Are we really doing this?
The Pentagon is so starved for bandwidth that it’s paying a Chinese satellite firm to help it communicate and share data.
U.S. troops operating on the African continent are now using the recently-launched Apstar-7 satellite to keep in touch and share information. And the $10 million, one-year deal lease — publicly unveiled late last week during an ordinarily-sleepy Capitol Hill subcommittee hearing — has put American politicians and policy-makers in bit of a bind. Over the last several years, the U.S. government has publicly and loudly expressed its concern that too much sensitive American data passes through Chinese electronics — and that those electronics could be sieves for Beijing’s intelligence services. But the Pentagon says it has no other choice than to use the Chinese satellite. The need for bandwidth is that great, and no other satellite firm provides the continent-wide coverage that the military requires.
I mean, we are really doing this, obviously. I wonder if we are really being this stupid to gamble on the sanctity of commercial contracts in China.
Normally, if we had more bandwidth needs that assets, I'd suggest we prioritize bandwidth needs to match satellite assets and use alternate means of communications and data sharing until we can get more bandwidth from safer sources.
After all, even if the Chinese don't read a single bit of data, just seeing where the traffic is from and where it goes will provide a wealth of information about our Africa operations. A surge of communications from the Horn region? Perhaps the Americans are preparing for a big mission there. Perhaps China's friends in Sudan might be warned to watch out.
The other obvious explanation is that we are aware of the Chinese ability to glean information from this contract and we want to feed them bogus information.
I'd really like to believe the latter explanation is the real one. But experience tells me the simplest explanation is correct--we really are being that stupid.
