And even if they did shut it down remotely, that could be construed as an unauthorized act of war.
Comment on Ubiquiti: The U.S. Tech Enabling Russia's Drone War
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 17 hours ago
Oh look, a hit piece put out by a media company that’s owned by a capital investment group that is shorting UIs stock…I wonder what this could be about?!
Ubi isn’t selling this stuff to the Russians and neither are their vendors. Their vendors, most of them in the article are from overseas, are selling them to middle-men who sell them to another middle-man who then physically gets the equipment into Russian hands where it potentially goes through ANOTHER middle man before its used by Russian troops. There’s almost no way to control that and if you read carefully the “legal experts” quoted toward the bottom of the article use some very careful language.
You can’t just “shut it down” either, although even the article notes that Ubi is trying. Most of the gear that’s getting into Russian military hands for use in the war is stuff that you have probably never used. It’s PowerBeam and NanoBeam product that’s most often used by WISPs, which makes sense because that’s precisely how Russian forces are using it. What the article isn’t telling you is that this stuff does NOT need hooked to the Cloud in order to function. In fact it doesn’t need Internet access at all and so there’s no way for Ubi to know where it’s being used or even that it’s been powered up!
Even if Ubi can tell that the equipment is powered on and in use they may not know where it’s at with sufficient accuracy or knowledge to do anything about it. The damn thing could be on the Internet via Starlink sitting in Pokrovsk. On December 1st, 2025 was a SL system with Ubi gear attached to it in Pokrovsk being operated by Russia or Ukraine? There’s literally no way for Ubi or anyone else to know.
As for Ubi doing more if you read the whole article you’ll find that more than a few of these bad distributors HAVE been caught and shut down across the globe which almost certainly means that Ubi is helping at some level.
In short the article looks bad but when you start breaking down the individual points it quickly falls apart, especially when the media company behind it has a monetary interest in sinking Ubiquiti’s stock.
PabloSexcrowbar@piefed.social 15 hours ago
Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social 10 hours ago
That’s not really true. If they wanted to, they could massively decrease the level of shipments that reach the russians. It’s not a priority for Ubiquiti.
It’s like with money laundering, it’s very difficult to control (I am talking in a general sense). Yet you’ll find that enabling money laundering for drug cartels is treated relatively seriously by major western financial institutions.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
I’m curious on how?
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
That’s… difficult in practice. Especially since the people involved in trying to circumvent sanctions and get this sort of shit to the Russians don’t just order things directly. In the interest of confusing and delaying legal repercussions for anyone involved, there tends to be lots of misdirection. To your point around money laundering: you’re kidding yourself if you think that sort of thing has been completely quashed.
Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social 9 hours ago
I understand. Nor am I naive enough to think it’s even possible to completely address money laundering or sanction workarounds.
It’s almost certain they have a lackadaisical (if not out right malicious) approach to limiting shipments that end up in russia. I am genuinely curious, is there a reason to believe otherwise?
rezifon@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Show your work