Month: August 2022

Enlarge (credit: MR.Cole_Photographer/Getty Images)

In mid-August, the Federal Communications Commission succeeded in its long-held plan to reallocate a portion of the spectrum from car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication (known as V2X) to Wi-Fi instead. However, the FCC didn't reassign that entire region of bandwidth—30 MHz remains set aside for "intelligent transportation systems." And the FCC should grant automakers a waiver to allow them to start deploying cellular-based V2X (C-V2X) safety systems, said the National Transportation Safety Board in a letter it sent the FCC on Monday.

The saga of V2X is a long-running one. The FCC originally saved the spectrum around 5.9 GHz for use with V2X in 1999, but despite keen interest from some automakers and industry groups like the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America), the technology still has not been deployed.

Seeing that failure, the FCC decided in 2020 to reallocate some of the bandwidth to Wi-Fi, leaving the frequencies between 5.895 and 5.925 GHz for V2X. ITS America and AASHTO sued the FCC to prevent this, but the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the FCC in August, allowing the commission to go through with its plan.

Enlarge / SAINT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA - JULY 31: Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (L) seen during the Navy Day Parade, on July, 31 2022, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. (credit: Getty Images)

On the evening of August 20, Russian TV pundit and conspiracy theorist Darya Dugina was killed on the outskirts of Moscow when a powerful explosion ripped apart her Toyota Land Cruiser. Dugina was a vocal supporter of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the daughter of fascist philosopher and writer Alexander Dugin, nicknamed “Putin’s brain” thanks to his perceived ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin. According to Russian authorities, a remote-controlled “explosive device,” presumably installed in her car, went off at around 9 pm local time.

News of Dugina’s assassination spread like wildfire through social media, most notably on the instant messaging service Telegram, where it was shared approvingly by a vast network of Russian and Ukrainian channels. But in the hours that followed, it became clear that one channel, operated by the media outlet Utro Fevralya, or February Morning, is more than just a place to share the news. It aims to play a key role in the story.

Created by exiled former Russian MP and dissident Ilya Ponomarev, February Morning was the first to report on a group claiming responsibility for Dugina’s death. Ponomarev himself took to YouTube, where February Morning airs its shows, claiming that the perpetrators were a little-known Russian resistance group called the National Republican Army. According to Ponomarev, an all-out war against “Putinism” had just begun.