I would think this would be sufficient which the USDA already does.
>... the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which conducts research on crop yields, invasive species, plant genetics and other agricultural issues. The USDA instructed employees to stop agency researchers from collaborating on or publishing papers with scientists from “countries of concern,” including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.
There have been incidents in academia of researchers accepting funds from the US government for projects and also accepting money from foreign governments but not disclosing it. Or even lying about it when asked. I think the USDA situation is different.
I know, right? Look at this, what Liv Ullman said. https://deadline.com/2026/01/norwegian-star-liv-ullmann-comm... I don’t understand what Liz Ullmann means here. The Nobel people said the prize can’t be revoked, shared, or transferred so it is just the gold medal that María Corina Machado gave to Trump. It is a very nice medal to have! But it isn’t anything to get upset about if she chooses to give her medal to someone. Norway isn’t going to invade the USA to get it back.
>“I’m Norwegian, we give a Nobel Prize to somebody who deserved it and suddenly that Nobel Prize is going to somebody else. It’s so strange, so strange and that’s why I’m happy specifically now that we have laws that say that if you misuse the Nobel Prize we take it away from you. Somebody in power in the United States may be disappointed. He will lose it… I am happy.”
Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez (born 18 May 1969) is a Venezuelan lawyer, diplomat, and politician who has served as the acting president of Venezuela since 3 January 2026, after the United States captured and de facto removed President Nicolás Maduro from power.
But you're right she is not the Nobel laureate. Quite an embarrassing brainfart from my side, possibly instigated by the fact that Machado would have been president now, if not for her obstinacy...
>The fact that critical infrastructure (e.g. utility companies using satellite links for remote-operated SCADA) was exposed is really scary too.
Really serious security risks in critical/industrial infrastructure are ... numerous. And these aren't complex vulnerabilities, these are leaving the door open with default passwords, unencrypted traffic, and that sort of thing.
The landing page has a Q&A. This is the relevant part of the response to the question, "Why aren't all GEO satellite links encrypted?"
>Encryption imposes additional overhead to an already limited bandwidth, decryption hardware may exceed the power budget of remote, off-grid receivers, and satellite terminal vendors can charge additional license fees for enabling link-layer encryption. In addition, encryption makes it harder to troubleshoot network issues and can degrade the reliability of emergency services.
So, the only suggestion that there would be greater heat/energy if they did encryption by default is the part about decryption (receiver) hardware having limited power budgets in some cases. There's more than what I copy-and-pasted above, but the overall message is that lots of organizations haven't wanted to pay the direct costs of enabling encryption... although they should.
It's not a spacecraft issue. Encryption can be done at the ground stations, and mandated as part of the standards for interfsce equipment, just like with DOCSIS. There's nothing, physically, to stop you passing unencrypted traffic down your DOCSIS cable, if you wanted to make a nonstandard modem and send unencrypted traffic on your local physical segment of the network. But the rest of the network will refuse to talk to it.
The same could have easily been mandated for satellite links - no encryption, your packet won't get forwarded to the internet at the ground station, and any packets sent to you from the internet will be sent to you encrypted. And all this can be implementd without needing to touch the satellite itself, which will continue to forward what it sees as unencrypted traffic without any design changes. It could even have been implemented incrementally on existing running services, with old and new equipment working side-by-side, but all new ground stations required to support encryption, and with a sunset date for old equipment, and a rolling upgrade program.
DOCSIS got this right in 1999; the satellite industry has had 25 yeqrs to catch up.
At first I thought, same-old same-old, but I changed my mind halfway through. I like how the author, Elke, identifies the underlying similarities between e/acc and the AGI doomers. (By AGI doomers, I'm referring to many Less Wrong folks, NOT earnest people who worry about whether AI will cause 20% unemployment or if it is hype and they're being played).
I think pmarca may have had a change of heart about being on the e/acc side, but he certainly is associated with funding lots of AI startups, so that may be more relevant.
Also, after the SBF_FTX fiasco and association with effective altruism, I'm not sure if EA should be so strongly linked to the doomers as Elke does. This and my vague recall of what Andreessen says on Twitter are minor points. Elke wrote an insightful, clever post about AGI (and even AI without attaining AGI) as a form of eschatology.
P.S. My next stop will be to look for the 1999 book she mentioned for an earlier view of tech eschatology.
>... the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which conducts research on crop yields, invasive species, plant genetics and other agricultural issues. The USDA instructed employees to stop agency researchers from collaborating on or publishing papers with scientists from “countries of concern,” including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.
There have been incidents in academia of researchers accepting funds from the US government for projects and also accepting money from foreign governments but not disclosing it. Or even lying about it when asked. I think the USDA situation is different.
EDIT for my bad grammar
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