A badly misrepresented year old story suddenly back in the news again on multiple platforms. Sigh.
I guess it helps that the Internet is so conditioned to hate Musk that any headline that says something bad about him gets an instant upvote.
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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I've heard a couple versions of this story. One is the story in the post, the other is that Crimea was not covered by Starlink, and Ukraine tried to get it covered and Musk wouldn't.
Do we have a definitive source that can speak to which occurred?
Musk's official biographer explained that there was a point where he had to take a decision of either allow it or not, and a Russian official discouraged it on the basis that there would be a nuclear escalation.
Allegedly, someone in a 5 point building got super pissed by the fact that a rich guy got to call it off, jumping over them and the Prez himself.
The DoD has since signed contracts with Starlink for service. But they hadn't at the time yet so I don't see why the Pentagon or American president would be involved in the decision.
Their first mistake? Not being able to identify a lying fucking narcissist.
No, their first mistake was launching a military operation that depended on Starlink connectivity to a region that they knew was already cut off from Starlink due to sanctions on Russia on the assumption that they'd be able to convince an American company to turn it on for them in the middle of the attack, thus violating some very serious American laws preventing that sort of thing from happening.
I know the overwhelming narrative on the Internet is "Ukraine good, Elon bad", but in this case it really seems to me like the screwup was on Ukraine's side here.
I always got the sense from the story that Ukraine didn't know it wasn't going to work in Crimea. When they realized, they begged him to turn it back on, because they thought he turned it off.
But it was never on and he refused to turn it on.
They also knew they weren't allowed to use it that way and tried anyway.
If they hadn't known that it wasn't on then that would be a pretty big part of the screwup, I'm sure Starlink wasn't keeping it a secret that there was no service there.
I'm trying to think how to word this so I don't get banned.
We need to turn off his connection.
Maybe it's the sentiment that's the problem, not the wording?
The thing I don’t think many people are aware of, is that if something is exported from the US (like starlink) and is used for military purposes (like a surface attack vessel) it is subject to ITAR restrictions and regulations. Starlink does not have ITAR clearance. A breach of this means your company can be seized and shut down by the US government. I would expect this behavior from any US based company that does not have ITAR clearance.
This doesn't make much sense...starlink was already available for military use by the Ukrainians. That was the whole reason Musk was "donating" use of the system to them.
Even if this were the underlying reason, the behavior I would expect from any US company that doesn't have ITAR clearance would be to cite said lack of clearance for the decision instead of the CEO coming out and saying he did it for war strategy reasons (like being worried about a nuclear response).
No it wasn't. There was never US government dispensation for direct UA military use. The original provisioning was for civilian usage. Starlink is definitely approved for US military, and a blind eye was turned to backend logistics use by UA, but as soon as your equipment is guiding bombs onto targets you're running straight into ITAR. It's being used for a weapon and that's a major no no.
Edit You're vs your