All right, here we go. It is that time of the week. Again, for the global Bob Show Globalbob Show, we are the crossroad of technology and politics. This week, we got a real special topic in store for you all pretty excited about this particular podcast. This one is titled Starlink, the ultimate weapons in fighting oppressive regimes. I know that's a lot to take in. But we're going to unpack it and explain just how effective Starlink is in modern war. And also for the free flow of information. I like to thank everybody that tunes into the show each week, I do this show for you all. And without the support of my listeners, then why would I even do this, but you can reach out to me at Globalbob show on Twitter. Or you can reach me on my Gmail account Globalbob show@gmail.com. And we also have a Facebook page Globalbob Show. Once again, I like to thank everybody the stats, I look at him each week, and the show was growing. We're even getting some international listeners, which is really cool. And I just want to thank everybody again, like I said, this is episode number 12. And if you listen to the podcast from the first episode, all the way through this one that's almost six hours a Globalbob. Alright, let's get into this. So what is Starlink? Well, Starlink is a company that is part of SpaceX. And we all know the owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk, a very brilliant man who has brought us the Tesla car. He's also brought us rocket ships that's got the us back into the space game. He's got very ambitious plans is going to take us to the moon and Mars. And this is his answer to the internet. Now Starlink has about 2200 satellites up in space. And they're planning on this gen one to be about 4408 satellites. But when this is all said and done, they're talking about having 42,000 satellites up in space. Now that's just absolutely amazing. All these satellites that are up there now this version one satellites are they weigh about 573 575 pounds, and the roughly the size of your coffee table. Now these things are whizzing around the earth. And what the basic way that they work is is that they have ground stations all over the world. And as the satellites whiz by your house or your location where you have the ground terminal, and then your ground terminal or antenna outside, it sends a signal up to the satellite and the satellite repeats that signal and it comes down to one of the ground stations. Now where I'm at here in Florida, there's a couple ground stations, I think there's like four or five here in Florida for our area. But these satellites they whizzed by, and they're doing about 17,000 miles an hour, which that's pretty dang fast. So what I want you to understand is the satellites that you're connected to this isn't like your direct TV, or even some of y'all that have via set, these satellites are always whizzing by. And so at any time looking at my Starlink terminal, it's tracking about four to five satellites. So it uses one as a primary and when that one whizzes by, and it automatically go to the next one. And also, it'll go from different ground stations. So basically, this is what they call bent pipe technology. And bent pipe technology with satellites means that the satellite has to see the antenna and the satellite has to see the ground station. And so these satellites, like said they're doing 17,000 miles an hour, which is pretty fast. And it takes about 90 minutes for them to circle the Earth. So that one satellite that's over your house that's providing you with internet within 90 minutes. It could go all the way around the earth and provide all kinds of people with internet which is really cool. So the little antenna on the ground. I don't know if you guys have seen these or not, but they're very small and this is going to come out later in the podcast. tear, you know, they're very small, they're only about, you know, 19 inches by 12 inches, and they weigh about nine pounds. And they have a router that's built into them. And when you get the package, I'm quite confident that just about anybody could install one of these things. I mean, they are pretty much plug and play. So they're very easy to set up. It even comes with a little wireless router. And you can't do anything wrong, because there's only two little ports on the bottom one's a power port and one hooks to the antenna. So to summarize it, these things are cheap, easy to install. Very fast, internet wise, I've seen mine go up as high as four or 500 megabits per second, whenever I was doing a speed test, and so that's a that's pretty good quality. Now, there are other satellite systems. Now Elon is always on the forefront of technology. And, but there have been satellite systems throughout the years. And probably some of my listeners that are in rural areas are pretty familiar with these. These are the ones by via sat, and HughesNet. And, you know, they're harder to set up most of these, they won't let you set them up yourself. You know, when my Starlink package arrived, it came via FedEx, and about 10 minutes later, it was really nothing to do just kind of put it out in the yard and plug it in. Now you got to fish your wires around. But these other ones like via set and HughesNet, they're pretty, pretty complicated to set up. Maybe complicated is not the right word, but they can be very finicky. And they have to be set up by a professional installer. Now, in my course of work I was certified for via set. So I know just how much it takes to get these things on the right bird as we call it in the industry or the right satellite. And then you have to have some very, very fine adjustments. So it's not like the Starlink, where you can just set it out in the yard. And it connect up. Now you can get with HughesNet. And via set these portable packages, I had one on my bus at one time, very expensive, like eight to $10,000 for it. And it has to be put on by a professional installer. And basically when I went somewhere, I could park and