Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023) | Hacker News Reader

Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

interpret.csis.org

170 pointsmsuniverse2026245 comments

The dual-use problem with Starlink is really just the most visible version of something happening across the military. Phones with civilian GPS chips are increasingly used alongside dedicated mil-spec hardware, simply because the commercial stuff is more usable and gets updated faster.

The real strategic question isn't whether Starlink can be weaponized - of course it can - it's what happens when military operations become dependent on commercial infrastructure that a single company controls. The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict.

Isn't virtually all military hardware and software single-sourced? Ultimately they trust the supplier and have good contracts. I imagine the US military is migrating to Starshield over time where they have a better SLA.

The other consideration is that the kill switch is ultimately controlled by the US. The US government can easily commandeer Starlink or jail Musk, but other countries use starlink at the pleasure of both Musk and the US government.

That's the part that makes allied nations nervous. If you're running military comms through Starlink and the US decides to play hardball in some trade dispute, your entire C2 network just became a bargaining chip. Ukraine showed how quickly access decisions become political. I think we'll see European and Asian allies start investing in their own LEO constellations specifically because of this - nobody wants their military dependent on another country's CEO.

European and Asian allies would have to start by investing in low-cost launch capabilities. So far they're making approximately zero progress in that area.

The reality is that all US allies except for maybe France no longer have the capability to project power much outside their own territory without active US support. It's not only satellites. They're also missing just about everything else such as logistics, specialized aircraft, air defense, amphibious capabilities, intelligence, etc. With largely stagnant economies there's no way they can sustain the funding necessary to close those gaps unless they join together in closer alliances with each other.

Most European countries (except France and the UK) are not interested in projecting power outside of a fairly narrow geographic area (mostly the European continent and adjacent seas).

These “military starlinks” will be much smaller systems than actual Starlink. The German one plans for 100 satellites.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-07/airbus-te...

I'm betting on every single implementation costing $10B minimum

You're right that the launch cost gap is the real barrier. Europe's been talking about sovereign launch capability for years but Ariane 6 still can't compete on cost with SpaceX. I think the more likely path is that smaller nations lease capacity on someone else's constellation rather than building their own. The question is whether that actually solves the dependency problem or just moves it from one provider to another.

LEO is pretty expensive. Smaller countries might be better off with cheaper Astranis GEO satellites.

There's other interesting middle ground options, like O3b's equatorial MEO ring, that has coverage similar to GEO as far as latitudes go, but better latency.

Most countries would not need to make their C2 infrastructure fully dependent on Starlink, because most countries are not big enough and cannot project enough power globally to make this an actual requirement, and the few countries who can project power globally can afford multiple communications layers. But your core idea is true.

This is explicitly one reason the US marketed the F-35 so hard to their allies. In addition to giving their allies a good capability, it made their air force dependent on continuing US support, so politicians wishing to go against US positions have to be willing to sacrifice their military power to do so. This gives the US a strong lever in negotiating.

Fair point on single-sourcing, but the difference is that Lockheed doesn't have a consumer business that creates geopolitical incidents on Twitter. Traditional defense contractors are purpose-built for that relationship. With Starlink, you've got a commercial network serving 80+ countries that also happens to be critical military infrastructure. Starshield helps on the SLA side, but the underlying constellation is still shared. What does "good contracts" even look like when the asset is literally in orbit and serving both markets simultaneously?

Starshield has a separate dedicated constellation and can also use the civilian Starlink constellation for certain purposes. This is not a problem. The US government has direct operational control for everything they need. No one of any importance cares about "incidents" on X.

That's valid and definitely changes the risk profile if the military constellation is operationally separate. Though the civilian network is still a force multiplier in many cases, which puts it in the targeting calculus for adversaries regardless of whether troops depend on it directly.

Irrelevant. Only China will have the capability to target satellites to any significant extent, and if it comes to a real war with them then we're probably all dead anyway.

It's not a matter of migration. The US military used Starshield from the start and never relied on Starlink for anything important.

Good point. I think I was mixing up the US paying for Ukraine to use Starlink with the US military itself using it.

Military connectors (e.g. MIL-STD-38999) are deeply multi sourced, like you can buy compatible connector sets from Souriau, Amphenol, ITT Cannon, some others. So it depends.

> simply because the commercial stuff is more usable and gets updated faster.

And this isn't a new pattern by any means. Decades ago the UK military had a plan to replace their old analog centric radio gear with a system that integrated voice, data, gps blue force tracking etc. They called it BOWMAN.

The initial versions were so bad everyone started calling it Better Off With Map And Nokia.

