Episode 12 - Starlink, the ultimate weapon against oppressive regimes!

In this Episode Global Bob (Brian Varner) discusses how effective Starlink can be against fighting oppressive regimes.  He also discuss how Starlink works and how it can be used by the modern day war fighter.

Transcripts are automatically generated.

Episode Transcript

(00:16):
All right, here we go. It isthat time of the week. Again,
for the global Bob ShowGlobalbob Show, we are the
crossroad of technology andpolitics. This week, we got a
real special topic in store foryou all pretty excited about

(00:37):
this particular podcast. Thisone is titled Starlink, the
ultimate weapons in fightingoppressive regimes. I know
that's a lot to take in. Butwe're going to unpack it and
explain just how effectiveStarlink is in modern war. And

(00:57):
also for the free flow ofinformation. I like to thank
everybody that tunes into theshow each week, I do this show
for you all. And without thesupport of my listeners, then
why would I even do this, butyou can reach out to me at
Globalbob show on Twitter. Oryou can reach me on my Gmail

(01:20):
account [e-mail]. And we also have
a Facebook page Globalbob Show.
Once again, I like to thankeverybody the stats, I look at
him each week, and the show wasgrowing. We're even getting some
international listeners, whichis really cool. And I just want
to thank everybody again, like Isaid, this is episode number 12.

(01:44):
And if you listen to the podcastfrom the first episode, all the
way through this one that'salmost six hours a Globalbob.
Alright, let's get into this. Sowhat is Starlink? Well, Starlink
is a company that is part ofSpaceX. And we all know the

(02:06):
owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk, avery brilliant man who has
brought us the Tesla car. He'salso brought us rocket ships
that's got the us back into thespace game. He's got very
ambitious plans is going to takeus to the moon and Mars. And
this is his answer to theinternet. Now Starlink has about

(02:31):
2200 satellites up in space. Andthey're planning on this gen one
to be about 4408 satellites. Butwhen this is all said and done,
they're talking about having42,000 satellites up in space.
Now that's just absolutelyamazing. All these satellites

(02:52):
that are up there now thisversion one satellites are they
weigh about 573 575 pounds, andthe roughly the size of your
coffee table. Now these thingsare whizzing around the earth.
And what the basic way that theywork is is that they have ground

(03:13):
stations all over the world. Andas the satellites whiz by your
house or your location where youhave the ground terminal, and
then your ground terminal orantenna outside, it sends a
signal up to the satellite andthe satellite repeats that
signal and it comes down to oneof the ground stations. Now

(03:34):
where I'm at here in Florida,there's a couple ground
stations, I think there's likefour or five here in Florida for
our area. But these satellitesthey whizzed by, and they're
doing about 17,000 miles anhour, which that's pretty dang
fast. So what I want you tounderstand is the satellites
that you're connected to thisisn't like your direct TV, or

(03:56):
even some of y'all that have viaset, these satellites are always
whizzing by. And so at any timelooking at my Starlink terminal,
it's tracking about four to fivesatellites. So it uses one as a
primary and when that onewhizzes by, and it automatically
go to the next one. And also,it'll go from different ground
stations. Sobasically, this is what they

(04:19):
call bent pipe technology. Andbent pipe technology with
satellites means that thesatellite has to see the antenna
and the satellite has to see theground station. And so these
satellites, like said they'redoing 17,000 miles an hour,
which is pretty fast. And ittakes about 90 minutes for them
to circle the Earth. So that onesatellite that's over your house

(04:40):
that's providing you withinternet within 90 minutes. It
could go all the way around theearth and provide all kinds of
people with internet which isreally cool. So the little
antenna on the ground. I don'tknow if you guys have seen these
or not, but they're very smalland this is going to come out
later in the podcast. tear, youknow, they're very small,

(05:00):
they're only about, you know, 19inches by 12 inches, and they
weigh about nine pounds. Andthey have a router that's built
into them. And when you get thepackage, I'm quite confident
that just about anybody couldinstall one of these things. I
mean, they are pretty much plugand play. So they're very easy
to set up. It even comes with alittle wireless router. And you

(05:24):
can't do anything wrong, becausethere's only two little ports on
the bottom one's a power portand one hooks to the antenna. So
to summarize it, these thingsare cheap, easy to install. Very
fast, internet wise, I've seenmine go up as high as four or
500 megabits per second,whenever I was doing a speed

