions (no idea how, it's classified, but they've actually done it so it's not just a wild notion), and portions of the signal are already encrypted such that they're only available to the US military. There would be little stopping them from sending altered signals or just turning it off.
Many missile systems, aircraft and fighting vehicles rely on GPS to function as expected.
This is a fair take. However, it does presuppose that we would have sufficient missile systems, aircraft, or fighting vehicles that it would matter.
I have a lot of GNSS units that allow you to choose which networks they're receiving (GPS, Glonass, Galileo, etc.). I've never tried to turn off GPS just to see -- might be interesting as an experiment.
They no longer add in inaccuracies to non-us military GPS units. That ended like 20 years ago?
Oh, not inaccuracies. Just portions of the signal only available to the military. The original intent was to limit accuracy, and now it's more to counter spoofing, but it's still there, just upgraded.
That ended because they now have better ways of doing the same thing using technologies on the satellites themselves.
If you need a device for navigation - get something that supports other constellations (i.e. Galileo) rather than just GPS.
Stop selling electricity to them. With luck that causes a cascade failure, or blackouts, in border states and gives them something else to worry about.
iPhones wouldn't be that bad I don't think. Cell/internet infrastructure would be much worse.
American vehicles would be harder to replace. We know Teslas can and have been remotely disabled in places where Tesla didn't want them being used. I'd be surprised if the big three didn't have remote killswitches in their vehicles already.
It's not even a secret. Almost all modern cars do as part of remote service packages. It's what let's you ask them to unlock your car, do remote start via a phone app, or let's the police request a remote shutdown of a stolen car.
Fix that by disconnecting the cellular antenna in the car and the telematics unit. You may need a bypass harness on some modern cars that "responds" to connectivity pings in the car's canbus, but otherwise you can't kill what's not connected. :3
Assume any/all networking equipment is backdoored or has an undisclosed zero day usable by the US government.
Hah! Half of it is Chinese
Ah, double the back doors. The vendor ones mandated by the government and the government found backdoors kept secret like Eternal Blue
The cell phone network might be a day 0 target, but Cell phones would be left mostly untouched, they are easy to track/drone strike. Interference would only happen acutely for IED concerns or cqb operations
GPS/Satellite location would be jammed / disabled
Internet connections would be targeted, sea cables, microwave, etc
Electrical systems would be targeted.
Prioritize:
cell phone network
Oddly enough, there was a huge push a while back to prevent Huawei being used in the cell phone network as infrastructure, because it gave China a potential espionage route. No one was thinking "kill switch" during this discussion. And no one was considering US tech in this discussion as a risk either.
I wonder what percentage of Canadian cell phone infrastructure is American?
Sever the submarine cables.
I think most submarines are cordless nowadays
We all live in a yellow Bluetooth submarine...
Our infrastructure. All our core network switches which are all American companies. Could you imagine if they did this the response around the world.
Internet, GPS, Electricity. Consider getting FRS, or go full-route and get your HAM license and a handheld. Consider LoRa-based Meshtastic devices (Lilygo T-Deck) - good for text communications, am unsure if they are dependent on GPS for their mesh capabilities though.
Sat up last night thinking about Mesh comms for the average Canadian who aren't likely going to be running out to buy new products. As a back-up, I have Briar for groups and Bluetooth chat for 1-on-1, but wondering if there are any recommendations you or others may have that are 1) better and 2) a Canadian solution?
FRS radio's for local use - get your HAM radio license for further range (LARC is great - they run a course each fall). But this is all new to me.
Picked up a new android (sat in someones drawer for a couple years), never been activated, no sim card - am installing things like Tor, Briar, Session, Element, Meshenger - in addition to Meshtastic - no Canadian solutions that I know of.
May be too late anyways, with the rumours about the upcoming EO that classifies fentanyl as a "weapon of mass destruction", allowing the use of military force to stop it within the "alleged" sources...
Zamboni killswitch being activated.
Buying an Olympia for my local rink. We gotta prevent this!