The defense establishment moves at a glacial pace and consistently under delivers vs the equivalent commodity commercial products.

Had no idea about that, went down a rabbit hole researching it. It's a pattern that keeps repeating: by the time mil-spec hardware ships, the commercial equivalent is two generations ahead.

There’s a structural reason for that. Mil-spec hardware requires years of data on the failure modes of components to properly design. NASA has the same problem and in the last decade or two they’ve been relaxing that requirement for less critical missions because technology sped up so much.

For the military that won’t change until there’s an existential threat.

> There’s a structural reason for that. Mil-spec hardware requires years of data on the failure modes of components to properly design.

By now you pretty much know how it can break and what are the most common issues with hardware. No one invented a new type of EMP for example that can pass through the holes in a Faraday cage for example. The water in the ocean did not became ten times more acidic that hardware requires more protection.

A wild guess: you can strap an iPhone to a military grade radio kit to help with jamming and what not, and have a very usable product. Or whatever modern phone. You then swap them out easily and you are always up to date on capabilities. Cell towers are upgraded less frequently than phone hardware. Same thing with the military stuff.

I think a great part in this plays industry inertia and vendor and too much money that could be lost. “This is how things are done” and it costs $10,000 per screw because “it is certified”.

The recent war showed that you can use commercial drones with a grenade or two strapped to them in very effective ways. Not to mention the more “advanced” ones that you still go to the store and buy them.

We need more defense startups and a lot less red tape to iterate as fast as possible.

Until Starlink, you had hundreds of milliseconds of latency for satellite internet. Now it feels a lot more like you are on mobile data on a phone.

Incumbments had no reason to offer a better experience because there was no competition. Now they’ve been left in the dust because of Starlink.

The existential threat will be very instant when an enemy with no milspec equipment punches you hard in the face. And catching up will not be easy nor fast.

For example all the Israeli tech in CENTCOM.

> The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict

This describes Boeing and lots of other firms

The US has also done lots of protectionism for a bunch of monopolistic businesses out of (alleged) national security interests.

This is what the US’s defense production act is for. If a company makes a critical product, the US has openly stated that it will compel a company to prioritize making that product in times of need. They can’t refuse. This is also why the US wants all of its key systems to be US made- they cannot be held hostage by a foreign entity.

There’s obviously a few areas where this isn’t really true, like a foreign company setting up a US company to sell their product, but by and large the US is immune to the risks you describe. China similarly makes most of their own systems and is mostly immune. A large scale WW3 between the US and China cannot be stopped by a company refusing to participate.

> The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict.

If you turn commercial infrastructure into a military tool, you put it within the firsts rows of targets' list to dismantle in case of conflict.

Given the large number of Starlink's satellites, you will inevitably have to use their own space debris to dismantle them, which will turn the LEO orbit inoperable (for centuries). With this you reduces the agility that was giving those satellites.

You would therefore be forcing the use of military satellites placed at higher orbits (lower resolution, number, more use of fuel, slower) and also forcing to use military airplanes and drones to fly over your territory (exposition).

Basically I read the article as a warning.

> which will turn the LEO orbit inoperable (for centuries).

Is this true? I understand that they deorbit without power in up to 5 years. So their debris would decay in essentially the same time.

It would not be debris produced by a decoupling that loses speed, with decrease their centripetal force progressively, so therefore progressively they fall to the earth, deorbit.

It would be a cluster of successive collisions in a short period of time. With each collision, each destroyed satellite would produce hundreds of thousands of microfragments at increased speeds, with would make them reach different orbits.

The microfragments at lower heights of LEO would decrease their speed due the atmosphere within months to a few years, and the ones at higher heights of LEO from decades to centuries, but this ones, at time they loses such speed they would decrease the height of their orbits and sweep across their new orbiting area (like a net/mesh), their kinetic energy would keep being able to destroy or damage what they cross.

If it were done it would be like a planned Kessler Syndrome event, and LEO is currently saturated with satellites.

> The real strategic question isn't whether Starlink can be weaponized - of course it can - it's what happens when military operations become dependent on commercial infrastructure that a single company controls.

This happens: Why the world's militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2517766-why-the-worlds-...

That's why the US military got Starshield. It is run by and belongs to the military. Make sense for critical infrastructure really.

I watch CappyArmy on YouTube. Was shocked recently to learn that Russia had widely deployed StarLink in Ukraine to get orders to the front lines.

Recently this was cut off suddenly, with an immediate counter attack by Ukraine... along with Ukraine trolling the shit out of Russia frontline operatives; offering fake "recover your Starlink connection" websites and texts, scamming them out of their account credentials.

