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U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 170 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago

It could have even been one of those multi SIM router things that has network redundancy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Mapping out network topology? Who knows.

Whatever the collected data was, it could have been sent to their satellites for long haul back home.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It’s a satellite provider. Cell networks don’t work at that altitude. Starlink was my first guess too but, after some more thought, it could be Hughesnet. They probably have wider coverage.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Yeah, their coverage is hughe

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Y U G E N E T

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

So are their pings

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Hugh Mungous

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Probably Hughesnet or Viasat.