Here is Elon Musk's version of the story about how and why Starlink satellite coverage around Crimea was inactive when the Ukrainian government wanted to use it to guide a drone attack on the Russian navy:
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
And here is Walter Isaacson's version:
Although he had readily supported Ukraine, he believed it was reckless for Ukraine to launch an attack on Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014....The [Russian] ambassador had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response. Musk explained to me in great detail, as I stood behind the bleachers, the Russian laws and doctrines that decreed such a response.
Throughout the evening and into the night, he personally took charge of the situation. Allowing the use of Starlink for the attack, he concluded, could be a disaster for the world. So he secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.
In Musk's version, he was asked to activate coverage around Crimea to support an "obvious" Ukrainian attack. In Isaacson's version, he deactivated coverage that already existed and didn't tell anyone. The attack went forward and failed.
There's a big difference between the two. Isaacson's version seems most likely to be the true one, which means Musk is lying to make himself look better. I'm surprised that more people haven't commented on this difference in their stories.
UPDATE: Walter Isaacson has changed his story:
To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a…
— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) September 9, 2023
This puts a different spin on things. It's one thing to secretly shut down existing coverage, but quite another to do no more than deny a request for additional service. If this is really how things went down, there's little reason to condemn Musk's actions.
Musk is a liar? Say it ain't so.
Another reason why one individual should not have this kind of power. Absolute power, yada, yada, Musk was already corrupt. It's a bad situation.
Embargo on?-) https://youtu.be/kJ-UZ4DvYBg?si=45K_Vnr-ZXdwaMpz
Still, presumably Musk will have less power in the satellite ISP space once one or more of the competitors get going.
To advocate a little deviltry… exactly who should control satellite ISP availability over a given swath of the globe? Particularly when there are opposing claims.
Would you have the same complaint if UN Peacekeepers refused to enter an offensive battle? Or the Red Cross refused to ferry soldiers into battle?
Why or why not?
Oh, the comments are starting to come in. Josh Marshall:
Link: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/musk-shutdown-ukrainian-attack-after-chat-with-russian-official
Literally it is.
Non governmental aid will refuse to work with local militaries if they think they're being used,
Musk thought he was being used because he told Ukraine to use him. He then changed his mind at a critical moment. So, this is not like UN peacekeepers or a normal NGO refusing to help.
Josh Marshall said, "[Musk is] a mercurial weirdo whose views visibly change by the day in reaction to whoever is giving him the most comments love on Twitter. His national security thinking is at best juvenile and fatuous."
The same Josh Marshall who came into prominence for/during his support of the United States' illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Almost all of our current middle-age "liberal" writers did the same, but still.
This has been annoying me all day, because lots of people are claiming that Musk admitted it, but as you show, the accounts conflict.
Forcing an attack to fail is not the same thing as preventing it from happening.
Turning off that coverage without telling Ukraine so their resources are wasted and their plan exposed precisely aids the Russian cause.
Exactly!
Starlink explicitly said not to use it for drones or directing weapons.
That makes no sense. Ukraine was using Starlink for military purposes from March, 2022 to February, 2023, before service was cut and Shotwell claimed that was because Starlink was not intended to be used for offensive purposes. That statement in itself is bizarre, since Ukraine was invaded and is conducting defensive, not offensive, actions.
Because the position of Starlink in Ukraine involves itself in issues of national security and US diplomacy should there not be some kind of governmental or regulatory oversight of something like this that should be able to intervene to prevent just such a destabilizing and arbitrary action?
Generally aid is provided by non governmental actors, and they generally refuse to participate in military advances.
As I recall, and perhaps I am mistaken, but that was the idea and almost immediately Ukraine began using it for directing weapons, Musk objected and threatened to withdraw Starlink and the US intervened insisting he continue providing it.
As it has continued on that basis his cutting off the system in the middle of a significant military action is very specifically causing harm to Ukraine out of sheer spite.
If he truly meant to withdraw he could have and should have but continuing in the circumstance changed the entire thing.
But now he can say to Putin see I'm still your pal, no hard feelings, right, we can do all kinds of great things together! Won't that be great?
His actions have in mind future commercial access and credit to do business in the future. It’s a little like Trump’s kowtowing to Putin so he can maybe, please, can I have a Moscow Hotel….pretty please.
In Elon’s case he wants continued access to Russia and it’s satellite states.
In the end, when sociopaths are involved, it’s really about personal advantage and that usually means money.
Was this around the same time he wanted to start charging fees?
More evidence that Musk is being played like a fiddle by the petromafia. As smart as he is, he is also kind of child-like. It would be easy.
Agreed that he should not be in this position. Don't know how to remove him.
Nuclear response for Crimea. Sure. This is where Musk thinks he's smarter than Zelensky and his military chiefs as well as everyone in the US government.
He's really not up to this.