push the button and it would automatically find the satellite. But like I said the very expensive set, I think Starlink call ends about $700. Now the monthly fee on it is some people say it's expensive. I don't think it's that bad. It's about $110, I think a month. And if you wanted the portable package where you could take it anywhere that you can get Starlink I think it's extra 25. So I think all in if you have what they call their portable package, or RV package is what they call it, it comes out to be about $135 a month. So via sat and Hughes. They're pretty expensive. You know, I think they're a little more expensive than this. But that's what we've had for most of the years. And we know that when the thunderstorms come and heavy fog the via sat in the huge net cut out. Now Starlink one of the reasons why it to me, I think that it does a lot better. And the Florida weather here is because the satellites are so much closer to the earth. With the Starlink satellite you're looking at about I think they're about 275, maybe 300 miles. But don't get too fixated on how close they are just know they're very close to the Earth where these other ones are about 22,000 miles out in space. And so it takes a lot to go from your house with via sat and Hughes you're going 22,000 miles up in space. It's turning around and coming down back to its ground station. So that's another 22,000. So that's a 44,000 mile round trip that that signal had to make. And with the Starlink I mean, it's only going maybe, you know, say 350 miles up 300 feet, that's a 700 mile that's not very far at all. So that's why I think you can punch through the clouds. Now Elon is not the only one that has this idea of these mega constellations. There's another one out there and I think they're bankrupt. It's called a one Webb, which they had a ideas to four mega constellation. And then you got Bezos with his Amazon project coupler, Kepler, Kepler. Now, neither one of these I think of went into production yet where you can actually sign up for it as you can with Starlink. So I want to start you off with a quote here that kind of resonates. Whoever controls the media controls the mind. Now that's pretty powerful. And we're seeing that play out now in Russia and the Ukraine. And when the Russians went into the Ukraine, first thing that they attempted to do was to control the internet in the Ukraine and either shut it down, or reroute the internet through Russia, so they could monitor it and use that as Intel. So when countries do this, they do it for two reasons. One, they want to make sure that their narrative is the one that plays out in front of people. So they could do things like block Western sights of which Russia started doing in their own country. Therefore, when they tell the citizens how they're winning the war, and give them information that their only source that information is from the Russian government. And when they tried to control the internet inside of the Ukraine, it's the same thing. They could have the websites that the Ukrainians could go to, let's say the Ukrainians tried to go to www.cnn.com, or Fox news.com. Now, the Russians could intercept that and reroute it to their website. Therefore, they could get you know, pictures in front of the Ukrainians. Of course, they'll know this not the real Fox News or the real CNN. But they do that put pictures in front of them and media in front of them to talk about how they're winning the war and how they should lay down arms. So in the intel community, we would call this Psyops or Psychological warfare. Now, the Ukrainians would know that this is going on, obviously, and the Russian people inside of the Russian Federation would also know because they're smart people that they're receiving a bunch of propaganda. And there are other ways besides the internet to get information in and out of the country. But the thing is, is that with shortwave radio, they could tune in and listen to the voice of America, which is broadcast all around the world. Also, the BBC is broadcast. But those radio stations that come in on those frequencies, it's pretty simple to block. There's very mature ways of blocking radio waves that come in. There's also through telephone lines, they could take and try to call people and get the news. And this also became pretty popular at one time, or phone numbers that 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 wayside, but there are still some underground ones today, however, the Russians could figure out those phone numbers. And because they control the telecommunications inside of both countries, they could inadvertently shut that down. So the traditional ways of getting information in and out of countries, that it's pretty simple to block and or shut down. But now here comes this guy from South Africa. And his name is Elon Musk. And he's like, wait a second, I have these Starlink terminals, they're blocking the traditional fiber optic lines are rerouting them and, and stuff. Why don't I just send a bunch of Starlink terminals to the Ukraine. And that's exactly what he did. And this actually made the Russians pretty upset. And they tried to do what they call electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, of which Starlink here's a private company was able to combat against that, which I thought was amazing. Now, why can the Ukraine use Starlink, and the ground terminals not be in the Ukraine? Well, when these Starlink satellites come over, there's a footprint that they they have. And the footprint is about a 300 mile diameter. And so with that 300 mile diameter, that means some countries like they could have a download station or downlink inside a Poland. And even though the star link is inside of the Ukraine, then the ground station is in a safe area. Now with version one, this is very much the way these work with that bent pipe technology. And so when you think about the countries that restrict satellite communications like India, China, Russia, Burma