This stuff is being written about like he's wretched for doing it but as far as I know Starlink's TOS specifically says it can't be used for weapons (Checked, " Starlink is not designed or intended for use with or in offensive or defensive weaponry.") so this is just melon enforcing contract terms (lol) in order to prevent starlink from being targeted by Russia. Pretty sure the Russians could plink his low orbit satellites out of the sky if they decided they were a threat.
Losing an offensive because I violated the TOS of the software I was using for command and control.
Russians could plink his low orbit satellites out of the sky if they decided they were a threat.
Technically - yes. Realistically - doubt it. Might constitute an attack on USA, and amusingly Kremlin is just sane enough to try and avoid that (unlike certain others)
Oh yeah, shooting down Starlink satellites would be the worst case response. More likely Musk was worried about his companies being targeted by sanctions or bans if Starlink got sorted into the "military industrial complex" category
It seems pretty clear that Russia has already found ways to jam their satellite terminals (no need to even shoot down their satellites) so it’s just a face saving move than to say Starlink has been rendered completely useless for military purpose.
🙏
Shotwell didn't provide details on how SpaceX disrupted Ukraine's use of Starlink but said, "there are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that... there are things that we can do and have done."
Now I'm curious what did, if not simply turning it off like the title suggests
Rate-limited in the middle of a firefight
But the truly galaxy brain move is in this article:
After CNN’s reporting, Musk reversed course, tweeting “the hell with it … we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
Gwynne Shotwell, Musk’s president at SpaceX, was livid at Musk’s reversal, according to Isaacson.
“The Pentagon had a $145 million check ready to hand to me, literally,” Isaacson quotes Shotwell as saying. “Then Elon succumbed to the bullshit on Twitter and to the haters at the Pentagon who leaked the story.”
lol out of uncountable amount of Ls from him this was literaly the only thing even remotely approaching a W and he caved anyway what a god damn loser.
Dumbest man alive, he became the richest man in the world by guzzling government money and he can't even grift the military? Truly pathetic
Drone warfare makes high ping bastards of us all
Neoliberals will call communism a failure while they entrust the victory against their mortal enemy in the hands of a unpredictable manchild who likes to LARP as an underdog against “the system” and “current thing”. Truly the smartest bunch of people.
Really? Has that stopped him before? Ya know, when Moskva got hit? When naval bases and ships in Sevastopol were getting swarm droned? Now he's suddenly worried?
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