Elon Musk says he refused to give Kyiv access to his Starlink communications network over Crimea to avoid complicity in a “major act of war”.

Kyiv had sent an emergency request to activate Starlink to Sevastopol, home to a major Russian navy port, he said.

His comments came after a book alleged he had switched off Starlink to thwart a drone attack on Russian ships.

A senior Ukrainian official says this enabled Russian attacks and accused him of “committing evil”.

Russian naval vessels had since taken part in deadly attacks on civilians, he said.

“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” he said.

“Why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?” he added.

The row follows the release of a biography of the billionaire by Walter Isaacson which alleges that Mr Musk switched off Ukraine’s access to Starlink because he feared that an ambush of Russia’s naval fleet in Crimea could provoke a nuclear response from the Kremlin.

Ukraine targeted Russian ships in Sevastopol with submarine drones carrying explosives but they lost connection to Starlink and “washed ashore harmlessly”, Mr Isaacson wrote.

Starlink terminals connect to SpaceX satellites in orbit and have been crucial for maintaining internet connectivity and communication in Ukraine as the conflict has disrupted the country infrastructure.

    • underisk@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      We already had a nationalized SpaceX. We defunded it and gave grants to private companies like uh… SpaceX.

      • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        While I agree that NASA shouldn’t have had any funding cut, supporting a privatized space industry isn’t a bad thing on its own.
        But giving Elon Musk a defense contract was a fucking stupid idea.

      • zeppo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Didn’t NASA used to just have companies like Boeing or Lockheed manufacture things?

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      That’s how you get an SLS. Government bureaucracy and pleasing congress isn’t great at rocket development.

        • Oddbin@lemmy.world
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          Nope, it comes from Old French which used the same “s” as Latin whereas the “z” is greek. The French standardised to the “s” in the late 1600 which informed the English which had bounced between the Greek and Latin but formalised on “ise” not “ize”.

          So, nationalise is the correct one here.

          • GoFastBoots@lemmy.world
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            You’re entitled to your hill, but as linguistically correct as you may be, linguistics take a back seat to common usage and national variance.

            Nationalized and nationalised are both English terms. Nationalized is predominantly used in 🇺🇸 American (US) English ( en-US ) while nationalised is predominantly used in 🇬🇧 British English (used in UK/AU/NZ) ( en-GB ).

            • Oddbin@lemmy.world
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              Wow, this really upset a bunch of the Lemmy toxic club didn’t jt. Honestly, Reddit may be crap but lemmy is doing it’s best to ape it’s toxicity.

      • ShoeboxKiller@lemm.ee
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        People learn words in different fashions. In Jeopardy (an American quiz show) they accept written answers in the last round that are spelled incorrectly as long as it’s clear, phonetically, what they were trying for.

        This is done in part because some people learn words by hearing them and not seeing them written, just like some people might have read a word but not know how to pronounce it.

        Did you comment this to be superior or be helpful because it comes across as superior.

        • Oddbin@lemmy.world
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          To add the same low level of information and discourse that all of these click bait, musk hate posts of late contribute to “news” and “technology”.

          Did you comment to feel superior or were you feeling left out?

          • ShoeboxKiller@lemm.ee
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            Neither. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that others didn’t and share something I learned that gave me a different perspective.

            Just like I’m treating this question as genuine, though I suspect it’s snark.

  • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Elon Musk says he refused to give Kyiv access to his Starlink communications network over Crimea to avoid complicity in a “major act of war”.

    So, in the classic trolley problem, Elon’s choice is to remove the track switch that his company produced so that no one else could use it to make a choice.

    “Sorry, guys. Looks like those innocent civilians tied to the tracks are going to have to die so that I am not tangentially and tenuously responsible for your choice to save them in exchange for the deaths of Russian soldiers attacking your sovereign lands and people (cough and lose money from the Kremlin as a result cough)”

    There’s no “right” answer to the trolley problem. But there are definitely wrong ones.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      His logic seems to be that Ukraine is to blame for all the bloodshed of the Russian invasion because they didn’t roll over and surrender without a fight.

      Victim blaming. Classic asshole move.

      Did Elon have a stroke at some point that we don’t know about? It’s amazing how consistently he makes a huge ass of himself now.

        • zeppo@lemmy.world
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          He’s said about that - Ukraine should negotiate with the Russians and give them territory because war is so killy.

    • aidan@lemmy.world
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      There’s no “right” answer to the trolley problem. But there are definitely wrong ones.

      That depends on your moral basis.

      • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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        Fair enough. My moral basis says that using my personal power and authority to undermine deals that I specifically sought to make in the first place, upon which others are dependent for literal survival, in order to backpedal my involvement in their survival attempts which I knew from the beginning was the entire point of the deal, the result of which directly and predictably leads to the deaths of hundreds/thousands of innocents… I consider that a moral failing. How about you?

    • Pendulum@lemmy.world
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      It was never turned on in the first place. Read the article, not the clickbait headlines that have circulated (this one is on point though, credit to BBC)

    • BigNote@lemm.ee
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      Doubt it. The smart money says that he did it because he does a ton of business with the Chinese and is very nervous about being seen to actively take sides in a way that would cause them to see him as a potential security threat.

        • BigNote@lemm.ee
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          You would have a point were I simply speculating, but I’m not.

          I am simply stating what the most well-informed and knowledgeable sources are saying.

          You would know this if you had sanitized and healthy media consumption habits, but you obviously don’t.

  • MrSqueezles@lemm.ee
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    Censorship is terrible. Except when I want to do it and pretend like I’m the best politician. Then it’s great.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      Now there’s a great idea. Especially since he never would have built SoaceX without so much public support via NASA.

  • Bear@sh.itjust.works
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    Why ISPs need to be neutral. Musk was never elected or appoints be a general. Otis not his place to decide what strikes happen or not. The blood of the people those ships have attacked are now on his hands.

    • aidan@lemmy.world
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      From my understanding, he didn’t pull the rug, instead he just never turned on satellites that he never said he would turn on

      • LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world
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        He did in fact “pull the rug”

        https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/elon-musk-biography-walter-isaacson-ukraine-starlink/index.html

        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.”

        As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes.

    • nik0@lemm.ee
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      Unfortunately, not likely. Unless there are some apps that will be able to do that; we’re stuck with this.

      Sync actually has this

  • scarabic@lemmy.world
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    Musk saw a bully go over and punch a kid. So Musk ran over and held the kid’s hands behind him. Because punching back would have just escalated things.