Starlink will keep funding Ukraine’s government ‘for free’ despite losing money | Hacker News Reader

Starlink will keep funding Ukraine’s government ‘for free’ despite losing money

theverge.com

8 pointsLopRabbit5 comments

Yeah, "free" my ass. You can bet that the Pentagon or CIA has been paying him for some time now as that's the business model and partnership between BigTech and BigBrother. Imagine the valuable Intel and insight they must be collecting as the Ukranian military uses Starlink to coordinate their war. It could even be providing real time Intel on how the Ukranian generals are strategising.

No smart government would have allowed Musk to back out, but it was also a smart play by him to remind the Ukranians of how he has supported them in the past and get the Ukranians to end the negative online campaign against him (and perhaps even get the Ukranian diplomat who cursed him to apologise to him).

The US can already find where the signals using Starlink originate from without paying Starlink, and Ukraine is surely encrypting their communications, so your conspiracy theory does not make sense.

What might make sense is the US donating communication assistance to Ukraine by paying for Starlink service, but that would show up in https://foreignassistance.gov/.

There's no "conspiracy theory" here - it's standard political and military strategy. Owning the communication infrastructure of another country is the wet dream of any super-power. (The internet today allows that to a certain extent, to the US). But Starlink's role in Ukraine is unique as they provide and own the complete (end-to-end) communication infrastructure. This means that the US has unhindered access to every data that flows through Starlink in Ukraine. Yes, military communication will be encrypted. But if the US has provided the hardware and software, they obviously will have the encryption keys. The US is an ally of Ukraine and is providing them valuable political support and equipment. Do you think the Ukrainian care right now if the US is monitoring their communication, when they need the US to defend themselves? In fact, the US is very likely using this info to give them advise on military tactics.

Anyway, my whole point is that thanks to Starlink in Ukraine, the US intelligence and military have a bird's eye view of how the Ukranians are fighting the Russians. And that is why I believe the US government is definitely paying Starlink. And if they are paying them under the table, like many intelligence or military operations abroad are done, they won't be public knowledge. It is also in their interest (as part of information warfare) to make it seem like a rich billionaire is generously supporting Ukraine.

> But if the US has provided the hardware and software, they obviously will have the encryption keys.

What Starlink provides is Internet access. For what you say to be the case, Ukraine would have to be using unencrypted protocols, which is nonsensical.

> Anyway, my whole point is that thanks to Starlink in Ukraine, the US intelligence and military have a bird's eye view of how the Ukranians are fighting the Russians.

And my whole point is that the US gets basically no more data than they already have by doing what you are claiming. That's why Musk said he would cut Ukraine off and asked the US to pay for it.

It's almost like the whole thing was a big publicity stunt all along. But, of course, that can't be true. We all know how Elon hates publicity.

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