Hacker News Reader

Comment by CAP_NET_ADMIN | Hacker News Reader

Currently, you can cut internet connections to most countries with a small deep water sub. China, for example, was busy building one that can be used at 10k+ depth and has arms.

View on HN

Its widely assumed China, Russia and the US have "kinetic kill" abilities on satellites in space too, its just capabilities are not as widely known. Projects Like the US/Boeing X-37 space drone etc, whose purposes still haven't really been revealed:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

Russia has already demonstrated its satellite destroying tech:

> https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/11/16/russia-blows-up-satell...

"Kinetic kill" is arguably easier to detect and harder to deny.

I haven't said that we should only focus on sea cables, I said that we should do both so that the overall reliability and resiliency increases.

Can those be deployed "anonymously" though? Publicly destroying another nation's satellite would be an act of war. Quietly and secretly cutting an undersea cable, while being able to plausibly deflect blame, is a bit safer.

Also, India. List of anti-satellite tests: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368223169/figure/tb...

The problem is that it is fairly difficult to do it cleanly without risking precipitating Kessler syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

It is basically automatic MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) out there in space.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com