Musk cut internet to Ukraine’s military as it was attacking Russian fleet
https:// www.washingtonpost.com /technology/2023/09/07/ukraine-starlink-musk-biography/ Musk cut internet to Ukraine’s military as it was attacking Russian fleet
If you're hitting a paywall, here's a CNN link to the same story: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/elon-musk-biography-walter-isaacson-ukraine-starlink/index.html
random people having this kind of influence on international conflicts because they have a lot of money is good and healthy and okay
170The free market will create another satellite network if musk's isn't right! /s
84If Musk doesn’t learn to play ball, the us government might well take control of the tech for the remainder of the war. Geopolitics is the game that is played with all the pieces.
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It's interesting to see how egotistical the man is. He's just shown militaries all around the world that he's willing to actively meddle in their battles. In other words, he is now a potentially powerful active combatant.
It's easy to imagine the US military making plans to take over his operations in case of national emergency, and it's also easy to imagine other countries coming up with black ops to deal with him in less friendly ways.
I'm sure he didn't think about that, but if he did he'd probably feel proud that now he's important, not realizing that it's not the kind of importance a normal person would really want.
50This is behaviour that gets you killed. Musk may be rich, but not "weapons manufacturer" or "oil magnate" powerful.
18I'm starting to think Mr Musk might actually be a CIA asset. If he was doing this shit without signoff he'd turn up dead.
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“One of the advantages is the huge amount of innovation coming out of the private sector, which the government wants to leverage to stay ahead of China and others,” said Brian Weeden, the director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, a think tank.
Well if the government had invested in its space and innovation programs they wouldn't have to rely on the private sector.
49The US government has certainly invested in private space programs. SpaceX is just one very expensive and prominent example.
7Honestly I’m kind of glad that they didn’t. Imagine if the US government had even more control and surveillance potential over the internet. I know they already basically have 100% but, I dunno, a network of low-Earth-orbit satellites constantly hovering overhead, covering every square centimetre of the earth, is a bit scary.
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What a shit article. Is it a job requirement that anyone at WaPo writing about Musk turns everything into fawning praise? Almost none of the article is about the incident itself, the majority of it is just rehashing all the things Musk's companies have done while crediting him for it (lol) and completely burying that the book alleges he shut down the internet during the drone attack after being in contact with senior Russian officials.
35It’s pretty much an advert for his biography lol. It’s going to have a bunch of clickbaity stories which look as though they may be critical of Musk, but it turn out that he’s the good guy, after all.
19Thankfully a biography won’t be necessary. The dipshit lived his entire life on social media and revealed to everyone just how much of an idiot he is. He really liked when people revered him like some kind of super human but now that’s all done. He can’t ever get it back so he’s resorting to courting Nazis and trolls. They’re the only ones left still tongue punching his rectum and he’s addicted to the feeling. Too bad. He’s only going to get more old, more fat, more pathetic. His money can buy him so much but he can’t buy public sentiment and the internet is merciless. It will never bend the knee to any one person. Even the richest man is powerless.
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the book alleges he shut down the internet during the drone attack after being in contact with senior Russian officials
Who threatened a nuclear strike in response. If that’s true, it does paint a different picture of the situation, does it not?
I’m no Musk dick rider (if fact, I can’t stand him), but that’s a tough spot to be in.
-1Who threatened a nuclear strike in response. If that’s true, it does paint a different picture of the situation, does it not?
Not really, because what that means is Russia now just has to say "nuclear war" any time they want to kill Starlink in Ukraine. If he had real concerns he was more than capable of getting in touch with the correct people. Instead he decided that he, not the Ukrainian military, gets to make calls on drone usage.
He wants to cry crocodile tears about how he never imagined Starlink would be used for war when he made it accessible to Ukraine after the Russian invasion... well, they're in the middle of a war. If he truly is that stupid he has absolutely no business making decisions any more complicated than "caf or decaf?"
10Russia threatening a nuclear strike is about as credible as a 3 yr old threatening to hold their breath. Come on you cowardly bitches, nuke us already. I fukkin dare you. Nut up, or shut up.
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Wow he is so subtle. What a genius move that no one expected. /s
30That's how you put yourself on the CIA and KGBs watch list
23I'm guessing that as a supervillain (as @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca pointed out), Musk expects the CIA and NSA to have nice thick dossiers on him. Since Musk has Putin on speed dial, the KGB probably shares their file and asks him for updates.
