Starlink and Crimea: Elon Musk did not “Turn Off” his network, but he did not “Turn it On”
Today Elon Musk was harshly accused of having taken a pro-Russian attitude, "Shutting down" the "Starlink" satellite internet service network over Crimea, preventing Ukrainian marine drones from hitting Russia last spring.
The news was reported by CNN, which in turn picked up an upcoming biography of the billionaire:
Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to shut down his company's Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on Russia's naval fleet, according to an excerpt from the eccentric billionaire's new biography entitled “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson.
As Ukrainian underwater drones packed with explosives approached the Russian fleet, “they lost connectivity and stranded harmlessly on land,” Isaacson writes.
Musk's decision, which prompted Ukrainian officials to implore him to turn the satellites back on, was driven by strong fears that Russia would respond with nuclear weapons to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea, a fear reinforced by Musk's conversations with senior Russian officials , according to Isaacson, whose new book comes out from Simon & Schuster on September 12.
In the end, Elon Musk himself intervened on the matter, stating that he never dreamed of "Shutting down" the network on Crimea to block Ukrainian incursions:
The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2023
But Elon Musk refused to activate the network in that region, because he apparently expected it to be used to attack the Russian fleet and providing his service would involve Stalink as a belligerent party in the war.
There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.
The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor.
If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2023
So Musk refused to activate the network so as not to become an accomplice in the war. At this point either the Ukrainian raiders were not informed, or they acted anyway hoping that the attack would work anyway.
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The article Starlink and Crimea: Elon Musk has not "Turned Off" his network, but has not "Turned it On" comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/starlink-e-crimea-elon-musk-non-ha-spento-il-suo-network-ma-non-lo-ha-acceso/ on Fri, 08 Sep 2023 19:37:34 +0000.