I was having a hard time imagining which company this could be. Not that I’m a fan of Verizon or Comcast, but I think they know what side their bread is buttered on. Which one wouldn’t?
Then I remembered Starlink exists.
Don’t think they were colluding with the provider. They probably just put a burner sim card into a 4g module and sent data over a VPN to China whenever it had signal.
It could have even been one of those multi SIM router things that has network redundancy.
The blurb says primarily for navigation.
So it was using the starlink signals like gps signal and therefore they needed to correlate with the carrier to get a rough time sync.
I wonder what timing data is freely available on the starlink acquisition signal.
Why would they need data then? With GPS can get a 1metre accurate chip for like 20 bucks and it’s way smaller. And no need for any carrier or subscription.
Mapping out network topology? Who knows.
Whatever the collected data was, it could have been sent to their satellites for long haul back home.
That just sounds like efficient design if you ask me.
I guess now we know why it stopped to hover over Starbucks for so long.
But the free market will regulate. /s
Wait, you mean US corporations will take money to do questionable things? Surprised Pikachu face.
Maybe the US government shouldn’t have set the precedent that that was EXPECTED AND ENCOURAGED
Ok, now tell us what the hell you shot down way up north during that time.
Didn’t that turn out to be a weather balloon launched by an amateur meteorology club?
No that ended up being swamp gas from a weather balloon trapped in a thermal pocket which reflected light from Venus. Pretty common mistake.
The one over the Great Lakes may have been an advertisement from a car dealership.
I’ll have a good laugh if it turns out the baloon was not chinese after all, it has just contained some iot device with previously unknown call home function to collect diagnostic data.
Someone tell China how to install Google earth app
We should let them do this provided they only use Comcast and Sprint.
frontier
The PCC must be feeling all smart about their spy balloon design choices. Just wait until they need to talk to Comcast customer support…
Was Dishy mounted on top?
Can’t wait for the final report in 10 years that confirms it was a weather balloon and some dumbass CO was too excited and wanted to see an AIM-9x get used on a static 10mph moving target.
Pentagon really running out of fun ideas to waste tax dollars.
Could have at least used the 20mm guns included in the F22 instead of $500,000
Could have at least used the *20mm guns
No, you really can’t.
The Canadians tried with an F-18. They shot the absolute shit out of a balloon with its Vulcan, but because they aren’t under pressure like your typical party balloon, it didn’t really do much.
