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Chinese military researchers say Starlink could threaten China’s national security.
Chinese military researchers have called for the development of a “hard kill” weapon to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system if it threatens China’s national security.
The researchers drew attention to Starlink‘s “huge potential for military applications” and the need for China to develop countermeasures to surveil, disable or even destroy the growing satellite megaconstellation. Their paper was published last month in the journal China’s Modern Defense Technology. A translated copy of the paper is available here(opens in new tab).
Starlink is a broadband satellite internet network developed by Musk’s SpaceX company that aims to beam internet access to customers anywhere in the world (as long as they have a Starlink satellite dish to connect to the satellites). Since the first Starlink satellites were launched in 2019, SpaceX has put more than 2,300 of them into low-Earth orbit, and the company plans to send up to 42,000 satellites into space to form a gigantic megaconstellation.
