Overnight, Ukraine’s military reported that, without explanation, the Starlink satellite communications system, produced by Musk’s SpaceX but managed by the US government, was no longer working at speeds greater than 100mph.
That effectively rendered most of the drones used by Ukraine to strike behind the frontlines inoperable – and, it later emerged, affected the most effective air defence system to stop Russian jet-powered attack drones bombing Kyiv.
“I am sure they knew what they did, absolutely. Because it was 1am at night, Starlink was blocked by SpaceX and the United States,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Piers Morgan. “This decision will bring a lot of human losses … of course, people will die.”
The sudden outage came as Russia launched ballistic missiles at Ukraine without any advance warning from the US for a second night. For years, the US has provided Ukraine with intelligence when strikes were about to take place.
In this case, turning off Starlink access was Trump’s decision, apparently, but in the past Musk has determined where Starlink can be used, denying its use in Crimea in 2022. Now that Musk has a like-minded fascist Russian collaborator in the White House, he hides behind the fig leaf of saying it is the US Government’s decision where it can be used.
This site tracks the subsidies sent to SpaceX. I don’t know if it is correct — the numbers I’ve seen of SpaceX subsidies are all over the place — but it shows that SpaceX has received $106 million in government loans. SEIU says that SpaceX has $32 billion in government contracts. There would be no SpaceX without the government.
Starlink is a great service — I’m using it to write this post. But, like Musk’s other ventures, he wants to pretend that Starlink exists because he’s a technical genius and Galtian übermensch whose huge financial risks merit mulit-billion dollar rewards. In reality, he’s government contractor run amok. He should be curbed, and he should be hauled in front of Congress for days of hearings on his many grifty scams perpetrated on the US Government and, by extension, the American people.
