I’m guessing Musk could easily have Starlink cut them off if he wanted to. It’s not exactly hard for them to geographically locate one of their base stations.
The problem is that both sides are using it and both sides are in the same general area. So cutting off a device on Russian soil could very well be a special forces group planning sabotage.
There are definitely solutions but they all involve giving a Russian agent direct knowledge of troop movements.
There are definitely solutions but they all involve giving a Russian agent direct knowledge of troop movements.
Starlink terminals are activated using a unique identifier. It’s how billing works.
SpaceX knows which terminals have been provided to Ukraine. We know they can geofence service. Geofencing the Ukrainian theater to terminals that were provided to Ukraine shouldn’t be a massive technical leap and doesn’t provide any information they don’t already have.
SpaceX knows which terminals have been provided to Ukraine.
They know which ones they’ve provided to Ukraine. Hardware like that has been and is still being donated through third parties daily.
Now, they could have Ukraine tell them which terminals are in use, including anything they’ve gotten from elsewhere, including stolen back from Russia, and use that to manage, but that would require the CEO of the company to actually want to help honestly.
For very obvious reasons, Ukraine may not want musk to have every single units position. Let alone groups that supplemented their own resources with Amazon.
Could starlink figure this out? Yes. But it would make everyone involved uncomfortable to know the theoretical has become documented and easily searchable.
I bet money Russia starts getting absurdly good. And they’ll have really good info. And it will be because of starlink.
Location info shouldn’t be needed, though. (Even though they should technically be able retrieve location data from any terminal on their own already. It’s all their hardware and network.) They should be able to geoblock traffic from Ukraine/Russia while having a kind of Allow filter for the terminals they know they provided for use by Ukraine.
It’s the same concept as blocking a country’s domains but allowing certain domains of that country through for emails. They just need to setup a “spam” filter.
Again, that assumes that Ukraine want a company run by a Russian asset to know every single device.
But also? There is a lot of value in civilians being able to reach the outside world as well. Especially under an occupation.
I would think you could wait until Russia took over a town and then cut off Starlink to that town until Ukraine makes advances.
Same problem
“Hey musk? Could you restore service to this town at 2 am on Wednesday? No reason but also please don’t tell putin or trump.”
Cool, except that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying the Ukraine military tells Starlink where the Russians are and they block them. Then if they move, the Ukraine military tells them that. I’m guessing Putin already knows where his own troops are and I’m guessing Starlink has a phone number, as does the Ukrainian military.
Why would Russia move? I’ll give you a hint: it involves shooting at them.
So unless Ukraine wants to not be able to communicate with recon units before every attack…
See the explanation in the source article https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/12/starlink-russia-ukraine-elon-musk/
It is pretty much what was answered to you, when it’s on the frontline it is very hard to know if it’s Ukrainian or Russian usage, even in Russia now that the Ukrainians did an incursion. Ukrainian themselves are worried to be cutoff by geo fencing.
About the billing account, there is a well organized black market that will use European identities and bank accounts before selling the service to Russians.It’s paywalled. And I’m pretty sure they could work with the Ukrainian military so they can say “turn it off over in this place.”
Nothing to see here, just Musk enabling fascism and genocide, as per usual
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