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Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space

233 points · 553 comments · xnx

  1. neuronexmachina · · focus · HN ↗
    Whenever I hear about this I can&#x27;t help but be reminded of the Howard Hughes Glomar Explorer, where a hugely-expensive commercial project was actually part of a secret CIA initiative to recover a Soviet submarine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Glomar_Explorer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Glomar_Explorer

    I&#x27;m not sure that&#x27;s truly the case here, but it does seem like the tech Project Suncatcher is working on has at least some overlap with requirements for military SIGINT and in-orbit imagery processing.

    1. lopsotronic · · focus · HN ↗
      Yeah, no proof, of course (these are spies, at the end of the day . . . like with the Epstein stuff any written records have already been shot into the Sun), but that is a very evocative theory. It explains things better than anything else, given how this whole rigamarole seems to run afoul of some very basic math.

      There&#x27;s a case to be made that a substantial part of the mobile&#x2F;social web revolution of the Aughties was at least in part propelled by the exploding budget of the security state post-9&#x2F;11. LifeLog, In-Q-Tel, a bucket of other programs that have straight-line-relationships with the various Web 2.0 shenanigans. The CIA point man for these operations are recognizable today as some of the new generation of American semi-governmental oligarchs.

      This last year I read that the early Stingrays only worked because they were engineered in from the IMSI standards - it was backdoored at the spec level, not the design level, not the manufacturing level.

      When you step back a moment it makes sense. Who&#x27;s funding a wireless information infrastructure to every American on the continent, not to mention a sea change in mobile computing manufacturing and development. Different tooling, different design systems, different everything, massive scale . . . what, paid for with advertising? Are you saying Mad Men is paying for all this? That seemed and seems . . . unlikely.

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