(05:45):
test, and so that's a that'spretty good quality. Now, there
are other satellite systems. NowElon is always on the forefront
of technology. And, but therehave been satellite systems
throughout the years. Andprobably some of my listeners
that are in rural areas arepretty familiar with these.
These are the ones by via sat,and HughesNet. And, you know,

(06:09):
they're harder to set up most ofthese, they won't let you set
them up yourself. You know, whenmy Starlink package arrived, it
came via FedEx, and about 10minutes later, it was really
nothing to do just kind of putit out in the yard and plug it
in. Now you got to fish yourwires around. But these other
ones like via set and HughesNet,they're pretty, pretty

(06:31):
complicated to set up. Maybecomplicated is not the right
word, but they can be veryfinicky. And they have to be set
up by a professional installer.
Now, in my course of work I wascertified for via set. So I know
just how much it takes to getthese things on the right bird

(06:51):
as we call it in the industry orthe right satellite. And then
you have to have some very, veryfine adjustments. So it's not
like the Starlink, where you canjust set it out in the yard. And
it connect up. Now you can getwith HughesNet. And via set
these portable packages, I hadone on my bus at one time, very
expensive, like eight to $10,000for it. And it has to be put on

(07:16):
by a professional installer. Andbasically when I went somewhere,
I could park and push the buttonand it would automatically find
the satellite. But like I saidthe very expensive set, I think
Starlink call ends about $700.
Now the monthly fee on it issome people say it's expensive.
I don't think it's that bad.

(07:38):
It's about $110, I think amonth. And if you wanted the
portable package where you couldtake it anywhere that you can
get Starlink I think it's extra25. So I think all in if you
have what they call theirportable package, or RV package
is what they call it, it comesout to be about $135 a month. So

(07:58):
via sat and Hughes. They'repretty expensive. You know, I
think they're a little moreexpensive than this. But that's
what we've had for most of theyears. And we know that when the
thunderstorms come and heavy fogthe via sat in the huge net cut
out. Now Starlink one of thereasons why it to me, I think

(08:21):
that it does a lot better. Andthe Florida weather here is
because the satellites are somuch closer to the earth. With
the Starlink satellite you'relooking at about I think they're
about 275, maybe 300 miles. Butdon't get too fixated on how
close they are just know they'revery close to the Earth where

(08:43):
these other ones are about22,000 miles out in space. And
so it takes a lot to go fromyour house with via sat and
Hughes you're going 22,000 milesup in space. It's turning around
and coming down back to itsground station. So that's
another 22,000. So that's a44,000 mile round trip that that

(09:04):
signal had to make. And withthe Starlink I mean, it's only
going maybe, you know, say 350miles up 300 feet, that's a 700
mile that's not very far at all.
So that's why I think you canpunch through the clouds. Now
Elon is not the only one thathas this idea of these mega
constellations. There's anotherone out there and I think

(09:26):
they're bankrupt. It's called aone Webb, which they had a ideas
to four mega constellation. Andthen you got Bezos with his
Amazon project coupler, Kepler,Kepler. Now, neither one of
these I think of went intoproduction yet where you can
actually sign up for it as youcan with Starlink. So I want to

(09:48):
start you off with a quote herethat kind of resonates. Whoever
controls the media controls themind. Now that's pretty
powerful. And we're seeing thatplay out now in Russia and the
Ukraine. And when the Russianswent into the Ukraine, first

(10:12):
thing that they attempted to dowas to control the internet in
the Ukraine and either shut itdown, or reroute the internet
through Russia, so they couldmonitor it and use that as
Intel. So when countries dothis, they do it for two

(10:36):
reasons. One, they want to makesure that their narrative is the
one that plays out in front ofpeople. So they could do things
like block Western sights ofwhich Russia started doing in
their own country. Therefore,when they tell the citizens how
they're winning the war, andgive them information that their

(10:59):
only source that information isfrom the Russian government. And
when they tried to control theinternet inside of the Ukraine,
it's the same thing. They couldhave the websites that the
Ukrainians could go to, let'ssay the Ukrainians tried to go
to www.cnn.com, or Fox news.com.
Now, the Russians couldintercept that and reroute it to

