This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
He's already selling to both sides with Starlink. Who is to say Musk won't be doing the same with this? He's really playing up the Bond Villain stereotype.
root password: "putin6969"
In the recent Musk biography it was said that at some point after a meeting with NASA he changed his laptop password to “ilovenasa” so you’re not far off in terms of terrible password security if the story is accurate.
I'm getting Deus Ex vibes
I spill my drink!
A lot wrong here, I'm sorry to say, and I'm really not a fan of Musk. He is absolutely not selling Starlink to be used by Russia. That would be shut down real quick. (They may be using black-market terminals, but that's a different question.) And this new constellation will, as I understand it, be owned and operated by the US govt. Think like every single spy satellite ever: govt finds a contractor and asks them to do a thing.
Oh, right. They couldnt possibly make another and sell that to someone else, oh wait...
Making boatloads of money
or
Making far less money along with loss of freedom for decades, or fleeing and sanctions while having your every shart logged...
Seems problematic, considering what a fuckwad musk is.
Seems like after his satellite shenanigans in Ukraine, the US would be more.. cautious.
Or there is more to that story than we know as the general public.
That this whole war is orchestrated by the deep state which has private corporations as a branch of government just like every other war waged since WWII (the last real war)?
Literally why is anybody shocked?
This. Musk disabled Starlink to fark over the Ukrainians. He should not be trusted with any military contracts. Ever.
Having mega corporations design space networks for you sounds like a great idea until they decide to lock you out and hold your government hostage. Or sell intel… Or sell access to other actors….
Just admit it—the corporations run the world at this point.
Nah, part of this is specifically that the US government owns it. This isn't SpaceX just providing access. Think of the US government buying an F-35 or something.
I imagine that might be because they want to do things with it that'd be riskier than what SpaceX does with SpaceX's constellation -- i.e. adversaries might aim to dick it up.
Really just sounds like they are deploying government equipment. There is no report of it being hardware built by spaceX. That is all speculation and clickbait m.
The company makes money by delivering payloads to space. In the end they are a delivery company moving packages from point A to point B.
That the US government would use this service seems obvious. SpaceX is well known for profiting off government funds.
Naw, I remember reading about this earlier in several articles. This isn't just a launch service contract.
straight up supervillain shit, as always
Just spitballing here, but it will get hacked and cause a major problem, if not a crisis.
There are numerous spy satellites up there already from many nations, any of them being hacked would be just as bad.
The DoD is going to be involved in how they are secured.
They'll probably all drop out of orbit before that happens though. I give it a week from launch.
The more ridiculous, the more plausible, because it has happened. 😂
" . . . for U.S. intelligence."
Yeah. Sure. Right. Musk will sell Intelligence to ANYONE who pays for it and US taxpayers will foot the entire bill for constructing the satellite network.
And then all the contractors and politicians will all pretend to be surprised by this and Musk will get the finger-wagging of a lifetime.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
SpaceX’s Starshield unit has had a classified contract with the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) since 2021 to build a network of “hundreds” of spy satellites for the agency, Reuters reports today, citing unnamed sources “familiar with the program.”
A Wall Street Journal report in February listed a classified $1.8 billion SpaceX contract with a then-unnamed government agency.
Now Reuters has attached a name, and that it’s to build a network of “hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits.”
SpaceX describes Starshield as a government-focused secure satellite network, and Elon Musk tweeted it “will be owned by the US government and controlled by DoD Space Force.” Last fall, the business unit signed a US Space Force contract to provide satellite communications for the military via Starlink.
According to Reuters, if the NRO contract is a success, it would “significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.
While an NRO spokesperson reportedly declined to comment on Reuters findings about SpaceX’s involvement, it confirmed to the outlet that it’s working to develop “the most capable, diverse, and resilient space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system the world has ever seen.”
The original article contains 255 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 19%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Sounds like this is a tack on to starlink. Could make sense to put low quality cameras on starlink to prevent a-sat shoot downs since there are so many starlink sats. You'd need to do a complete Kessler syndrome leo denial to economically knock them all out.
I bet this leads to Musk getting outed by more of his own companies, lol.