Great episode to go watch. I can't imagine how Russia thought this was a good idea?

It's not great that they found starlink terminals on Russian drones (they've since tried to lock them down more).

These should be export controlled and geo-locked as they are arguably much more powerful than any missile.

SpaceX already does geo-lock them to an extend. But the terminals are exported to so many countries that any meaningful controls are impossible.

The terminal knows where it is at all times.

I think what's actually funnier is that the satellite shooting the laser has to know where the terminal is with pin point accuracy too. So it's pretty easy to cut off targeting to a vast chunk of the planet.

The sats don't use lasers to communicate with terminals, just regular radio waves, they only use lasers for inter-satellite communication

Starlink cells are ~15 miles wide BTW.

Yes but the problem is that the battle lines are fluid and the drones are obviously aiming for the Ukrainian side.

I know this is a meme but for those at home the whole point of a war is to cross over the front line into the opponent's territory and capture it. If your comms are disabled when you cross the front you can't really fight. So "just disable Starlink within Russian territory" does not solve anything.

You can have a hybrid approach - deny access in that area by default but have a secure way to whitelist specific terminals for short periods (mission duration)

So Starlink ‘Offence’ could be an upsell on a basic ‘Defence’ plan.

Simple solutions: block all Starlink terminals that aren’t whitelisted upon entering Russian territory or Ukrainian conflict zones.

This will prevent Russians importing Starlink terminals and then deploying them in Ukraine.

Work with Ukrainians to whitelist all their terminals.

Which is exactly what they are doing.

https://unn.ua/en/news/ukraine-launches-starlink-whitelist-i...

It’s missing the part that any non-whitelisted Starlink terminal entering Russian territory should automatically be blocked.

This would deny all Russians the use of Starlink.

The issue isn't Russians using Starlink inside Russia (they have other option, e.g. wired system, etc. there); the issue was their using it for drones and other combat operations inside Ukraine (including Ukrainian territory presently held by Russia).

The point is that in order for Russians to use Starlink in combat operations in Ukraine, they first have to import them to Russia. All non-whitelisted Starlink terminals entering Russia should be immediately bricked to prevent this. It's an important part for denying Russians the use of Starlink.

It's beyond sickening what none of you even bother with the idea what a civilian service should not be used by the military, especially in the zone of the conflict - by any side.

Why not? Assuming you want one of the sides to win, why would you not want your side to use every (ethical) means available to do that?

War is not ethical.

Starting a war is not ethical. Defending your territory from aggressors is 100% ethical.

Of course it is.

This line of thinking would lead to the world being led by bastards. There are ethical uses of war and violence.

Starting a war maybe not (depending on circumstances), but how is getting attacked and fighting a war to prevent invasion not ethical?

"Civilian service" - lol.

SpaceX is a privately-owned defense services company. Their #1 client is the United States. Their launches out of Vandenberg occur because the United States Space Force allows them to happen.

Are you on their board? Who are you to make the call that the product they are offering is a "civilian" (only?) service?

The Starlink terminal can't know based on only its position which side it's being used by. Equipment is often used in enemy territory.

That is a tiny minority of the use. The vast majority of Russian use has been on Russian controlled land.

Sure. But if you geoblock all use on Russian controlled land, you're also blocking Ukrainian use on Russian controlled land. I have no idea if that would cause issues or not, but it's not that far fetched to imagine it might.

It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't

I understand this reference

That all depends on what the meaning of is is.

It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.

This makes it a very, very dirty terminal.

Terminals in Ukraine are whitelisted (with whitelist being supplied by the Ukrainian MoD). Meaningful controls are possible, it's what led to the ukrainian forces advancing and liberating territory recently.

You missed my point. It's impossible to meaningfully control the export of physical terminals. But as I pointed out above, SpaceX has already been doing some geo-locking.

I did not. Whitelisting means Russia can not buy terminals in UAE and use them in Ukraine. Because the terminals in UAE are not whitelisted to be used in Ukraine. Therefore, it's possible to control the export of terminals.

I suspect nradov argues that this type of geofencing + allow-listing is not typically what people mean when they talk about "export control", which I agree with.

And while geofencing + allow-listing for sure provide value in e.g the Ukrainian conflict, it's a weak protection compared to goods that are actually under strict export control (e.g ITAR), and will always have to be done after the fact. Russia could for example put Starlink on drones launched from the Baltic Ocean targeting Poland or whatever.

