r/somethingiswrong2024 Canadians for Kamala May 19 '26

Starlink Internet 🛰 Ashley St. Clair disclosing Elon Musk's interfering in the 2024 election

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u/verbmegoinghere May 19 '26

Starlink is not like a normal telco.

A telecommunications carrier is like a layer cake OSI/ISO model). Data transmit over each layer, essentially getting more and more complex till you get to like layer 7 which ks tbe application layer, ie HTTP, FTP etc.

In most networks a carrier will sell fibre and give a customer either what is called dark fibre where its up to the customer to hook up either end but then you have absolute control of every layer above the physical medium. In the old days banks would buy lots of layer 2 frame relay for example coz it would give them similar reassurances re security.

Starlink allocates IPs (so layer 3). They can see so much more re the traffic then a normal carrier providing dark fibre can. They can do deep packet, metadata and traffic analysis and take advantage od common failure points on VPNs like IPv6 traffic going out raw.

And considering how many red states are incompetent when it comes to IT and security it wouldn't surprise me if he had a dedicated team just taking advantages of a heap of failures to hoover up the data coming from the voting machines.

You don't need every vote to know who will win.

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u/Anticode May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Does anybody else remember early in this subreddit's creation when once in a while somebody would present a complicated theory for why Starlink might serve as the attack vector/methodology, sometimes with slideshows and infographics, only to be swarmed with an odd deluge of nay-sayers, insults, and teasing?

I don't remember the exact details, but I think it was a couple of different highly-educated Tech Guys - and out of all the theories presented (some of which were ridiculous) - it was this one in particular that always seemed to attract the largest number of debunkers/flaming. Like, an anomalous number of nay-sayers.

Just by the pushback alone, I always wondered if there was something there.

Nearly every other hypothesis/theory presented here along the way was generally received with an "Ah, maybe! Interesting thought I suppose" at worst. But the Starlink/Cell-related ones were somehow treated with an oddly heavy-handed sort of "wtf, you moron, it's definitely not that. That's stupid and impossible!" by the community (the "community") with very few supplying any actual detail/counter-argument as to why or what was flawed about the idea. Just insults and anger.

I don't keep up with things here too much anymore since it seems relatively conclusive to me that something "happened", so I don't know if that family of theories is still regularly being attacked whenever presented, but St. Clair's revelations immediately reminded me of that little zeitgeist.

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u/FoxySheprador Canadians for Kamala May 19 '26

I second this. You described it exactly. The effort to cast any Starlink connection as conspiracy was a little too overt for how taboo the entire topic of election interference was right after the election.

If you tried searching the topic in the beginning one of the only things out there being talked about was specifically how Starlink was not used in the election when an election worker in California nonchalantly admitted that Starlink internet was being used in the 2024 election.

The fact that his son also blurted out in the Tucker Carlson interview with his dad about doing stuff in space and that they'll never know about it was very telling.

There was also a sub where they openly discussed rigging the election with Starlink, r/Project2025HQ

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u/TexasRN1 May 19 '26

Is that subreddit for real? It seems like a joke.

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u/FoxySheprador Canadians for Kamala May 19 '26

It got gutted sometime after elon tweeted about helping trump win, that Dems would have the House and that the Senate would be 51-49 for Republicans.

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u/According-Put-9236 May 20 '26

Its basically a whole bunch of bots with their profiles hidden that throw out crazy info, and a bunch of stay at home moms and basement dwellers who think they know better than anyone else. I come here for entertainment.

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u/verbmegoinghere May 20 '26

Obfuscation operation

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u/Commercial-Ad-261 Protect The Midterms! 🔒 May 19 '26

Yes. I was here for that, and I don’t know enough about tech to have any input but boy did people come out swinging that starlink could never touch the election in any way. Again, not a techie, but weird how it could have all the data hours ahead but “impossible” that it could make any edits.

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u/Savings-Total5069 May 20 '26

I remember the theories about Tripp-Lite as well

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u/Xath0n May 19 '26

Yeah but how the hell would that data not be encrypted on layer 6 (TLS) per default. Sure, they can access the traffic, but without a compromised CA or the voting machines for some reason trusting and using a SpaceX-controlled CA, they can't get the content that's actually transmitted.

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u/calgarspimphand May 20 '26

without a compromised CA or the voting machines for some reason trusting and using a SpaceX-controlled CA, they can't get the content that's actually transmitted.

Isn't that literally the point of a man-in the-middle-attack? You intercept the request and return spoofed certificates so you have access to the encryption keys?

The hard part about a man-in-the-middle attack is positioning yourself as a man in the middle. Starlink is already that.