China Exploits Fleet of U.S. Satellites | Hacker News Reader

China Exploits Fleet of U.S. Satellites

msn.com

92 pointsnwrk30 comments

This story can be summed up by "China buys satellite internet connection, and also has a terrible human rights record." Nothing shows any real connection between the two, and the one-sided attack is rather ridiculous. The US military helped develop this technology exactly for this purpose, and is actively using it to kill people across the world. On top of that, the main satellite they mention was sold to Pakistan a year ago, which seems worth mention if ethical concerns are the issue.

Some of your frustration reflects how the use of "exploits" in the headline is, for lack of a better word, problematic. In the tech news context, "exploit" has the connotation (if not denotation) of a hack or bug being used in an unintended way.

In this case, the word "leverage" would be more appropriate.

Though I see your point, "exploit" is a better choice as the entire point of the article is to say China is unethical.

It's on MSN. No one should expect quality or accurate or even on topic information.

It's a Wall Street Journal article rehosted on MSN.

If I was America I think I’d want my rivals to be relying on technology provided by people I can bully into turning it off when needed

That doesn't work.

India relied on GPS and Clinton turned off (regrettably IMHO) India's access to high precision data in the 2000 Indo-Pak war.

India went on to build their own.

EDIT: Year was probably 1999, not sure.

> India went on to build their own

Presumably there’s some lead time on that though

India’s NavIC is riddled with problems. Atomic clocks on some of the satellites have failed. ISRO is opaque about the malfunctions. Researchers have found that it can be easily jammed with household WiFi signals causing severe degradation of signal strength. Nobody is really using the system, all the talk has been about fishing boats carrying the receivers.

India started developing after GPS was denied during Kargil War with Pakistan in 1999. More recently India’s (More like Russia’s) cruise missile, BrahMos, veered off target by 7 Kms as GPS signals were cut off mid flight.

India has tried replicating GPS, but the system is still not proven.

Could you provide sources on all of these claims?

I know the clocks were breaking down but those clocks are not made by ISRO.

Atomic clocks failing (4 satellites have malfunctioning clocks out of 7): https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/isros-clock-to-prop-u...

In one article, ISRO shared that they heaved a sigh of relief every morning on seeing that IRNSS satellites were functioning normally. ISRO is trying to replace the clocks from a Swiss manufacturer with their own. Same clocks failed on Galileo, but causes were different.

BrahMos cruise missile failure: https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl2607/stories/20...

WiFi jamming: https://thewire.in/space/study-says-navic-frequency-too-clos...

Original research paper is quite damning on this one.

India is now trying to be part of Galileo project: https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1156188

Thanks! The signal jamming issue is quite glaring.

> India is now trying to be part of Galileo project

"Now" would be a stretch, would it not? That article is from 2005.

Meant to post 2-3 days old article: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1119329/india-galileo-s...

Original article on Business Standard is paywalled. This one is bit outlandish, but retains the essence of the article.

I remember talking to a sailor in the BOC Solo Round The World race in late 1990. They all knew and talked over radio to each other about "something going on" in Late July and early August - when their GPSs started reporting much more accurate CEP numbers, which allowed them to much more accurately detect the ocean currents they were sailing in and position themselves most favorably in them.

Because selective availability had been switched off.

They might have been the first civilians to be aware of Gulf War 1...

The same thing happened north of Lofoten, in Norway. The fishermen noticed at once that their GPS waypoints were much more precise than on the day before.

If by "doesn't work" you mean "only works for a while", then there might be some value in that.

Same with Russia. USA turned off GPS during the Russo-Georgian war. Russia went ahead to build GLONASS and it's military performance during the intervention in Syrian Civil War was much better.

> U.S. officials and industry players have said the profits American satellite exports generated could be reinvested in development to keep the U.S ahead.

Lease out our competitive advantage and use the revenue to build more competitive advantage!

Profit maximization and national security have conflicting incentives.

Because I'm sure there are no national security benefits from having your rival route their communications over your infrastructure in such a way that you can cripple them in a conflict.

> Boeing said it...was neither possible nor required by law to monitor each bandwidth user after a satellite it built is in space.

Except it's their infrastructure now.

If they don't own or control the satellite, it's not really their infrastructure when push comes to shove. China might have contracts guaranteeing bandwidth, but I doubt that matters much in an armed conflict.

Nothing would matter much in an armed conflict between the US and China.

Armed conflict doesn't necessarily mean all out war.

Welp. There goes Boeing's government contracts.

Space X will be celebrating this one.

if by "exploit" you mean "rent capacity" then i guess... who is approving this drivel?

Non-paywall version: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-exploits-fleet-of...

Anyone with a WSJ account care to summarize the paywall’d article?

On HN, underneath the link there's a list of other links. This thing:

Click on the one that says "web" then click on the WSJ url in the search results and you should get the full article.

Paywall still exists for me even with that route. My understanding was WSJ changed their policy there.

Bypassing the paywall on desktop worked for me using mobile view: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703810

Reply on news.ycombinator.com