Back in the old days when men were men, and farming was a brutal struggle against nature, GPS systems would go goofy every now and then when fewer satellites were above the horizon. So around 4 pm., you could wake up on your field cultivator somewhere in the next field. You youngsters think I’m kidding, but life wasn’t easy then like you kids have it now.
It took about 10 minutes after installing your first GPS guidance system for farmers to fall in love with this technology. In the years since, guidance has not only gotten remarkably better on our farms, but we can find our way to anywhere with Google Maps, tell where grain trucks are by checking our phones, install tile with astonishing precision, and have stopped using “getting lost” as an excuse for being late. GPS may have made as big an impact on our lives as cell phones, although there is a lot of overlap.
Only this miraculous addition to our lives is actually more fragile than we could imagine. While we’re obsessed with changing our bank passwords – although why anybody would want to steal my loans I can’t imagine – what should be more on our minds is hardening and backing up our current GPS systems. That is a real security risk. The system of satellites that comprise this technology are distant, about 13,000 miles and to my surprise there are only 34 US GPS satellites. Signals from that distance can be weak at times, which is why receivers constantly compare signals from 5-10 satellites. These relatively weak signals are also vulnerable to jamming or spoofing – passing off a fake signal for the original. Ships have reported GPS errors that placed them hundreds of miles inland, and commercial drivers can buy cheap devices to fool company location tracking devices. In fact, one such driver plugged in a device to fool his truck’s GPS tracker and interfered with a major airport guidance system.
There are efforts underway to protect and harden the system from inadvertent or deliberate harm. Losing the GPS system would have widespread serious consequences, and farmers would be particularly affected. My point is not to alarm or suggest there is imminent risk of failure. There may be, but I don’t know. But if we haven’t learned anything else from the pandemic, one lesson should be that we should identify those tools that are most critical and monitor their vulnerability. The debate over upgrading our GPS and protecting it better is one for us to follow more closely.
