The thing is, once something becomes commonplace, people build in obligations against it without thinking about it. All those layers that civilization depends upon have a cost, and as long as the cost is paid, all is good.

We're talking about the sudden loss of precision timekeeping, which could desync all sorts of things in unexpected ways. It's my understanding that precision time is required to make even the cell phone networks properly operate, and they'd fall apart without it.

If Russia were to take out GPS, the effects would be deep and expensive to correct, if we could. There's a very small, but non-zero chance it could collapse our supply chains. As time goes on, this chance grows, unless there is an active effort to keep backup systems viable. We all know how actively the US maintains infrastructure 8(