• Bury The Right
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      2 years ago

      Billionaires having deep ties with their respective governments is just something that should be assumed by default with all liberal/fascist countries, with maybe the rare Engels outlier here and there.

  • @mylifeforaiur@lemmygrad.ml
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    212 years ago

    Is this really anything more than a publicity stunt? Where are Iranians getting Starlink receivers? Can the average Iranian afford the $100/mo subscription fee?

    • SpaceCowboyOP
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      202 years ago

      Absolutely it is. This is not for the average person it is for operatives on the ground. They made a huge deal about Starlink over Ukraine for the “people” but only like 150 people or so were given access to it.

      Starlink is for military/clandestine application. Secure lines of communication are extremely important in these sorts of operations.

      • @mylifeforaiur@lemmygrad.ml
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        52 years ago

        The cia and the us military has many secure means of communication, none of them are starlink or any other public internet service.

        • SpaceCowboyOP
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          2 years ago

          Of course, but there has always been reliability issues with satellites, which starlink has apparently overcome.

          It is possible that it is just a publicity stunt though.

          Stable satellite internet is massively superior to just satellite comms.

      • @mylifeforaiur@lemmygrad.ml
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        112 years ago

        It’s kind of silly to believe the cia has no methods besides starlink for this purpose. There have been competing geosynchronous internet services for like a decade before musk started using starlink as an excuse to keep SpaceX alive. Once again I believe this is nothing more than a publicity stunt to make sure everyone remembers how important Elon musk is so we keep the state subsidies going for his businesses.

        • SpaceCowboyOP
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          2 years ago

          I’m gonna be honest, I thought I knew a lot about the SpaceX/Starlink CIA relationship, but I should probably brush up if I’m gonna be giving my opinion so freely… more caveats with my opinions on the matter (I know more about the interpersonal/political side than the tech side).

          Do you have any resources that inform your opinion or is it just based on your background, knowledge, and experience in a more general way?

    • SpaceCowboyOP
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      2 years ago

      Elon Musk is an asset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career (4th para)

      SpaceX is a CIA contractor/cutout to avoid FOIA.

      Tesla is in my opinion a fossil fuel op controlled opposition in the ev game (Tesla founders hate him and he’s constantly making really awful decisions) I think tesla will go bankrupt or something in the next 5 years after soaking up investor money that could have gone into real EV endeavors.

      Starlink is 100% just a CIA cutout - it has been INSTRUMENTAL in ukraine.

      My personal theory is that paypal and the whole paypal mafia are assets.

      I think a lot of crypto pump and dumps like dogecoin are CIA fundraising ops as well

      • @knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Ebay founder and thus Paypal linked billionaire Pierre Omidyar owns/started The Intercept and possibly even bought the remaining unreleased Snowden documents from Greenwald and Poitras. He also runs one or two NGOs that are very similar to the Open Society Foundations - supporting ostensibly independent journalism projects which never truly criticize or expose the capitalist class.

        Edit: now reading the wiki synopsis on Griffin. The connections between all these programs and people run so deep. As a bit of a space geek it’s always really difficult for me to square that childish wonder of space exploration with how cynical and often outright evil the capitalist aerospace industry is.

      • @brechvorlage@lemmygrad.ml
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        92 years ago

        All oligarchs have connections to the spooks. Tesla is a financial scam basically, so that already explains why it’s stupid and failing.

        SpaceX is a military contractor, and they’re trying to sell Starlink as a weapon because it’s way too expensive to launch a satellite into orbit just so it can provide internet to a hundred or whatever people (when it’s not in the middle of nowhere). It makes no sense as civilian infrastructure, who’s going to pay for that? The military loves paying through the nose for that kind of shit.

        I’m not sure about instrumental though, it’s not like NATO doesn’t already have radios.

        • @mylifeforaiur@lemmygrad.ml
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          22 years ago

          Starlink itself is a financial disaster so large that even the us military would blush at that level of wasteful spending. Musk is desperate to find enough buyers for Starlink because, without it, SpaceX would go bust and take the rest of Musk’s companies with it.

        • SpaceCowboyOP
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          12 years ago

          radio is inferior to satellite comms by a long shot. I heard people who have been in government/military intel talking about Starlink with glowing praise.

          I feel like SpaceX is more than just a contractor. Like it feels like more directly a cutout than a company like Boeing is. Moreso in the vein of google or facebook where there is a sketchy origin story.

          Definitely all oligarchs have ties to the deep state.

    • @knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
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      242 years ago

      There is regular reporting and open letters out of China discussing how worried Chinese analysts are about Starlink. It takes up an immense amount of orbital space, is heavily funded and supported by the US defense and intelligence agencies, and has under very suspicious circumstances even threatened the lives of Chinese taikonauts in space.

      https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202201/1245327.shtml