Starlink at the moment of Cruise Missile/Sea drone attack on Black Sea fleet

The United States is providing aid to the Ukraine to fight off Russia. While Russia may not technically be an enemy of the United States at the moment, the two nations aren't on the best of terms. This action can be construed as Musk aiding and abetting the Russians, with whom the United States is having "difficulties" with at the moment. Musk should keep in mind the United States has the power to denaturalize him and revoke his citizenship.

If the CEO of Vodafone or something was saying that they could see military operations in the metadata, and also talking about their chats with Putin, _eyebrows would be raised_. (For a number of reasons; I'd be astonished if the CEO of Vodafone or similar has casual access to just look at call metadata for fun, plus also, yeah, the Implication).

He has to tell the Ukrainians that he's using their data for chats with Putin:

"We don’t knowingly sell your personal information, but we still have to tell you what we collect from you and how we use it."

https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1000-41799-67?r...

Location data is specifically covered and Musk was not using the location data for 'goods and services' but instead in violation of privacy rights was using this information for geopolitics instead:

"Location Data (not precise geolocation), which includes your general location in order to provide you with the appropriate goods and services."

Outrage doesn’t need to be equal.

There is zero need for plebs to be defending a mentally ill billionaire on HN or anywhere else.

The fact you haven't heard that outrage simply suggests that you haven't been a network operator before. We have an RFC, in fact, that addresses this very point.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1925

Note truth number 4:

> (4) Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational network.

Most people have not ever wrestled with operating a network. To get outraged about the exploitation of user activity/metadata and violation of end user trust perpetrated by today's network operators, you have to have wrestled with having at least tried to operate or build out one yourself.

Only once you have (and it doesn't take many) multiple users completely dependent on you as a single point of failure or as a vector for intrusion into their intimate affairs, will you truly appreciate the burning white anger the more ethical of us feel at the behavior of the largest network operators.

In fact, policymakers and law enforcement have all but weaponized that fact. Usually couching any further abrogation or unraveling of end user expectation of privacy under the guise of "keeping you safe" or "protecting the children" (which a vast majority experience first hand), without at the same time pointing out that "oh, hey, this means we basically get to intrude on all activity you conduct over a network".

Which nowadays is "all activity you conduct with someone else that doesn't involve meeting face to face"

Which is a lot.

Think about that long and hard.

I'm pretty sure the US DoD has its own network of satellites for communications and has had one before Starlink.

That’s a separate service with its own satellites and it’s called Starshield.

https://www.spacex.com/starshield/

> And he's pissing all over them.

More like he has tons of friends there what to do and what def not to do (i.e. be complicit in attack)

Probably at this point this is the closest the US can get to declaring war with another major nuclear power. Declaring actual war would probably escalate to a horrific end with nuclear weapons.

The US is explicitly and very loudly supplying a massive amount of weapons to Ukraine for the purpose of killing Russian soldiers and equipment. It feels like a technicality that our troops aren't the ones pulling the triggers.

I'm not weighing in on either side of this argument since I'm undecided, but I think this is what war looks like between nuclear nations.

IBM famously equipped the Nazi's to be able to operate their concentration camp infrastructure with ruthless, industrial-scale efficiency.

Chemical manufacturers knowingly shipped Zyklon B to the Nazi's and to concentration camps as direct buyers as well.

Unfortunately, my new acquaintence, you are laboring under the presumption that militaries/governments build, manufacture, and operate "government owned infra" to do what they do that can be cleanly seperated from "civillian infra". This is not the case. It's why arguments that "private companies working on behalf of the government to do things the government wouldn't be able to do" should be seen as what they are. A bunch of bullocks.

The Government is Us, and We are the Government. "It's a private company" style arguments only hold validity to specifically if you put on blinders to the fact a "Company" is a construct granted legitimacy by it's host State. Break the rules, or make things overly problematic to your host state, and watch how fast the landscape changes.

As an American, I see the politicians and those in the pocket of 'defense' contractors playing the role of corrupt villain.

Yes. In my opinion this is uncomfortably close to us playing Team America: World Police. We are injecting ourselves into a situation where there outcome is unpredictable and there is no clear game plan or win conditions defined such that we can exit the conflict without the entire area collapsing. Reading between the lines, and sometimes said out loud by the ruling class, it's clear that they want regime change in Russia and they're hoping that this forces the issue.

Now I'm not going to shed a tear for Putin if he has to flee Moscow and we find him in a hole in the desert with a long beard, but the US track record for _successful_ regime change isn't exactly stellar. The middle east is still a mess, Korea is still divided, Vietnam was a colossal failure, and there are more examples in Latin/Central America than I care to cite.

IMO "Equipment" is a very tame and benign term for the deadly munitions we're supplying being used directly against an hostile nuclear power. It's not like we're only sending medical supplies and other errands of mercy. It just seem very risky to me to assume that the Putin is forever just going to ignore the fact that his soldiers are getting blow up by American weapons.

Do they have an economic interest in doing so, or are just volunteering out of taxpayer's money?