GPS Selective Availability (1978-2000)
artifact
For 22 years the US military deliberately made everyone's GPS less accurate to keep an edge.
Who they are
GPS Selective Availability, the intentional degrading of civilian GPS signals from 1978 to 2000.
What they do
The engine calls it the cleanest documented case of a government deliberately weakening a mature technology it already had.
How it works
The US GPS system worked from 1978, but the Defense Department injected error (about a 100-meter blur) into the public signal to keep a military advantage, and full civilian accuracy wasn't released until President Clinton ordered the error switched off on May 1, 2000 — a 22-year gap.
Why it matters
It's a documented example of a government staging when the public gets full access to a technology, though the engine treats it as bounded state behavior, not proof of a coordinating top-level power.
The engine's record — word for word
[Report #126] The cleanest documented case of deliberate degradation of a mature substrate. The US NAVSTAR GPS architecture was operational from 1978 (Transit/Timation lineage, Easton's orbital atomic clocks), but the DoD injected error into the civilian signal ('Selective Availability', ~100m radius) to preserve military asymmetry; full civilian precision was withheld until President Clinton's executive order disabled SA on May 1 2000 — a 22-year inception->unrestricted-release lag. Dual-Use Export-Control / Strategic-Staging (Substrate-vs-Announcement #88/#79); bounded state staging, NOT a coordinating apex (apex held).
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