Re: Odd - China Building "Space Supercomputer"

On 6/4/25 7:21 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:

   My concern is not with the underlying TECH- but
   the underlying INTENT.

 The driving force now is probably military applications. Various
autonomous fighting machines in Ukraine have shown the usefullness
of Starlink in wartime, and that's prompted China to renew work on
building an internet constellation of their own. Then, this AI
constellation might be useful for efficiently processing all the
data from thousands of drones swarming over our heads come WWIII.
But it's too early to tell where they'll really go with that.

   However, this does not seem to be another StarLink ... that
   is not what they're talking about. China already has lots
   of comm sats - and likely the codes to take over StarLink
   and friends in a pinch.

   You don't invest THIS much without INTENT.

 It's not clear how much they've invested at this stage, having only
launched the first 12 satellites of the planned thousands. These
announcements are prone to vapour-ware, there was the Chinese
"LinkSure" company in 2018 who were launching a free global
internet constellation like what Starlink's became:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-30/chinese-company-to-provide-free-internet-worldwide-by-2026/10568434
 There's not much news since, that I can find, but this page claims
it's cancelled:
https://www.newspace.im/constellations/linksure
 But there are new Chinese Starlink clone projects that are gaining
more traction now:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/china-orbits-first-guowang-internet-satellites-with-thousands-more-to-come/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guowang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianfan

   China, of course, wants more global net. However the
   means to THAT is much simpler than this project. WHY
   create a cluster super-computer in orbit ?