An American intelligence assessment found that the balloon used a commercially available U.S. network to communicate, primarily for navigation, U.S. officials say.
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.
This was probably the biggest intelligence coup of this century. Our intelligence agencies have extremely capable hacking capabilities. I’m sure they not only know the provider, they know the exact building down to the individual IP addresses of the PCs that data was transmitted to. If they get that, they will be able to trace all of the other activities that originated from that Chinese agency.
On top of that when the US was done it still shot it down and now has the hardware to analyze.
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?
Actually there is only one. The rest buy their services and say they are nationwide but are regional centric. Long lines weren’t really deregulated either.
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
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.
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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.
We should let them do this provided they only use Comcast and Sprint.
frontier
That just sounds like efficient design if you ask me.
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
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
Was Dishy mounted on top?
I thought the official announcement from the pentagon was it never sent any data?
You’re correct, it didn’t send any data, it sent data.
Ah yes of course, my apologies for the misunderstanding. I hate when a butt plug is the voice of reason, thank you for your service though.
This is what you get for not castrating them 25 years ago.
Make internet a utility already, fuck.
I really thought you were going somewhere else before I got to the second sentence.
This was probably the biggest intelligence coup of this century. Our intelligence agencies have extremely capable hacking capabilities. I’m sure they not only know the provider, they know the exact building down to the individual IP addresses of the PCs that data was transmitted to. If they get that, they will be able to trace all of the other activities that originated from that Chinese agency.
On top of that when the US was done it still shot it down and now has the hardware to analyze.
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.
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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.
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Mapping out network topology? Who knows.
Whatever the collected data was, it could have been sent to their satellites for long haul back home.
Well…how many nationwide internet suppliers could there be?
Three.
Thanks, deregulation.
Actually there is only one. The rest buy their services and say they are nationwide but are regional centric. Long lines weren’t really deregulated either.
Which one
AT&T of course.
I guess now we know why it stopped to hover over Starbucks for so long.
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
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.