• unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 months ago

      Cutting a couple undersea fiber cables and completely fucking the whole internet is very easy. Humanity has so far just kinda silently agreed to not fuck with that.

      • Cosmicomical@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Sure, but welcome to 2024, where we have mirrors and cdns and the cloud with distributed everything.

        Not saying disconnecting the americas from eurasia wouldn’t be a big deal, but the internet would keep working.

        Elon would be very happy.

        • Steve@startrek.website
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          6 months ago

          Im curious… how much undersea cable traffic could Starlink handle? I know the sat-sat laser links are just coming online now, what if every sat had them

  • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    I find the threat of GPS loss to be hard to believe. Theyd have to take out 38 GPS satelites and presumably any of the other navagation satellites American allies have in orbit, and presumably theyd have to not damage their own navigation satelites in the process. I also doubt they could do that all at the same time, or quick enough that no one could respond. Im sure they have the capability, and im sure they have an idea of what the operation would have to look like but in terms of a plan that’s actionable, I have big doubts.

      • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 months ago

        Where though? They just gonna fly enough jammers up into orbit to cover the entire path and all the satelites and pretend thats not going to also jam every navagation satelite including their own and China, their biggest allys? I don’t see it.

        • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Blowing up the GPS satellites is certainly an option and there’s not much we could do to stop them. We know that China has succesfuly tested an anti-satellite missile in 2007. I would not be surprised if Russia was working on the technology at the same time. If they can’t or don’t want to blow up the satellites, then they could perhaps launch their own jamming satellites to orbit near the existing GPS satellites would work.

          Edit: It just occurred to me that you don’t need to jam them. Just put up your own satellites that mimic the GPS satellites to throw off the calculations of anyone trying to use them. Your devices wouldn’t know which signals were legit.

          • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 months ago

            Just put up your own satellites that mimic the GPS satellites to throw off the calculations of anyone trying to use them. Your devices wouldn’t know which signals were legit.

            Do this, then get absolutely raw dog fucked by the US (and any other competent) military, who has absolutely no issue with ground nav or weapons guidance because they all use encrypted GPS signals.

        • snooggums@midwest.social
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          6 months ago

          Jam some strategic locations, like air travel hubs or highly populated areas for the highest impact. No need to jam wide open low population areas without military targets.

            • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              6 months ago

              I also just don’t see anyone in Russia deciding that were going to trigger article 5 by using a jammer on US soil. The risk reward is non existent unless they can make the whole country GPS and internet dark at the same time. Imagine that many resources going on the ground in a country as large as America. It’s basically asking Ukraine to regain any territory they had a counter invasion plan ready for.

            • aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com
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              6 months ago

              The jamming equipment could be the size of a briefcase; the received signal is below the noise floor.

              Or it could be one satellite already in the air beaming to a specific area. Or a constellation of satellites already in the air who handoff coverage of a specific area. Or a hack of an existing satellite constellation command and control channel to reprogram the transmitters to cover up GPS L band.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yes, this is really like a tiny dog barking its head off, because it’s convinced it can’t be harmed.
      Russia and Putin have been embarrassing themselves for a while now.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It’s like a mini MAAD…

      To Putin, any significant threat to his power in Russia is destruction. Ukraine is making inroads as I type this, if they get too far into Russia, it could dominoe into Putin losing power.

      If it ever actually looks close to that, he ain’t going to be attacking Internet cables, he’ll be launching nukes.

      But once a nuke launches, it’s over for all of us. So he needs an intermediate step that he could do and would fuck a bunch of shit up by doing, but it’s not a nuclear bomb.

      • troed@fedia.io
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        6 months ago

        once a nuke launches, it’s over for all of us

        No, it really isn’t. Nuclear winter and the idea of thousands of Tsar Bombas belongs to the 70s. Even in an all out nuclear war today using the full (working? - doubtful regarding Russia) arsenals it would be a catastrophe with hundreds of thousands of dead but mostly we’d be continuing on as before afterwards.

        I grew up during “duck and cover” and iodine in the cupboard. That’s not where we are anylonger.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          Also rockets are a pain to maintain, theres a reason the US military is trying to move away from the minutemen over towards gravity controlled nukes. Does anyone think Russia can properly maintain theirs.

            • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              Its the fact that my name is vault dweller and not thw fact that my picture is of the Mer remover Pelinal Whitestake.

              Anyways my name is a reference to Fallout one which is a lot more depressing about the whole apocalypse thing, tonally its probably closer to a boy and his dog. I dont fear the bomb but I aint welcoming it either.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Yeah?

    And we’d retaliate. Which is why they haven’t done it. They didn’t shoot down the satellites in the cold war and they aren’t going to do it now unless they’ve decided the world without satellites is just so much better.

    How is this news? China could nuke the West Coast tomorrow and the Canadians might invade Maine to secure a maple syrup monopoly! Actually, that’s more likely than anything else in this thread…

  • lettruthout@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    In the Julia Roberts move “Leave the World Behind”, they mention a process of destroying a country. (I vaguely recall that the process was attributed to a real person.) One of the steps was to take down the internet. With lack of information chaos develops, and the country destroys itself.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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        6 months ago

        So Ivan Sabotageovich calls up someone who works at Level3

        Says “Hey broski I want you to start announcing bogus BGP routes”

        Guy who answers the phone says “What? Why would I do that?”

        Guy on the phone says “I’ll give you rubles”

        Guy who answers the phone says my brother in Christ I make $175k per year and I will get fired and they’ll fix it in about 25 minutes anyway, sorting out and fixing stuff like this is kind of why people like me are employed here and there are a lot of us watching what happens

        Guy on the phone says I can also give you TONS of unrefined crude oil and methane, or precision aircraft parts from the 1990s

        Guy who answers says I need to go now, good luck though

        Guy on the phone says blyat as the line goes dead

          • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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            6 months ago

            … for 18 minutes

            With their existing infrastructure in the US which Russia doesn’t have

            And it was detected (and was trivial to fix once detected it sounds like) even before people were particularly alerted to this as a possibility

  • vegeta@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Maybe they could get an compromised/friendly/useful idiot/individual installed in the hightest levels of government who, either intentionally or unintentionally, would funnel secrets to them which help facilitate mass disruption?

    ohh wait…