(11:23):
their website. Therefore, theycould get you know, pictures in
front of the Ukrainians. Ofcourse, they'll know this not
the real Fox News or the realCNN. But they do that put
pictures in front of them andmedia in front of them to talk
about how they're winning thewar and how they should lay down
arms. So in the intel community,we would call this Psyops or

(11:44):
Psychological warfare. Now, theUkrainians would know that this
is going on, obviously, and theRussian people inside of the
Russian Federation would alsoknow because they're smart
people that they're receiving abunch of propaganda. And there
are other ways besides theinternet to get information in
and out of the country. But thething is, is that with shortwave

(12:06):
radio, they could tune in andlisten to the voice of America,
which is broadcast all aroundthe world. Also, the BBC is
broadcast. But those radiostations that come in on those
frequencies, it's pretty simpleto block. There's very mature
ways of blocking radio wavesthat come in. There's also

(12:31):
through telephone lines, theycould take and try to call
people and get the news. Andthis also became pretty popular
at one time, or phone numbersthat you could dial. And they
were hooked to the news, audio,so off of your phone, you could
dial and listen to the news,those have kind of went by the

(12:53):
wayside, but there are stillsome underground ones today,
however, the Russians couldfigure out those phone numbers.
And because they control thetelecommunications inside of
both countries, they couldinadvertently shut that down. So
the traditional ways of gettinginformation in and out of
countries, that it's prettysimple to block and or shut

(13:15):
down.
But now here comes this guy fromSouth Africa. And his name is
Elon Musk. And he's like, wait asecond, I have these Starlink
terminals, they're blocking thetraditional fiber optic lines

(13:36):
are rerouting them and, andstuff. Why don't I just send a
bunch of Starlink terminals tothe Ukraine. And that's exactly
what he did. And this actuallymade the Russians pretty upset.
And they tried to do what theycall electromagnetic pulse, or
EMP, of which Starlink here's aprivate company was able to

(13:58):
combat against that, which Ithought was amazing. Now, why
can the Ukraine use Starlink,and the ground terminals not be
in the Ukraine? Well, when theseStarlink satellites come over,
there's a footprint that theythey have. And the footprint is

(14:21):
about a 300 mile diameter. Andso with that 300 mile diameter,
that means some countries likethey could have a download
station or downlink inside aPoland. And even though the star
link is inside of the Ukraine,then the ground station is in a

(14:44):
safe area. Now with version one,this is very much the way these
work with that bent pipetechnology. And so when you
think about the countries thatrestrict satellite
communications like India,China, Russia, Burma slash
Miramar and Cuba. The Starlinkterminals pose a really big

(15:09):
threat to them. Because someoneinside the country could have
one of these terminals. RememberI said they're only about 19
inches by 12 inches, so verysmall, that can be hidden very
easily. And say, our brothersand sisters in Cuba, if we could
get these in the hands of theCuban people, then there's a

(15:30):
Starlink downlink in Miami, andso they could very easily win no
problem get internet in and outof Cuba. And the dictators don't
like this because theseterminals are easy to identify,
which does have me worried.
Because you can use frequencyfinding technology, which in ham

(15:52):
radio, we've done this. And ifany of you all are pilots out
there, you do this all the timewhen you're using vo Rs. So this
terminals, while they're easy tofind, they're very hard to
block. Now, whenever I say theyblock radio waves, like they do
with shortwave, that's becausethere's one frequency that's out

(16:13):
there a couple of frequencies,these satellites use many, many
frequencies. And there's a lotof other things that are inside
those frequency bands. And soit's not like you just tune in
to to one particular frequency,and that's where it's at. So the
government that wishing to blockStarlink, they would have to
basically find all thefrequencies and jam them all at

(16:37):
the same time. But you know,that's just really not feasible.
So probably the way that they'llgo about combating these are
trying to identify them, andthen going and arresting the
people that are running these.
Now the reason why this wouldwork good and cube on some of
the smaller countries is becauseof that footprint of version one

(17:00):
satellites, version twosatellites, and I'm probably
messing this up, it could beversion one, five, but basically
the next generation of Starlinkis going to be a lot bigger.
Bird, as we call satellites upin the sky, it's going to be a
lot bigger, and it's going tohave capabilities called inter

(17:21):
stellar switching. Now, that's apretty cool name. I've always
like saying that interstellarswitching and Interstellar
switching is basically a way forone satellite to beam to another
satellite, before it goes downto a ground station. Remember
the bent pipe technology, itbasically goes up repeats and

