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What’s new: A comprehensive article in Wired that discusses the need for government leadership a lot more than most similar pieces.
Why it’s important: Government leaders’ concern, and most importantly action, are the only way the U.S. or any other nation will be able to address this problem.
What else to know: The article quotes a senior official from the Biden administration and proclamations from the last and current Trump administrations. Yet we have not seen significant actions to address the problem.
GPS jamming and spoofing attacks are on the rise. If the global navigation system the US relies on were to go down entirely, it would send the world into unprecedented chaos.
Around 12,500 miles above our heads, the satellites that make up the Global Positioning System (GPS) quietly keep the world running. A blackout would result in almost instantaneous chaos.
“You would see traffic jams, a lot more traffic accidents, because transportation is going to see the first most immediate impact,” says Dana Goward, the founder of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a charity which works to strengthen GPS.
Thousands of planes in the air, which use GPS among other systems for navigation and precision landing, would face a wave of uncertainty. Then other critical parts of society—from financial transactions to energy production systems—which have come to rely upon the precision positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) provided by the US-owned constellation of 31 GPS satellites may start to stutter. The ripples would be felt around the world.