How would they geolock terminals on active conflict zone where conflict line changes in realtime. Terminals also cross miles across the line on drones etc. regularly. There was also pushback from Ukraine forces, when they are asked to register their terminals to be whitelisted a while back.

Starlink recently implemented new rules for satellites that travel more than 100mph. Service is deactivated unless they have a valid government ID and an aircraft's tail number attached to the account. While both can be faked, you could arguably correlated a provided tail number with ADS-B data because anyone with a Starlink is likely also broadcasting ADS-B. But it also provides a bit of 1:1 correlation on satellites and there is a finite number of tail numbers out there.

They also jacked up the subscription price which caused thousands of actual pilots to cancel their service. So expect a flood of used Starlink Minis to enter the market soon.

I thought Starlink doesn't allow you to move your terminal at all with the basic plan, and there's a premium plan where you can move it, but still can't use it, unless you stop?

You aren’t supposed to move the terminal on a residential plan, but there are plans for RVs, boats and planes that allow you to change location and/or use while in motion.

I had the RV plan when they said it would not work in motion, but it worked pretty well on the highway anyway.

Nowadays Starlink terminals to operate in Ukraine they have to be approved so right now Russians cannot waste them anymore on drones as it's much harder getting one working (in the past they have been).

Not only that. It seems to have been more Russian starlink terminals than Ukrainian ones.

Especially in light of that early war elon confession about disabling terminals mid Ukraine op.

Another not great data point is https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukraine-starlink-data-traffic...

"Starlink satellite traffic in Ukraine fell by about 75% after SpaceX shut down its terminals in the occupied territories of the country."

By now it came to light russians for example had starlinks on every assaulting tank in addition to long range drones.

That story keeps being spun by people who don’t read articles (or don’t expect people to). What SpaceX did there was limit the use of Starlink in Russian controlled territory. The very same new pattern of Ukraine whitelisting and geofencing access which is what everyone is praising today.

The only reason Ukraine complained was their special ops were running drone boats deep in Russian territory. After they asked for permission (following this controversy) SpaceX did a deal with DoD to let them manage those special cases allowing its use behind enemy lines.

Starlink has been nothing but positive for Ukraine

.gov allowed Russian military to become reliant on Starlink, then cut it off.

That was a deliberate tactic; Government is not leaving the fate of nations in the hands of Elon Musk alone.

Yes. Their brilliant 5D chess moves I can see at the gas station every day. Their long term plan is clearly to drive everyone away from the fossil industry and towards renewables.

Cappy army on YouTube had an interesting analysis on the starlink usage in russia.

https://youtu.be/Fpt8dYAwK7c?si=x5pp9vfKdwXM947c

The usage is in Ukraine

Right i meant to say by Russians in Ukraine

How does radio transmission with fast moving targets work (including LTE on phone), doesnt the doppler effect shift the frequencies of all radio waves?

Yup, it shifts but it's a minor shift and easily handled in the receiver. Receivers already need a little ability to tune the carrier frequency to account for ordinary variations in the circuits. From memory GPS's doppler shift is on the scale of a single digit khz, so Starlink's probably double that. A few khz of shift is no big deal for ghz carriers.

How does the receiver know how to shift?!

All RF protocols have some provision for signal acquisition. It can take a bunch of forms but what it nets out to is the oscillator in the receiver can acquire the signal from the sender. A simple example of this is "pilot" signals or prefixes that have an easily recognizable structure and allow the receiver to align to the sender in the clock recovery sense. So the receiver needs a little extra tunable bandwidth and to run the messy intermediates through something like a convolution filter, but it can latch on easily. This is early days of radio technology, like mid century post war.

The theory is the US let some Russians use it as a trap to get them dependent on it and then pulled the rug which gave Ukraine a big advantage to clear some areas and generally disrupted Russian operations.

The DoD has always been deeply involved in running Starlink there

While there is a massive US advantage in space launch, it should be used to the maximum. It's not going to last forever (while perhaps, sufficiently long that China fizzles out demographically before it's gone).

To be honest, I think US demographic trends are a lot worse than whatever is going on with China.

Oh my goodness, this is deeply untrue. China is facing a massive population implosion. A lot of their global strategy can be understood through that lens: they are racing to accumulate power, standing, and wealth before the implosion starts to kick in.

Everyone is seeing a population implosion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_world#/med... we are already past peak child.

Some are doing worse than others, and China is doing close to the worst.

China is doing much better than the West. The only thing keeping populations from imploding here is the constant migration from the third world.

I don't understand. You say China is doing better than the West, and then explain why the West is doing so much better than China.

The West isn't doing better.

