Click Here A wrinkle in time: GPS jamming in Ukraine
9 snips
Mar 24, 2026 Anastasia Lepatina, a Ukraine fellow who reported from Kyiv on strikes and blackouts. She paints life under power cuts, how people rely on Starlink and batteries, and which repairs and government steps keep heat on. She also traces Russia’s evolving energy-targeting tactics and how timing attacks and improvised tech helped protect the grid.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
GPS Timing Is The Grid's Hidden Nervous System
- Modern power grids use GPS satellite clocks as a universal reference to synchronize operations across vast distances.
- When GPS timing disappears, industrial systems panic and automatically shut down to avoid catastrophic failures, causing widescale outages.
GPS Disruption Comes From Many Sources
- GPS interference is more common than expected, caused by accidental equipment, coastal defenses, and solar storms.
- These varied sources demonstrate that GPS vulnerability is both deliberate (jamming/spoofing) and environmental (solar weather).
Steakhouse Conversation Sparked The Fix
- Joe Marshall met a Ukrainian transmission delegation in a Palo Alto steakhouse and learned about battlefield damage and improvised repairs.
- The Ukrainians described welding transformers and MacGyvering parts after missiles and drones hit substations.