What products are most at risk. What are easiest to replace to reduce risk? Hardest to replace?
Internet, GPS, Electricity. Consider getting FRS, or go full-route and get your HAM license and a handheld. Consider LoRa-based Meshtastic devices (Lilygo T-Deck) - good for text communications, am unsure if they are dependent on GPS for their mesh capabilities though.
Sat up last night thinking about Mesh comms for the average Canadian who aren’t likely going to be running out to buy new products. As a back-up, I have Briar for groups and Bluetooth chat for 1-on-1, but wondering if there are any recommendations you or others may have that are 1) better and 2) a Canadian solution?
FRS radio’s for local use - get your HAM radio license for further range (LARC is great - they run a course each fall). But this is all new to me.
The cell phone network might be a day 0 target, but Cell phones would be left mostly untouched, they are easy to track/drone strike. Interference would only happen acutely for IED concerns or cqb operations
GPS/Satellite location would be jammed / disabled
Internet connections would be targeted, sea cables, microwave, etc
Electrical systems would be targeted.
Prioritize:
- electrical backups
- clean water backups
- communication backups (point to point fiber, lasers, microwave)
cell phone network
Oddly enough, there was a huge push a while back to prevent Huawei being used in the cell phone network as infrastructure, because it gave China a potential espionage route. No one was thinking “kill switch” during this discussion. And no one was considering US tech in this discussion as a risk either.
I wonder what percentage of Canadian cell phone infrastructure is American?
In a invasion we don’t have to think about software kill switches, each tower can be trivially destroyed.
I suppose I was presuming they wanted the infrastructure intact. Probably easier to shut off the power than to destroy the dam. But this all presumes they’re acting rationally. Invading Canada isn’t rational, so everything else is a question mark too.
Cell phone towers are not critical infrastructure, destroying them is just the cost of war.
Hydroelectric dams, nuclear power plants, anything that takes a long time to build, would be spared if the intent is to takeover.
Off the cuff invasion scenario:
- Jam all gps
- Multistike all air force and anti air installations
- Emp over military facilities
- Destroy key communication points
- Destroy power grid
- Mine all major roads (cluster mines from the air)
- Secure /disable nuclear assets
Cut the population off so they can’t organize, destroy the military, secure critical assets. Since most of the CA population lives within 100km of the boarder the only real pernicious worry will be submarines deployed and further afield military posts in the north.
GPS. The system can be turned off in specific regions (no idea how, it’s classified, but they’ve actually done it so it’s not just a wild notion), and portions of the signal are already encrypted such that they’re only available to the US military. There would be little stopping them from sending altered signals or just turning it off.
Many missile systems, aircraft and fighting vehicles rely on GPS to function as expected.
If you need a device for navigation - get something that supports other constellations (i.e. Galileo) rather than just GPS.
This is a fair take. However, it does presuppose that we would have sufficient missile systems, aircraft, or fighting vehicles that it would matter.
I have a lot of GNSS units that allow you to choose which networks they’re receiving (GPS, Glonass, Galileo, etc.). I’ve never tried to turn off GPS just to see – might be interesting as an experiment.
iPhones wouldn’t be that bad I don’t think. Cell/internet infrastructure would be much worse.
American vehicles would be harder to replace. We know Teslas can and have been remotely disabled in places where Tesla didn’t want them being used. I’d be surprised if the big three didn’t have remote killswitches in their vehicles already.
It’s not even a secret. Almost all modern cars do as part of remote service packages. It’s what let’s you ask them to unlock your car, do remote start via a phone app, or let’s the police request a remote shutdown of a stolen car.
Fix that by disconnecting the cellular antenna in the car and the telematics unit. You may need a bypass harness on some modern cars that “responds” to connectivity pings in the car’s canbus, but otherwise you can’t kill what’s not connected. :3