The West is destroying third world countries to take their human resources. Blowing up the middle east created more uber eats drivers than defunding all the schools in Detroit ever did.

I think you haven't been following the news. US demographics is by far the healthiest of all halfway developed countries, with the exception of Israel. China has third low TFR in the world after South Korea and Taiwan, and is facing extinction within two generations whereas society and the economy will simply cease because all available labor will be consumed by caring hundreds of millions of extremely elderly people.

By 2100, US will look about the same as Western Europe looks today: ageing, but still OK. China will be no more.

The American advantage in launches would get narrowed within ten years. China only needs to be able to get their own constellation up; they don't need to keep SpaceX levels of launch cadence.

American technological superiority is overblown. The only reason we’re ahead is because of immigration. As China/other countries get wealthier and the US gets less friendly, smart people stay home. One generation later and the best scientists will in those countries, not here.

This seems like a terrible idea. Kessler syndrome is a few provocations down the road from military satellites.

As technology advances the consequences of war get worse. Asymmetrical warfare gets more effective.

We should be building and maintaining a rules-based international community predicating on peaceful resolution of disputes.

Why is Chinese army propaganda on this site? It's not news that the PLA will oppose technology that gives the US military an advantage.

> The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.

Sorry, may I get more information on why this is considered Chinese army propaganda?

My understanding is that CSIS (https://www.csis.org/about) is an US based organisation that provides analysis on topics which include Chinese organisations/military.

Did you read the first sentence?

> In this piece, two researchers from PLA-affiliated National University of Defense Technology argue that

Did you stop reading at the first sentence??

Yes. It is the equivalent of reading a technical review of a product by the product owner

When you were a kid, did you stop listening when your parents said “Santa”, or did you keep listening in order to glean useful information from their propoganda, even knowing that Santa isn't real?

Were you under the impression the Chinese Communist Party has been telling you sweet lies only because they find joy in seeing your childlike naivety and wonder?

The general principle of extracting useful information from the scenario “(party a) tells lies because (ulterior motive b)” transcends the particular values of party a and motive b

That’s it, you’re on my naughty list! —Santa

Thanks; I missed that and almost sullied my mind reading an argument formulated by a potential adversary to the United States of America.

Isn't sully your mind a bit harsh?

As long as you read with the article's authorship in mind, it's useful to learn what thoughts your adversary wishes to influence and why.

Not specific to this article, but I generally like to find third party sources to confirm or deny the "bipartisan" and "nonprofit" parts of their about page. I've seen too many where that turned out to be false.

Just today I tried an experiment asking the YouTube Ai question bot "where on the political compass are the opinions expressed in this video?"

The chatbot couldn't get past the fact that the video said it was non-partisan and if they said it it must be true.

Csis is everything but neutral.

I haven't read it fully but it doesn't seem to be promoting any sort of falsehoods. As an American I consider any reliance on Starlink and the thoroughly compromised Elon Musk to be a weakness rather than a strength.

So, you disagree with the paper and think what the Pentagon did with Anthropic is right.

But does that mean they are wrong?

Usually yes.

Certainly not. Some propaganda is made up, some just highlights some convenient truth.

Trouble is it's hard to tell the difference.

From whose perspective?

Last I attended a CSIS event, it was filled with US intelligentsia (including the famed Zbigniew Brzezinsky, Polish spellings be damned).

It makes a change from the US Military propaganda I suppose.

No no, American media corporations are virtuous courageous freedom fighters intent on "speaking truth to power" and "standing up for democracy" and "science". To suggest otherwise makes you a something something denier, a dangerous conspiracy theorist, a puppet of fascism, etc.

Interpret: China is a CSIS project aimed at facilitating a more nuanced understanding of global strategic issues through a library of translated materials matched with expert commentary.

Americans are so propagandized and paranoid that they see a DC blob foreign policy think tank translating Chinese PLA source documents and start wondering if there's a nefarious plot afoot. "Understanding the enemy?! That sounds like an axis of evil conspiracy!"

CSIS is republishing work from PLA affiliated writers from PLA affiliated think tanks, published an a PLA affiliated journal because it does in fact capture aspects of internal PLA thinking. This article is from 2023, it's not written in the context of the current administrations policies and rhteroic. While we can always be certain that there are aspects of external facing PR/propaganda, we also should consider "how does China view the militarization of Starlink and Space".

And to that end, we can clearly see that the PLA sees Space Dominance as being strategically destabilizing. They see threats to their ability to disperse and hide their nuclear launch systems.

