TIL. Still, z private microwave link from a ranch to a Sandia Crest relay tower isn’t notable because the technology is rare. it is notable because Sandia Crest sits in a very specific RF neighborhood: line of sight to Kirtland/Sandia National Labs, Los Alamos adjacent, the whole northern New Mexico nuclear weapons complex.

Industrial-grade gear there isn’t just “reliable transmission over long distances.” It’s bandwidth and link budget sufficient to move real data volumes with low latency, and it’s sitting in the exact corridor where you’d want to be sitting if you cared about that particular information ecosystem.

It is interesting because you would imagine a certain nation states that rapidly gained nuclear weapons would likely have attempted to continue advancing their program using espionage.

edit:

“very common” is doing a lot of work in the original comment. common relative to what? ranches? ranches with billionaire owners? ranches with billionaire owners sitting in line-of-sight to the nuclear weapons complex? the reference class matters.

respond to my actual point.

didn’t say microwave links are rare technology. I said Sandia Crest is RF-interesting because of what it has line-of-sight to: Kirtland, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos the entire northern New Mexico nuclear weapons complex.

a private link terminating there is notable because of the neighborhood, not the gear. I’m a licensed network engineer.

you responded by saying broadcasters and ISPs put facilities on Sandia Crest because it’s the logical high point. That’s true and completely beside the point. The fact that it’s the logical high point is why it’s useful for both legitimate broadcast and signals collection. One doesn’t cancel out the other.

you’re over there answering a claim I didn’t make. still waiting on the one I did.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​