Wait, why is the White House using Starlink to ‘improve Wi-Fi’?
(www.theverge.com)
from remington@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org on 19 Mar 2025 17:54
https://beehaw.org/post/18987651
from remington@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org on 19 Mar 2025 17:54
https://beehaw.org/post/18987651
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated the system was implemented “to enhance Wi-Fi connectivity on the complex,” citing poor cellular service in some areas and overloaded Wi-Fi networks. … instead the outlet writes that the White House is having its Starlink service piped from a government data center miles from the compound.
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Merchandising, merchandising! Where the real money from the coup is made!
Or so it can be turned off in later to sabatoge a more competent government.
“Let’s set aside the obvious conflict of interest and ethics questions at play here —” You can’t, and you shouldn’t.
"We can even skip over the security implications pointed out by a cybersecurity expert in the Times piece. " You can’t, and you shouldn’t.
“As a practical matter alone, there’s no obvious reason to add another ISP in order to improve Wi-Fi coverage” It doesn’t take an entire paragraph to figure out what’s going on here let alone an entire article.
As someone from north of the USA border… PLEASE stop this man from stealing your country, Americans.
Adding a second ISP can provide resiliency and ensure a critical infrastructure stays connected even when 1 ISP fails.
I would be surprised if the White House didn’t already have such resiliency.
My speculation is they just want to avoid red tape and circumvent the restriction and strict access control applied to existing connections.
The answer is easy. Corruption.
Because it's all computer
You... don't want to know (if you know what's good for you, capiche?:-P)
Elon is securing those government contracts!
They could have easily made up an excuse like “contingency in case of a terrorist attack where national infrastructure is damaged” or something that’s actually believable and feasible, lol
They’re letting the terrorism button cool off a bit, considering its basically not been let up since September 2001.
It’s a military fortress housing the head of one of the most militaristic nations on Earth. It has redundancies.
I think it would make more sense if (their excuse was that) this was just another redundancy
There are so many better options to whatever they said, like there are so many better options for a properly run government. These days I just assume this is how the the US people (as a whole, I know many do not want this) want their government run, which is troubling but expected nowadays, unfortunately.
Something no IT professional has ever said: “let’s improve the Wi-Fi quality by putting the router 500km away”.
The cool air in the upper atmosphere cleans the waves, though. Obviously that doesn’t work horizontally, everybody knows that.