slash Miramar and Cuba. The Starlink terminals pose a really big threat to them. Because someone inside the country could have one of these terminals. Remember I said they're only about 19 inches by 12 inches, so very small, that can be hidden very easily. And say, our brothers and sisters in Cuba, if we could get these in the hands of the Cuban people, then there's a Starlink downlink in Miami, and so they could very easily win no problem get internet in and out of Cuba. And the dictators don't like this because these terminals are easy to identify, which does have me worried. Because you can use frequency finding technology, which in ham radio, we've done this. And if any of you all are pilots out there, you do this all the time when you're using vo Rs. So this terminals, while they're easy to find, they're very hard to block. Now, whenever I say they block radio waves, like they do with shortwave, that's because there's one frequency that's out there a couple of frequencies, these satellites use many, many frequencies. And there's a lot of other things that are inside those frequency bands. And so it'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 block Starlink, they would have to basically find all the frequencies and jam them all at the same time. But you know, that's just really not feasible. So probably the way that they'll go about combating these are trying to identify them, and then going and arresting the people that are running these. Now the reason why this would work good and cube on some of the smaller countries is because of that footprint of version one satellites, version two satellites, and I'm probably messing this up, it could be version one, five, but basically the next generation of Starlink is going to be a lot bigger. Bird, as we call satellites up in the sky, it's going to be a lot bigger, and it's going to have capabilities called inter stellar switching. Now, that's a pretty cool name. I've always like saying that interstellar switching and Interstellar switching is basically a way for one satellite to beam to another satellite, before it goes down to a ground station. Remember the bent pipe technology, it basically goes up repeats and comes down, has about a 300 mile diameter footprint. But with interstellar switching. Now, the folks that are in Russia and China, they don't necessarily just have to be on the fringe of the country to get this service. Now they can be anywhere in the country. Because if they can have a bird fly over and they can get the signal up to the bird, that bird will automatically redistribute that traffic until it finds an appropriate ground station. So there's some in Australia, there's some in New Zealand, so I could very easily see where there could be through interstellar switching people or users in these countries that are connecting to the bird above and then it go 1000s and 1000s of miles away till it hits a ground station. Now that's some pretty neat stuff. And it really tips these have pressure regimes on their head. Because they've always thought just like in China, while will control the internet through the Great Firewall of China, we will block VPN technology, we will block Voice over IP like Skype. And so they do everything they can so any of the information coming in and out of the countries they control. Now, when you think about this, this isn't being done by the US government, this is being done by a private person with a corporation. And so with that, there's this expectation of these private corporations, of course, they gotta have the permission of their host government. But they can put these satellites up and say, Hey, we can control where they go. They're orbiting around Earth and if someone uses it, they can use it. Now in the past, I've talked about some of the satellite technology that I use for communications, and I think it was Holloway back in podcast number one, but I use Inmarsat and I use Iridium now. My iridium and Inmarsat may not work in some of these countries that I've talked about before Russia, China, India, but it's not because it technically cannot work there. It's because Inmarsat and iridium are wanting to the countries to use their products. So they cut a deal with that country and say, Okay, we will provide you service Russia with our Iridium phones, but we will block anybody that tries to use an Iridium phone from using it. So the Iridium phone just like the star link, it has a GPS in it. And so they do that. So the government will allow them to have some kind of coverage in there. But Starlink and Elon is aggressive as he is, I doubt that he would do that. I think that he believes in the free flow of information enough. And he understands that we got to get the people the information, that's not propaganda. So yes, Elon would have the means to restrict the Starlink terminals wherever he wants, because there are GPS as in these terminals. But I don't think he will. And then that's why, really, the regimes are kind of upset with him. I mean, he's tweeted out before that, you know, he he knows that, especially Russia is because now he can get the citizens to have unfiltered unbiased connectivity into those countries. And what a game changer that is. I mean, we see in wars before the Russian Ukrainian war, that's the first thing you do. When we went into Iraq, then, US spiders were bombing cell towers, and they were taken out communications. But now how do you do that when a satellite is 350 miles overhead, the terminals can be installed by anybody that's plug and play. And once that satellite signal is up, off and into space, then it's very hard to jam. Well, I can tell you, this has gotten the Chinese so worried that they have actually put out a paper a few days ago, and it talks about how they need to find a way to combat Starlink. Now, I think that's amazing. You know, before, we've always seen kind of behind the scenes, this company is manufacturing something for the government. And so we got to figure out how