In fact, from a 2026 lens, the best way to read this paper would be "the PLA has mapped out its vulnerabilities, and all of its risk control and escalation options (basically its suggestions in the conclusions) are basically off the table. Therefore, it's very obvious that the PLA will attempt to compensate through simultaneously achieving its own space based capability similar to Starlink, develop additional ways to hold US strategic assets (read nuclear strike platforms) at risk, and find asymmetric means of deterrence".

EDIT: Just made a connection in my head - there's been a lot of news about Chinese nuclear arsenal increases in recent years, with a uptick starting around 2023, and the DoD estimating a rough tripling from 2025-2035. I suspect these developments might be connected.

EDIT2: I think to summarize what I think would be important take away from reading this paper is that while the most immediate examples of militarized Starlink use are all very tactical level (thinking about drones in Ukraine), this piece clearly signals that the PLA also believes that Starlink militarization poses treats at the strategic (read nuclear) level. And therefore, if we think purely in terms of tactical/operational capabilities, we may be caught off guard by certain reactions by the PLA/China.

I don't think that Starlink affects nuclear deterrence / the MAD doctrine in any meaningful way. But it does seriously affect "conventional" warfare. And China is rather visibly preparing for a conventional war.

I believe it's exactly that thinking that CSIS was trying to check when they chose to translate and publish this specific article. They are trying to get analysts and policy makers to think through, and make an active decision on if they believe that China will treat military/militarized mega constellations as destabilizing in a nuclear/strategic sense.

It's fair to decide that that is not major factor, but it should be an informed decision. It requires looking at the nuclear risk issues that the piece raises, and finding reasons to dismiss them.

Even the best space comms system does not make your ICBMs invisible to your adversary, and does not allow you to shoot down your adversary's return salvo of ICBMs. Hence the mutually assured destruction is not going away, and the side starting an all-out nuclear war still cannot win. I don't see how anything what's available now changes this; do you?

What might be destabilizing would be long-range hypersonic missiles that fly relatively low (30 km above the surface, not 1000 km), so they can't be easily detected until it's pretty late, and can arrive from multiple directions. This is exactly the kind of weapon that is China apparently developing, BTW.

The article argues that space and AI dominance meaningfully threatens China's second strike (mobile land based ICBMs) survivability, which would bias China to act more proactively (ie, more hair trigger) in escalation scenarios.

Chinese and Russian developments (HGVs, FOBs, the Russian "superweapons" like Poseidon) are all destabilizing to an extent. But as long as none them challenge/hold at risk the US second strike capability (a robust C2 network and the SSBN fleet), they won't be massively destabilizing.

For what it's worth, HGVs that could strike the US from China still need to be launched off what are effectively ICBM class rockets. The launch signatures would almost certainly be detected.

And finally, let's not even get started with what Golden Dome would do to strategic stability.

There's simply no need to go pointing fingers right now. The reality is that all sides are taking various self-interested actions that in the absence of communication or coordination will lead towards less stable environments. No side has the ability to compel the others to not take these actions, and so the best we can do is try to anticipate the new operating environments and be ready for them as best we can.

I think the issue is that one side having an overwhelming non-nuclear, conventional advantage might push the other to a nuclear response in the event of a catastrophic loss in a conventional conflict. Imagine Chine tries to invade Taiwan and they are defeated so badly that the CCP might fall -- then perhaps a nuclear response becomes more likely.

However, I think this is not the case. In the end no one wants to reduce the world to ashes over losing power. But... well, I suppose there are people crazy enough to want that.

Americans propaganda has completely brainwashed you

It really is that simple. Straight up CCP propaganda translated from a Chinese journal, written by Chinese professors worried about Chinese national security.

Starlink was never about giving people untethered access to the internet.

Musk started SpaceX with Michael D. Griffin, the guy who invented large constellations of military satellites to win a nuclear war. And then he funded Starlink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin

Starlink project began after Musk and Greg Wyler parted their ways. Wyler approached SpaceX in 2014 with a proposal to build OneWeb (then called WorldVu), and initially they worked on the project together. But then they started to accuse each other of doing various underhanded things, and split. After that, Musk decided that he could do a similar and even better system without Wyler, and that's how Starlink was born in 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

I noticed this the other day with the Anthropic upholding its redline. I think this is the first time in history where consumer tech exceeds military tech. Historically, it was always military tech trickles down to consumer.

