106 points

Bark bark bark

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28 points

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.

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98 points

suuure, they couldn’t even take out ukraines communication systems

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29 points

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.

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21 points

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.

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7 points

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

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6 points

And otherwise, you can’t eliminate the possibility of local sabotage as well. Most of the important networking information in Sweden was leaked due to our “open information” laws.

It’s not like Russia can make it some long-term problem, but being an annoyance and making chaos is their goal.

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5 points

Maybe the local internet would keep working but the countries wouldnt. Lots of stuff stops working without central web authorities and all international trade and payment systems would collapse. It would be a massive catastrophe. But its probably quite hard to take out everything at once before the militaries of the world would start paying special attention to those cables.

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6 points

would Americans even consider that taking down the internet? It wouldn’t impact a US client talking to a US server.

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3 points

Thats not how things on the internet work. It would mostly certainly cause many issues for everyone everywhere. Basic functionality might stay working but not everything has a local copy in the US. We depend on things and people from all over the world to keep things running.

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74 points
*

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…

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56 points
*

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.

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9 points

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss that threat.

They know exactly where in the sky they are. They know what frequencies their antennas are tuned to. I’m betting burning out those transceivers would not be an impossible feat.

I also don’t know how well they put up against really large lasers

They’ve also been fully capable of putting s*** into space for years. I would not put it past them to have some form of combination weather/spy satellite and weapons platform out there.

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12 points

They must be aware of the concept of re-ta-lia-tion. You shoot down my satellites, I shoot down yours. Nobody wins and we are all back 40 years.

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-16 points

or they could jam the signal.

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38 points
*

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.

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7 points

They just have to give them the raspberry.

I don’t get why this is so hard.

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4 points
*

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.

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-6 points

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.

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2 points

Which they do. Not on a global scale, though.

It is quite annoying to be Russia’s neighbours. But you can work around it. In fact, it’s not bad to train yourself to operate without GNSS. And it would be even better if the jammers decided to spontaneously combust.

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52 points
*

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…

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5 points

Maine should just be part of New Brunswick but your decorators could never match the right shade of pink

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5 points

If Canada invades I’m fighting on their side. We suck so much and they’re polite.

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3 points

LMAO, we’re a commin’ for that syrup 🇨🇦

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1 point
*

I need to give you one more chance to retract, no questions asked. Before this conversation becomes a confrontation.

Edit: Just an American quoting a Canadian show to you. Nothing actually confrontational about it. In fact, everyone who responds with a quote from the same show gets an updoot.

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