Starlink’s role in Ukraine war sets China thinking about hurdles to its possible seizure of Taiwan

LONDON – Arrests of people accused of spying for China are by now quite common in Europe.

In January alone, a senior Greek military officer was held on charges of transferring top-secret documents to China. And in the Czech Republic, a Chinese newspaper correspondent was nabbed on similar suspicions.

But it is the

recent arrest of two Chinese nationals

in France that has caught the attention of European intelligence agencies and defence experts.

The alleged activities of the two, who were formally indicted and placed in pre-trial detention in Paris on Feb 5, may reveal a great deal about the importance China’s intelligence community places on space-based communications satellites, and particularly on the Starlink internet constellation owned by Mr Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person.

The curious, twisted story started on Jan 10, when the two Chinese citizens arrived in France, claiming that they were planning to stay for less than two weeks. They declared on their visa applications that they worked as engineers for a company specialising in the research and development of wireless communications equipment.

Using Airbnb, the two rented a house with a garden in the Gironde region of south-western France. So far, hardly unusual. Home to the world-renowned Bordeaux wines, the region is a magnet for tourists.

Only that the two Chinese nationals appear to have had no interest in sightseeing. Instead, they spent all their time in the rented property, erecting a 2m-wide satellite dish in the garden.

According to the official version released by the French authorities, the owner of the property, who lives nearby, was not amused by the appearance of the satellite dish and alerted the police.

“Police officers launched a discreet investigation, gathered information on site, and verified the occupants’ identities,” claims a report aired on TF1, France’s premier TV news channel.

“As troubling evidence accumulated, the case was transferred to the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI). The service quickly concluded that the suspicions of espionage were serious enough to warrant action,” said TF1’s report. DGSI is France’s domestic counter-espionage agency.

In all likelihood, the official version of events tells only part of the story. For even if the original tip-off came from the owner of the property, other clues suggest that DGSI interceptions and electronic scans performed by France’s National Frequency Agency, the body that manages all the public wireless transmission domains, alerted the authorities to what the two Chinese nationals were alleged to be doing.

The apparent activation of the satellite dish at the Airbnb property also coincided with a major internet outage throughout the region, yet another development that attracted the attention of French counter-espionage agents.

Once alerted, French police lay in wait to arrest potential accomplices. Two additional individuals, whose nationalities remain unknown, were taken into custody when they allegedly attempted to deliver more communications equipment to the rented property.

Either way, French security officials believe they know what the Chinese nationals were up to.

“They were carrying out a mission to capture satellite data from the Starlink network and data from entities of vital importance, including military, in order to transmit them to their country of origin, China,” the Paris Prosecutor’s Office stated. If convicted, the accused face jail sentences of up to 15 years.

The two Chinese, who have yet to be named, strenuously deny the charges. “My client stayed in France for strictly professional reasons. He totally denies the accusations made against him and has no connection with any spy service,” Mr Baptiste Bellet, lawyer for one of the Chinese nationals, told AFP, France’s national news agency.

Why is China interested in Starlink?

No date has been set for the trial, and the authorities have not released any further evidence. Still, the accusations against the two coincide with indications from other sources that Chinese intelligence services are deeply interested in the infrastructure operated by Starlink, and particularly in technologies to jam the company’s services.

Starlink’s military and strategic importance became evident in February 2022, when Russia launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine. The Russians were hoping to decapitate the Ukrainian leadership and seize large parts of the country in a lightning strike, which included paralysing Ukraine’s government communications and the country’s internet infrastructure.

Unbeknown to the Russians,

however, Western intelligence services helped Ukraine migrate all its government electronic records and services to cloud platforms, and Starlink ensured that Ukraine’s internet infrastructure remained operational.

The result is that not only did the Ukrainian government continue to function normally, but the Russians also failed to impose an internet blackout. This boosted both the morale of ordinary Ukrainians and the country’s resilience.

Starlink’s crucial role in the Ukraine war has attracted the attention of Chinese military planners for obvious reasons: Any Chinese plan to seize Taiwan by force would also include the imposition of an internet blackout on the island, partly to render any resistance much more difficult, and partly to prevent information on what would happen inside Taiwan from galvanising global public opinion.

But if Starlink, with its constellation of low-orbit satellites, were to make any future internet blackout impossible, plans for a swift seizure of Taiwan could become much more difficult to contemplate.

The Journal Of International Security Studies, a bimonthly publication sponsored by the Beijing-based University of International Relations, which is linked to China’s Ministry of State Security, frequently prints articles by Chinese defence scholars warning about Starlink’s supposedly grave strategic challenge.

Starlink’s vulnerabilities and opportunities

Chinese security analysts also worry that Starlink enhances US intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, potentially reducing the survivability of China’s nuclear deterrent, which relies heavily on road-mobile missiles.

But there are also indications that Chinese scientists have successfully used Starlink satellite signals to detect stealth aircraft during radar experiments, thereby potentially exploiting the network’s signals for Beijing’s purposes.

Be that as it may, China’s interest in exploring Starlink’s vulnerabilities and opportunities remains beyond doubt. And confusing Western intelligence services by intercepting the US company’s communications from the territory of a Western country, such as France, makes perfect sense.

It remains to be seen whether the French authorities will proceed with the trial of the two Chinese suspects or whether, as often happens in such affairs, they will simply send them back to China in exchange for some Western agents charged with similar activities.

Still, next time you tour Bordeaux’s famous vineyards, watch out for any suspicious satellite dishes.