NPR.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong here with friend of the show

Nate Hedgy. He is the host of the public radio podcast Outside In.

Welcome back to the show, Nate. It's so great to be back, Whelan,

and I have a question for you.

How often do you use GPS?

Oh, in the car?

I am Michael Scott driving into a lake.

I am just, I'll do whatever the GPS says. Can't live without it.

Well, you are not alone. A recent survey found that nearly half of all Americans

say they could not live without GPS in their car.

And it turns out the American economy could not live without GPS either.

Satellite navigation systems ensure that the clocks on Wall Street all align, that commercial fishermen

know where to go, and of course that your lift driver knows where to pick you up.

But our access to GPS is becoming increasingly vulnerable to attacks from

foreign adversaries. A study from a few years ago

found that an outage could cost our country at least one billion dollars a day.

And we don't have a backup. Russia does, China does, but we don't.

Today on the show, we're going to explain who owns GPS and why we don't have a Plan B if it fails.

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