this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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As much as I hate Elon for all the shit he says and does, but it also shows the sanctioning for stuff like this is not waterproof. These units can be bought by company X in country X and sells it to company Y in country Y who is friendly with Russia. Also depending where they get launched from (for example from occupied Ukraine) it makes it also difficult to tell "friend" from "foe". Can that be prevented ? Probably, but it's not as straightforward as armchair generals may make it sound.
Now, could spaceX do something more about this ? Most likely. But that is resources you need to put on this, which is not profitable. So long story short. It's more than Elon bad here.
Look at this article from March 2024: https://robertgarcia.house.gov/media/in-the-news/cnbc-house-democrats-probe-spacex-over-alleged-illegal-export-and-use-starlink
So the equipment has to fall into the wrong hands, through a somehow compromised supply chain. Maybe that could happen without starlink knowing, but they really should have figured that out in march. They should have very easily identified the units that were potentially compromised by auditing shipping logs.
Not only did the supply chain have to be compromised, but also the subscription and payments system... How did they not catch it on the subscription payment side? Now in addition to a compromised supply chain, a financial institution was compromised? At the least, they didn't do their due dilligance in customer verification.
How could russia have set up the equipment without some level of development and testing? Geolocation should have given that development away.
Yeah good point, that's called "negligence". Not doing due dilligance or taking the necessary steps to avoid breaking the law, because it isn't profitable, isn't a valid legal defense.
It really would have been as simple as geofencing against devices that weren't preauthorized or whitelisted.
Yepp those are for sure valid points. Seems that it's not such a "high" prio for our Trump lover.