This is a completely unfounded conspiracy theory, but I think it’s a fun one. I think Elon Musk is running these companies the same way that he is a top ranked Diablo player. He just plays one on TV. The decision makers in the military industrial complex pushed black programs into a group of private company so they could scale and cut red tape while shedding contractors with really serious performance problems. So now a faction of “the insiders“ control space launches, social media, and have a backup AI company. There are less successful programs like Tesla for getting cattle like me to drive an electric car that can be remotely driven into a median or disabled if someone in Bethesda decides that they don’t like you. Also there is a not so successful attempt to revolutionize tunnel logistics for defense. So what I’m saying is that this is military tech, they just pretend these are private companies run by a Tony Stark showman. I can’t support this with evidence, but it makes for a good story.

hahaha, the conspiracy i always joke about is when the first time a starlink satellite deorbiting is going to kill someone 'accidentally'.

Conspiracy theories aren't very productive. But the one thing that continues to bother me is how there is no great explanation for why TSLA is still worth much. It's a shrinking car company that is failing to execute at FSD and says it's going to make humanoid robots instead of cars.

There is no good reason TSLA should be valued any more than 10% of its current valuation, and even that would be rich. There is a fine argument it should be worth 3-4% of what it currently is.

It is almost like there's a connection between PayPal, Elon Musks fortunes, and crypto.

I still wonder who Satoshi really was. I wonder how Microstrategy remains solvent.

Whomever it is, was, there are a handful of individuals still holding block controls on the ORIGINAL chain... that could topple ANY valuation. Those who sold around $0.32/USD would be happy to know that chasing the dragon would have made them as mad as the leads on TV shows.

The vision for the future elon gives us (exploring the stars, human augmentation, advanced AI likely leading to elimination of suffering) is a heaven-like vision in a western world where most people don’t believe in anything much, and many of our leaders and intellectuals are misanthropes who think having kids is selfish.

I don’t care what tesla’s quarterly sales are, I’m supporting elon’s vision.

That vision is a lie, and it's a distraction. It is taking advantage of the emptiness that they themselves created, and now they are making you angry to distract you while they rob you. I sincerely wish you well in life, don't pick the wrong heroes.

Who is your hero, and why?

It is just a bet on Elon’s vision, nothing more, you put a little money there, many people do the same, price go up. Just that.

There are no other companies in the same position as Tesla, time will tell if it succeeds or not.

There are many such mysteries, right? How does Oracle make money when every product of theirs sucks and is worse than free alternatives? How is it that Google and Meta seem to have more revenue from “advertising“ than everyone spends on advertising? Where are the product sales that can be traced to this massive amount of spending? I don’t think you could even articulate a plausible business plan around what Google claims to do, especially when they were hot in the early 2000s. How do large financial institutions, like JP Morgan, get fined for financial crimes yet still operate with total public trust? Just as strange as Bigfoot and aliens but in plain sight.

Again, I’m going to qualify this with the disclaimer that this is my own baseless conspiracy theory presented purely for its entertainment value. I suspect that the United States has many effectively state owned enterprises just like the PRC, but there are elaborate obfuscation techniques used to make that seem as if that were not the case. In part that is because a large criminal network is wearing the dead US government like a skin suit.

Most insightful HN comment in recent memory.

I think the notion of a cryptocurrency treasury company is idiotic but Strategy (MicroStrategy) is an audited public company. If you want to know how they're solvent then you can literally just read their financial statements.

https://www.strategy.com/financial-documents

Consumer tech "exceeded" military tech when the first consumer-grade FPV drones started destroying tanks and bombing trenches in 2022.

Exactly as cyberpunk books predicted, the technology is so advanced that all you need to create a weapon is sold in a toy store.

weren't the first instances of that. you could argue that places like /r/combatfootage are the consumer 'tech' that leads some of this, but it wasn't 2022.

This is footage of a drone strike against personnel in a building from July 2022: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wbb1yh/ua_su...

This apparently has more footage from 2022: https://www.reddit.com/r/UADroneArchive/comments/11nxhh4/ua_...

ISIS was dropping mortar rounds from consumer drones back in 2017 already

Afghani terrorists were using weaponized consumer drones back in 2020.

https://www.twz.com/37398/deadly-taliban-attack-on-governors...

I argue that it’s different. Ukrainian military needed this to adapt to the warfare. The US has plenty of means to bomb people (look at Iran) with or without consumer drones. Our military does not have any native LLM capabilities.

Indeed for once data volume >>> other concerns

> I think this is the first time in history where consumer tech exceeds military tech

Never mind airplanes, telephones, steel, cars, trucks, photography, steam engines, gasoline engines, light bulbs, electric power generation, ...

