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Elon Musk has confirmed that he in essence scuttled a Ukrainian military strike on Russia by refusing to allow Starlink to be used in the process. The billionaire claims the decision was made to avoid being \u201ccomplicit in a major act of war,\u201d but it also raises serious questions regarding the role of oligarchs in military matters.<\/p>\n
The news was first reported by CNN<\/a>, citing Walter Isaacson\u2019s upcoming biography of Musk. In the book, Musk describes a situation in 2022 when Ukraine planned an attack on Russia\u2019s navy off the coast of Crimea.<\/p>\n The ships and marine drones that would have performed this attack relied on Starlink for connectivity, but the satellite internet service was not (Musk asserted later on X\/Twitter<\/a>) active over the region. When Ukraine made an \u201cemergency request\u201d to activate it, he refused, and the drones \u201clost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,\u201d obviously leaving the Russian ships untouched.<\/p>\n In a way the matter is very simple: A government requested a service from a private company that the leader of that company thought was inappropriate, and declined. Therein is demonstrated the inherent risk of relying on a private service for the prosecution of warfare \u2014 Musk was in effect a mercenary or arms dealer, albeit less directly involved in violence. (Russia itself would soon have its own demonstration of a similar principle when the Wagner Group marched on Moscow.)<\/p>\n But in another, far more troubling interpretation of events, an American billionaire made a unilateral military decision for a foreign allied power. Doubtless this has happened countless times before, but seldom has a technology from outside the military-industrial complex (and thus outside its norms and expectations) risen so quickly to prominence as Starlink has due to \u2014 it must be said \u2014 Musk\u2019s own promotion of it for use by Ukraine after Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n The complex mathematics of geopolitics are beyond the scope of this article (and indeed this site and your author), but it is hard not to wonder whether it is appropriate for Musk to offer a key service to support Ukraine, only to withdraw it at his own discretion.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,\u201d Musk wrote in justification of his decision.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> X\/Twitter<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is fair enough in its way, but, as with many of the CEO\u2019s pronouncements, is profoundly dismissive of important context.<\/p>\n Leaving aside that Starlink had been a key enabler of countless military actions already, one does not need to be an expert to find dubious Musk\u2019s claim that this would have amounted to a \u201cmini-Pearl Harbor.\u201d Ukraine and Russia were by this time in open war, instigated by the latter\u2019s invasion; to compare a counterattack against an aggressor during a serious and ongoing conflict to the infamous sneak attack that drew the U.S. into World War II is at best ignorant. But considering Musk\u2019s proposals that the conflict end with concessions to Russia, it feels more disingenuous.<\/p>\n It is simply untenable for Musk\u2019s personal opinion of how a conflict should play out is the sole determinant of how Starlink can be deployed in warfare. As advisor to Ukrainian PM\u2019s office, Mykhailo Podolyak, expressed on X\/Twitter<\/a> after the story hit:<\/p>\n Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake. By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via #Starlink interference, @elonmusk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities. As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Is Musk willing to perform the value judgment of whether negating an attack on Russian materiel is worth the inevitable cost in Ukrainian lives? Because that is the position he has placed himself in: deciding who should live in a war taking place on the opposite side of the world.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to imagine that Musk may think himself capable of doing this, but it would not be the first time he has overestimated his own competence. The question is not whether he can make the choice, but whether he, or anyone in a similar position of civilian or commercial power, should be permitted to make it.<\/p>\n Garry Kasparov, former world Chess champion and now a prominent activist, offered a simple summary<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cSpaceX & Starlink are marvelous, but if Musk\u2019s delusional \u2018anti-war\u2019 agenda leads him to interfere with their services to Russia\u2019s advantage, it\u2019s a huge risk.\u201d<\/p>\n The situation Musk found himself in was new and unprecedented, but now it is neither. And those for whom life-and-death decisions are familiar territory will likely find ways to circumvent an interfering foreign oligarch in making them.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n