Hacker News Reader

Comment by porscheburnaby | Hacker News Reader

goodbye, great firewall of china...

Why. China can just force SpaceX to turn off over China. Unless this is part of a political 'Radio Free Europe' style operation China will control this as much as everything else.

Why. China can just force SpaceX to turn off over China.

How? By shooting down satellites?

Yes, they can do that [0].

However, the easier option is to just scan for the right EM waves on the ground and go after the people using the illegal network.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...

Yes, they can do that [0].

But it's a crappy enough move, it's not certain they would.

However, the easier option is to just scan for the right EM waves on the ground and go after the people using the illegal network.

So someone just has to figure out a way to hide the uplink.

"not certain they would."

This is a country that has the GF. One that routinely oppresses its citizens. One that gives its citizens a social rating that can prevent them from traveling etc etc. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that the CCP will find a way of stopping access to this. If it takes hacking into SpaceX, shooting down 12K satellites, etc, it will. Maintaining power is what the CCP does.

"hide the uplink"

Kind of hard to hide EM transmitters that aren't going to be designed for special ops teams...

Regulation. Do you think SpaceX would operate an illigal network in a foreign company? Do you not think China had the pull to tell the US to keep SpaceX in line?

The can ban the sale of terminals. They can scan waves.

This thread applies also to Russia, where complaints about coming constellation were already voiced in the government.

In both cases I assume the issue at stake is the freedom of communications. I'd hope to have both technical means to communicate (and hide those communications) and enough support on USA side not to pressure SpaceX to deny service worldwide.

We'll see how it goes.

One of the consequences of the Sputnik launch was that it basically enshrined the principle that overflying another country with an active satellite was not an illegal act. (That is, the US government decided not to protest, because it meant they wouldn't have to apologize for their own future spy satellites.) I doubt China wants to break this precedent.

No. There is a difference between flying over and operating communication satilliets.

As far as international law is concerned, I doubt it. Sputnik was transmitting the entire time it overflew the US.

Its about offering a service in China, not about the technical act of communicating.

As others have pointed out regulations. I believe Musk also really wants Tesla to succeed there (it is a very large market for them) and I have no doubt the Chinese government would punish another company of Musk's if they wanted to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com