(17:42):
comes down, has about a 300 milediameter footprint. But with
interstellar switching. Now, thefolks that are in Russia and
China, they don't necessarilyjust have to be on the fringe of
the country to get this service.
Now they can be anywhere in thecountry. Because if they can

(18:02):
have a bird fly over and theycan get the signal up to the
bird, that bird willautomatically redistribute that
traffic until it finds anappropriate ground station. So
there's some in Australia,there's some in New Zealand, so
I could very easily see wherethere could be through
interstellar switching people orusers in these countries that

(18:26):
are connecting to the bird aboveand then it go 1000s and 1000s
of miles away till it hits aground station. Now that's some
pretty neat stuff. And it reallytips these have pressure regimes
on their head. Because they'vealways thought just like in

(18:48):
China, while will control theinternet through the Great
Firewall of China, we will blockVPN technology, we will block
Voice over IP like Skype. And sothey do everything they can so
any of the information coming inand out of the countries
they control. Now, when youthink about this, this isn't

(19:12):
being done by the US government,this is being done by a private
person with a corporation. Andso with that, there's this
expectation of these privatecorporations, of course, they
gotta have the permission oftheir host government. But they

(19:34):
can put these satellites up andsay, Hey, we can control where
they go. They're orbiting aroundEarth and if someone uses it,
they can use it. Now in thepast, I've talked about some of
the satellite technology that Iuse for communications, and I
think it was Holloway back inpodcast number one, but I use

(19:55):
Inmarsat and I use Iridium now.
My iridium and Inmarsat may notwork in some of these countries
that I've talked about beforeRussia, China, India, but it's
not because it technicallycannot work there. It's because
Inmarsat and iridium are wantingto the countries to use their

(20:16):
products. So they cut a dealwith that country and say, Okay,
we will provide you serviceRussia with our Iridium phones,
but we will block anybody thattries to use an Iridium phone
from using it. So the Iridiumphone just like the star link,

(20:37):
it has a GPS in it. And so theydo that. So the government will
allow them to have some kind ofcoverage in there. But Starlink
and Elon is aggressive as he is,I doubt that he would do that. I
think that he believes in thefree flow of information enough.
And he understands that we gotto get the people the
information, that's notpropaganda. So yes, Elon would

(21:01):
have the means to restrict theStarlink terminals wherever he
wants, because there are GPS asin these terminals. But I don't
think he will. And then that'swhy, really, the regimes are
kind of upset with him. I mean,he's tweeted out before that,

(21:21):
you know, he he knows that,especially Russia is because now
he can get the citizens to haveunfiltered unbiased connectivity
into those countries. And what agame changer that is. I mean, we
see in wars before the RussianUkrainian war, that's the first

(21:43):
thing you do. When we went intoIraq, then, US spiders were
bombing cell towers, and theywere taken out communications.
But now how do you do that whena satellite is 350 miles
overhead, the terminals can beinstalled by anybody that's plug

(22:03):
and play. And once thatsatellite signal is up, off and
into space, then it's very hardto jam. Well, I can tell you,
this has gotten the Chinese soworried that they have actually
put out a paper a few days ago,and it talks about how they need
to find a way to combatStarlink. Now, I think that's

(22:28):
amazing. You know, before, we'vealways seen kind of behind the
scenes, this company ismanufacturing something for the
government. And so we got tofigure out how to hack into
there. But this is the firsttime that I really feel like
where a government has setpublicly, their sights on a
private corporation orcommercial Corporation, non

(22:52):
government corporation. And inthe paper, they published it.
Now I did get a translated copybefore it was pulled down off
the Chinese website. But it saysthey got to have both hard and
soft means to combat Starlink.
And in the industry, when theysay hard means that means how

(23:15):
could they physically disruptthe satellites, and China has
lasers, China has other waysthat they have demonstrated that
they can blow up a satellite.
But here's the thing, Elon, whenhe has his pool constellation
out there, there could beupwards of 42,000 of these
satellites up in space. So howare you know, this

(23:39):
isn't like they're going afterone or two satellites, I could
see that. Were okay, we could goup there and take one out. But I
mean, when you got 42,000 ofthem, that's quite a bit, they
would almost need a starling,SpaceX vacuum cleaner to suck
all these things out of the sky.
Now, I'm not saying that theydon't have some kind of advanced