to hack into there. But this is the first time that I really feel like where a government has set publicly, their sights on a private corporation or commercial Corporation, non government corporation. And in the paper, they published it. Now I did get a translated copy before it was pulled down off the Chinese website. But it says they got to have both hard and soft means to combat Starlink. And in the industry, when they say hard means that means how could they physically disrupt the satellites, and China has lasers, China has other ways that they have demonstrated that they can blow up a satellite. But here's the thing, Elon, when he has his pool constellation out there, there could be upwards of 42,000 of these satellites up in space. So how are you know, this isn't like they're going after one or two satellites, I could see that. Were okay, we could go up there and take one out. But I mean, when you got 42,000 of them, 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 they don't have some kind of advanced capability, I just think that it would be very hard for them to do that. Now, when they talk about a soft mean, means what they're talking about there is that they would need to figure out how to hack into them, and to disable them. And that is a very real threat. We know that China and Russia have very robust and very capable cyber offensive operators and they do conduct offensive cyber operations all the time. So if they did decide to come after Ilan satellite system, it would have to be something like they said, a combination of a soft and a hard means or an electronic and a kinetic means to disable them. But given all the innovation of Starlink and SpaceX, I rest assure that He's done at once, when the Russians tried to do some hacking and disabling of satellites, I'm pretty confident that he's got some stuff up his sleeves, it's going to keep that from happening. So we talked about how the these regimes don't like the information getting in and out of their country. But that's just one part of it. You would have to believe that the US government is working with SpaceX, to use their satellites is a form of communications. And when your any of my brothers and sisters that have been into the war zones, you know, satellite phones work great, but they have their limitations to them, you either get delays or it's voice traffic only. And so you're really relying on people on the other end to give you the Intel. And if you do have began satellite system out in the field with you, then it's usually kind of slow or can be slow. But with Starlink and these constellation have completely encircling the earth I see this as a game changer for the warfighter where they could use the Starlink system along with the government encryption that they have to actually get high speed data right into the palm of the hands even while our trucks and tanks are driving. And that's really got to scare these various governments because it's one thing to have, you know, voice comms going back and forth. But when you can take and stream in real time what's happening on the battlefield. And then having real time intelligence and telemetry coming in on such a fast link. That's got to be a game changer for the warfighter. Moving forward, Elon is talking about releasing a phone, the Tesla Model pi, which I think is awesome, because we all know, all of us math, folks, pi is 3.14. So this is the Tesla phone 3.14 Or the Tesla phone pie. Now with that, this is going to be a consumer grade phone, they can utilize the Starlink system for connectivity when cell towers aren't around. Now, if they're going to put that into the hands of a normal citizen right there. I mean, when we would see in Gulf War and Afghanistan, or news reporters are out there, the pictures would be grainy, or they wouldn't necessarily be the live shots, they would take in film and then have to spend hours trying to upload on very slow links. But now, you could essentially pull out your phone and stream that data. Well, if the civilians can do that, you got to imagine there's probably something in the works where the US government could utilize that technology. But then you're gonna say, Well, wait a second, if the US government can do it, why couldn't the other governments do that? Well, that's why we're glad that Elon is a US citizen. And he's probably going to take our side in this and so he could shut down, you know, those other government phones, or they probably just went new Starlink because they know that is a US based company, and would probably give preferential treatment in times of war to the US government. So you put all that together. And you can see where this is a real threat to these oppressive regimes, they're going to have to figure out a new way to keep information out of their country or to control the information going into their country. And with that, we are at the bottom of the hour. I really appreciate everybody riding along as we cruise the highways and byways of not just cyberspace but of outer space to this podcast was done completely inside of my radio room, of which it's only path of communication is via Starlink. Wow, I never thought the day would come. I remember when I first saw the advertisements for Starlink. I signed up quickly and I got on their waiting list. And man did I wait and wait and wait. I think it was almost two years. But that day has come and I can tell you the Starlink is here to stay. And I look forward to using it for many years. And you know us Floridians are no strangers to natural disasters. So when hurricane season gets in full swing, it will be interested to see how much we rely on Starlink and how it performs and I will make sure to give everybody an update. With that. I want to say thank you very much for tuning in. I will see you here next week. As always, please send your comments suggestions or gripes or complaints to Globalbob show@gmail.com or post on the Facebook group Globalbob show. All right, until next time