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“Commercial space” is playing a significant role in the war in Ukraine and will undoubtedly do so again in the future.
The diversity of the industry’s capabilities are on full display with everything from commercial imaging and remote sensing to radio signal monitoring and more. Unsurprisingly, the demand for these types of capabilities has surged and the government surged its acquisition of such capabilities, more than doubling the procurement in the run-up to the war.
Beyond the government, journalists, activists, open source intelligence analysts, and more all sought the high-resolution image and data sets commercial companies like Blacksky, Planet, and Maxar were able to provide on short notice. The panoply of satellites in orbit meant frequent overflights of key targets, allowing rapid verification of claims or debunking of propaganda. HawkEye 360 tracked Russian activities on-orbit as well as radio and GPS jamming on-the-ground while the aforementioned imaging companies helped identify Russian war crimes, such as those which occurred around Bucha. Investigating and prosecuting such crimes will never be the same.
Space companies are becoming more active participants. Their work has geopolitical and national security implications. Hackers targeted Viasat terminals in Ukraine to deny the country satellite broadband. Elon Musk’s Starlink sent “thousands” of its own terminals to Ukraine to connect to the company’s growing internet broadband network.
This is a particularly important point on which to reflect. While analysts and researchers have long considered the potential targeting of commercial companies or their services in an active conflict, this is perhaps the first time in the 21st century when those companies were engaged in an inter-state war.
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The more technology advances, the more ways it can be used for good, but also ways that it will be abused. And some predict its only a matter of time till the artificial intelligence becomes smarter than us…
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