I’d like to see more substantial consequences for consciously and deliberately sabotaging a war operation using a service the pentagon paid him to provide.
But he was slammed in a headline! There’s no way any other consequence could even be achievable.
/s
Don’t worry, I’m sure our leaders are formulating a strongly worded condemnation of their own. One might even venture to suggest they could hold a hearing about it, or assign a task force to investigate! Canceling his government contracts or charging him with anything are obviously off the table, though.
Of course that’s off the table, there’s simply no way any kind of law enforcement in our country would ever consider such violent response to actions made by a citizen.
He didn’t sabotage it though, as another user pointed out (with sources) he had already turned off starlink awhile ago and didn’t want to turn it back on for just this strike.
Well, he’s not a representative of any state, so technically assassination wouldn’t be an act of war…
I’m not advocating, just pointing out that as an individual, his position is a bit more precarious than I think he realizes.
And as much as I liked President Obama, he did set the precedent by targeting and killing a (bad) US citizen.
The richest man in the world facing consequences for his actions? Not in this timeline.
Why we shouldn’t allow corporations to control information, or information services. They need to be publicly owned.
Or there need to be lots of competing services owned by different companies. That worked reasonably well until companies that are essentially monopolies became the norm, and it’s not just news agencies that are a problem. The high inflation we’ve been seeing is largely caused by record profits that little or no competition allows.
“Capitalism worked pretty well until capitalism happened.”
The only way you’re getting lots of competing services from competing companies is with a LOT of government regulation of the market. Otherwise the rational behaviour for everyone involved in a free market inevitably leads to monopolies.
If you’re looking for a compromise between “everything is state run” and “late stage capitalism” then you can always go with something like the Canadian “Crown Corporation” model, where you create a not-for-profit company whose charter requires them to provide the best possible service at the best possible price. Then you let them compete with the market. Sasktel in Saskatchewan is a great example of this. Canada has famously terrible telecoms pricing, but in Saskatchewan rates are much, much cheaper than the rest of the country, because everyone has to compete with the floor set by Sasktel.
Government used to actively dismantle companies that acted as monopolies. There doesn’t need to be a lot of government regulation until things get to that point, but you’re right - Everybody wants to rule the world.
I mean it would just convert malicious failures into more frequent and unintentional ones.
Malicious features, like businesses?
Failures*, yes, that’s what I said.
Starlink is a US defense contractor. These decisions should not be Elons to make.
Musk is an absolute sociopath, but there’s actually a logic to this.
Apparently the US has extremely tight export controls for telecomm tech used for war, and Starlink was concerned that by Ukraine using it in an offensive way it would result in the US or other countries classifying Starlink as military tech, thereby limiting where they can export it. That would be really bad for Starlink, of course, which is why they specified at the beginning that Ukraine should only use it for civilian goals (hospitals, schools, government, etc).
I assume the contract between Starlink and the Pentagon covers that, but I haven’t researched that far.
What you’re describing could not be done in an unbiased way. For example, you’re hinging everything on the distinction between whether something is offensive or not, but whoever decides that is in fact making a political and military decision.
Starlink had the option to decline the customer on the whole. We don’t want to let them off the hook because they intentionally created a situation where they had and used the power to affect individual battles in real time.
I had an epiphany today: Jonathan Coulton’s the future soon is a song about Elon #Musk.
Pretty funny. Thanks.
if it wasn’t this bitches would be complaining that he’s providing internet for war shit lol
This was over a year ago, musk is a shithead fascist but this just reeks of scapegoating for the failed offensive.
Yeah, I was wondering why so many headlines about this, I thought he had done it a 2nd time.
Turns out his biography or something came out and this was mentioned in the book. So apparently this is to drum up attention for his book? Weird option to go with to sell a book.