I mean most of us knew from day 1 this would get militarized as soon as possibly can... the same goes for spacehip (large payloads delivery to battlefields) as well and neuralink (during interrogations).

same for "save the whales" PlanetLabs

Please elaborate, this sounds like a fun weekend rabbit-hole.

this is very difficult to address with intellectual honesty.

It seems obvious to me that people of conscience and standing have built plenty of the most cutting edge tech of this age. Yet those people are structurally embedded within business and government. Far-reaching technology is one thing, but satellite networks are especially impactful in many ways for both real time intelligence gathering and also building a record of analytic data over time.

So, PlanetLabs.. without a doubt, completely sincere in Doves reading save-the-whales data over the entire Earth. And also, connected "at the hip" to the US Federal Government. Does the US Federal Government work diligently to save-the-whales? You be the judge.

PlanetLabs is business, with investors. That is the horse that brought the endeavor to its current state. Larry Ellison seems to run a very stable business, in the same locales, and that seems to be just fine with investors. Is there any way that PlanetLabs would not be subject to the same investor pressures and direction, lawsuits and governance letters, that Oracle is subject to? seems likely that lots of the same actors are close at hand, from the beginning.

SO there is tragedy and comedy, stock price and hiring practices, technical capacity and brilliance. The mission is the message ? feedback here seems likely to escalate, so let's set a tone of informed debate, and recall that after the typing, almost nothing will actually change in practice.. just an educated guess.

The US Federal government has done a lot to save the whales.

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/marine-mammal-protec...

Krill baby krill?

The current administration is openly extractive without the fig leaves of old.

I don’t think we can look forward to nature - whether it’s national parks or marine parks or just being a non polluting neighbor - getting any priority or protection from now onwards.

Canada will continue to casually choose the pro-nature option when presented.

Yeah, they are using this tech 'round the backside to track subs.

I was early at Planet (and fresh out of college) and the transition internally towards govt money was very painful for the bright eyed save-the-world hackers internally.

The initial technical architecture was aligned with broad good (low res, global, daily, openly available), but the shift towards selling high res satellite capabilities directly to governments has been tough to see.

Their role of providing a public ledger is still a net good thing IMO, and i doubt Planet is adding much increased capability to the US war fighter (they have way better stuff). Harder to say for their deals with other governments that have fewer native space capabilities.

This comes across as whining.

"StarShield"

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Just because I have a knife doesn't mean it affects the stability of my neighborhood. Even if I use my knife to kill a killer, that doesn't necessarily affect the stability of my neighborhood. It could even improve it.

All in all, I would rather live in a somewhat free America than in communist China.

> All in all, I would rather live in a somewhat free America than in communist China.

The last 15 years has significantly changed peoples' opinions on that matter. https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart

Let's see how the next 15 goes.

The last 15 years has significantly changed peoples' opinions on that matter.

I’m gonna need to see some immigration statistics on influx of foreigners into the PRC to believe that claim.

Might have more to do with language than anything else TBH

Ok, but what is China's immigration policy like?

They could be importing young people from nearby India, yet they're not. Why?

I mean, theres still a language barrier there no? I dont know much about their immigration policies though.

Get yourself a plane ticket from your """free""" America to visit """communist""" China one day, you might be surprised by what you see

I've done so. I saw a country that is a mix of third and first, full of wonderful people who the government fear so much they have to cut them off from the rest of the world and run the place as a police state.

War and militarization is a failure of leadership. It’s what you get when you elect weak, simple-minded men. See the current US administration as an example.

We are already in some sense past the threshold of sats required for a potential civlizational collapse that would be caused by the loss of access to space.

There are way too many sattelites, starlink militarizing means it's a viable target now for enemy nations, any one of them taking out a couple sats and causing debris would cause a chain reaction that would effectively turn space into a dump, let's not even mention that military = more money = more sats, making it even riskier.

Or the fact that at any moment those sats could also die from a carrington+ level event.

...there was civilization long before satellites.

The relative impact of Kessler syndrome is honestly overblown: we're simply not that dependent on satellites for day to day activities. It would be an economic disaster, but those aren't civilization ending.

> any one of them taking out a couple sats and causing debris would cause a chain reaction that would effectively turn space into a dump

You may not realize how big space is relative to the size of a few sats.

https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/3...

You may want to read an actual study about it. And this doesn't even consider the possibility that militarization of starlink satellites may cause them to get taken out, which will trigger the KS the same way.

Interesting paper, thanks! I guess we'll find out.

Besides, SpaceX could launch more sats to even lower orbits (where they wouldn't last long just due to atmospheric drag) during a conflict -- enough to win, then we can figure out how to get all that debris cleared out.

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