(24:00):
capability, I just think that itwould be very hard for them to
do that. Now, when they talkabout a soft mean, means what
they're talking about there isthat they would need to figure
out how to hack into them, andto disable them. And that is a
very real threat. We know thatChina and Russia have very

(24:23):
robust and very capable cyberoffensive operators and they do
conduct offensive cyberoperations all the time. So if
they did decide to come afterIlan satellite system, it would
have to be something like theysaid, a combination of a soft

(24:43):
and a hard means or anelectronic and a kinetic means
to disable them. But given allthe innovation of Starlink and
SpaceX, I rest assure that He'sdone at once, when the Russians
tried to do some hacking anddisabling of satellites, I'm

(25:04):
pretty confident that he's gotsome stuff up his sleeves, it's
going to keep that fromhappening. So we talked about
how the these regimes don't likethe information getting in and
out of their country. But that'sjust one part of it. You would
have to believe that the USgovernment is working with
SpaceX, to use their satellitesis a form of communications. And

(25:29):
when your any of my brothers andsisters that have been into the
war zones, you know, satellitephones work great, but they have
their limitations to them, youeither get delays or it's voice
traffic only. And so you'rereally relying on people on the
other end to give you the Intel.

(25:52):
And if you do have begansatellite system out in the
field with you, then it'susually kind of slow or can be
slow. But with Starlink andthese constellation have
completely encircling the earthI see this as a game changer for
the warfighter where they coulduse the Starlink system along

(26:14):
with the government encryptionthat they have to actually get
high speed data right into thepalm of the hands even while our
trucks and tanks are driving.
And that's really got to scarethese various governments
because it's one thing to have,you know, voice comms going back
and forth. But when you can takeand stream in real time what's

(26:36):
happening on the battlefield.
And then having real timeintelligence and telemetry
coming in on such a fast link.
That's got to be a game changerfor the warfighter. Moving
forward, Elon is talking aboutreleasing a phone, the Tesla

(26:57):
Model pi, which I think isawesome, because we all know,
all of us math, folks, pi is3.14. So this is the Tesla phone
3.14 Or the Tesla phone pie. Nowwith that, this is going to be a
consumer grade phone, they canutilize the Starlink system for

(27:18):
connectivity when cell towersaren't around. Now, if they're
going to put that into the handsof a normal citizen right there.
I mean, when we would see inGulf War and Afghanistan, or
news reporters are out there,the pictures would be grainy, or
they wouldn't necessarily be thelive shots, they would take in
film and then have to spendhours trying to upload on very

(27:41):
slow links. But now, you couldessentially pull out your phone
and stream that data. Well, ifthe civilians can do that, you
got to imagine there's probablysomething in the works where the
US government could utilize thattechnology. But then you're
gonna say, Well, wait a second,if the US government can do it,
why couldn't the othergovernments do that? Well,

(28:03):
that's why we're glad that Elonis a US citizen. And he's
probably going to take our sidein this and so he could shut
down, you know, those othergovernment phones, or they
probably just went new Starlinkbecause they know that is a US
based company, and wouldprobably give preferential
treatment in times of war to theUS government. So you put all

(28:28):
that together. And you can seewhere this is a real threat to
these oppressive regimes,they're going to have to figure
out a new way to keepinformation out of their country
or to control the informationgoing into their country. And
with that, we are at the bottomof the hour. I really appreciate
everybody riding along as wecruise the highways and byways

(28:53):
of not just cyberspace but ofouter space to this podcast was
done completely inside of myradio room, of which it's only
path of communication is viaStarlink. Wow, I never thought
the day would come. I rememberwhen I first saw the
advertisements for Starlink. Isigned up quickly and I got on

(29:16):
their waiting list. And man didI wait and wait and wait. I
think it was almost two years.
But that day has come and I cantell you the Starlink is here to
stay. And I look forward tousing it for many years. And you
know us Floridians are nostrangers to natural disasters.
So when hurricane season gets infull swing, it will be

(29:37):
interested to see how much werely on Starlink and how it
performs and I will make sure togive everybody an update. With
that. I want to say thank youvery much for tuning in. I will
see you here next week. Asalways, please send your
comments suggestions or gripesor complaints to Globalbob

(29:59):
[e-mail] or post on theFacebook group Globalbob show.
All right, until next time