5FSB not KGB
3In this case, he got on the KGB's "thank you and we'll send you some flowers, luvya ❤️" list
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22Literal supervillain behaviour
19Permanently Deleted
18I mean.. that's what the government, more so the political self interest in those of power wanted. Funding for NASA reduced and that easily could have done what SpaceX has accomplished, to pandering and almost begging Elon to get things done.
The system is beautiful.
6Permanently Deleted
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
But the recounting of the incident is a reminder of how SpaceX — and its founder — amassed enormous power and leverage as its competitors proved incapable of keeping up with a dizzying pace of innovation.
“One of the advantages is the huge amount of innovation coming out of the private sector, which the government wants to leverage to stay ahead of China and others,” said Brian Weeden, the director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, a think tank.
SpaceX started providing Starlink internet service to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, creating a lifeline for the country when its communications systems had largely been knocked out.
“Despite being the launch provider with the most proven track record and the lowest prices in the industry, SpaceX was seemingly not considered by Amazon,” the suit alleges.
“SpaceX has been truly innovative in several key areas, launch and large constellation broadband internet — two things people have long dreamed of but have been tried and failed before,” Weeden said.
A good portion of that success stems from Musk himself, who works relentlessly and pushes his teams to as well, attempting to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.
The original article contains 1,360 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 86%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
8Why is that piece devolving into a suck-fest for Musk? Or is the random firing of employees he is reportedly prone to now considered "pushing his team"?
4Wow...this summary had almost nothing to do with Ukraine...
Sorry bot, you usually do a good job, but not this time.
2Sadly this summary does not contain the actual essence of that report as the report jumps from irrelevant points to Musk disagreeing with ukranian military using it to actually fight for their freedom. But nooooo, they aren't allowed to use it in an "offensive" manner, only to slow down the invaders. Nice one Musk rat.
"How am I in this war? Musk asked,” according to Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
“We were really pleased to be able to provide Ukraine connectivity and help them in their fight for freedom,” she [Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer,] said. “It was never intended to be weaponized, but the Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement.”
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If you are hitting a paywall, remember to turn off scripts for this particular site on ublock origin
6Waiting for him to have an "accident"
5That is a very unflattering photo. lol
5Elmo is a very unflattering person
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Paywalled articles are such a bummer. I understand why they exist, but hoarding knowledge sucks.
5Sorry, I almost never hit their paywall so I forget it's there. Here's another article:
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People have a lot of family over there. A lot of folks are really upset.
I wonder how much more before people have an extreme reaction to him personally.
4All Musk has to do to answer this is to say outages occur in satellite networks all the time. But, I'll suppose he'll remain silent until someone charges him with something. Would be nice to have a witness on this stupid SOB
3Starlink's dominant revenue stream is the US military. It's seen as a moderately strategic program by the US as they attempt to saturate specific orbits of strategic value with US assets to prevent China from using those orbits.
If Musk actually did this, then he did it with the knowledge and likely the direction of the US military. The alternative is that he didn't do this but the story is being planted as part of a propaganda campaign in which Musk is playing the role of right-wing mobilizer.
3They're hand in glove, that's for sure. Any attempt to paint Musk or any other haute bourgeois as separate from the capitalist state is intended to confuse readers and hide the material relations in capitalism.
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Cut those juicy government assets and seize StarNet. The US military dumped money in and now it conflicts with national security.
1If you're hitting a paywall, here's a CNN link to the same story: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/elon-musk-biography-walter-isaacson-ukraine-starlink/index.html
1Website is paywalled, no archive link, and I can’t make any sense out of the TL;DR. Why did Starlink cut off the Ukraine’s internet access? I’m guessing it’s for a much less interesting reason than the headline wants us to assume
-2Probably worse than you think the headline wants you to assume.
Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet, according to an excerpt adapted from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the eccentric billionaire titled “Elon Musk.”
Plenty of other sources.
12Thank you very much for the link, that’s really kind of you! I’m a bit lazy/tired so searching myself for it myself wasn’t within my power this evening :)
Musk’s decision […] was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons
That’s not what I was guessing, honestly, it seems almost too well-intended for Musk. I was assuming it was because Zelenskyy hadn’t retweeted him or something.
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Disable or simply not enable , need to be clear in terminology...
-8Was on. Now off. Also if you bothered to read the first sentence of the article you'd have your answer
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