Can we be sure he is all that smart at this point? I think the verdict is out on that.
This asshole is really becoming a problem. His combination of mercurial arrogance, incompetence and increasingly anti-US political interests are going to cause a lot more damage.
Emerald boy needs an attitude adjustment.
You saying 'emerald boy' means you're biased against the truth.
He's done plenty of shitty things, but refusing to allow humanitarian aid be used to direct weapons is not one of them.
(Nor is his father's investments, which he hasn't inherited from.)
The idea that Dark Pudge Lord Elon Musk may have a humanitarian bone anywhere in his body seems pretty absurd.
Musk is Acting Sec. of Defense.
No Senate confirmation required (like Christopher Miller).
Do his actions now allow his properties, funds, and person be targeted as an actor in war? When you can control theater wide conditions, you are not a begin or neutral actor.
*Benign.
Starlink was given under humanitarian aid. Explicitly it was not to be used for weapons or drones,
This is really no different than UN Peacekeepers or the Red Cross refusing to transport soldiers into battle.
Not sure where you are getting your info to make the very confident statements you are making in these comments, but according to the Wikipedia Starlink (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_satellite_services_in_Ukraine) has been primarily used for military communications, including controlling the drones.
I'm not assuming that Wikipedia is always 100% accurate, but in searching for evidence of your claim above I came across nothing indicating what you said was true, but did find links, including the one above, that contradict your claim. If you are going to make such confident assertions please provide links.
So the Ukrainian military launched a major attack that relied upon Starlink coverage for weapons control knowing that Starlink wouldn't work?
If Musk had indicated to them that Starlink would be cut off before the operation began, would they have relied upon Starlink for the operation?
At best--and I do not accept a false comparison between Starlink, a private for-profit corporation owned by Elon Musk that has been used to support military operations and is currently being used for that purpose, and the UN or Red Cross--this is comparable to the Peacekeepers agreeing to allow the Ukrainian military to use their communications systems going into the attack, and then shutting them off when the attack was launched.
Really very very different.
It's not good for your sneak attack if people who are willing and able to thwart you find out about it. Too bad for Ukraine that they didn't have that strong an ally in Musk.
Crissa has made a number of comments to the effect that Space X should never have been expected to allow its service to be used offensively. Rather than chase down individual claims, I'm responding here.
For starters, she has claimed that Ukraine was explicitly told not to use Starlink for targeting or for weapons. She really needs to provide a citation for this, because I cannot find anything to that effect prior to February of this year, well after the incident in question.
Outside that, the best spin we can put on Space X's behavior is that, at the start of the war, they thought it would be good PR to provide assistance to Ukraine, but never put any thought into what they were actually doing. This is most obvious in their comments that attempt to draw nonsensical distinctions. In particular, they have said that they intended for Starlink to be used by Ukraine's military for comms, but did not intend for it to be "weaponized." The only way to read this is that they have no idea what "comms" means in a military setting.
Communications is inseparable from command and control. That's why they are, collectively, referred to as C3. Defenses are directed through comms. So are offensives. And there is no line that divides offensives from defensive actions. Fighting a war is an integrated whole.
So, if Space X told Ukraine that Starlink could be used for communications, the obvious and reasonable takeaway for the Ukrainians is that it could be used to coordinate and direct combat actions. That's what "comms" means in that context.
Another part that indicates that this is post hoc ass covering on Space X's part is that it was very clear that Ukraine was using Starlink in exactly that way, almost from the beginning of its use. There were newspaper stories about Ukrainian special forces units using it to receive intelligence on operations. There were newspaper stories about Ukrainian artillery units using it to receive targeting information. It would have been impossible for Space X not to know that Starlink was integrated into Ukrainian combat capabilities from the start. They didn't object.
As for the drone attack on Sevastopil, this just indicates the ways in which Space X didn't understand what it had committed to. Directing drones is comms. It isn't really any different than if it were being used to communicate and provide intelligence to a manned ship. Either way, it's playing an indispensable role in the operation.
There really is no conclusion other than that Space X wanted some good PR, but never took the time to understand what it was doing. It may or may not have wanted the Ukrainian military to use it on the battlefield, but never took steps to tell the Ukrainians not to do so when such usage was public knowledge. Then, they got wind at the last minute that Starlink was being used in a way that they really did object to and, rather than communicating said objections to the Ukrainians and hashing out the ground rules, just pulled the plug with no warning. This not only led to the loss of the drones in use, but also alerted the Russians to an active weakness in their defenses, thus ruining a future operation targeting the naval base.
Thanks for the background details and perspective!
Ahem. 2 points:
- Starlink explicitly claimed to limit Ukraine's ability to use Starlink: "There are things that we can do, and have done." Perhaps you forgot that front line Ukrainian military personnel had temporarily lost communications, not just drone access around Crimea.
- Once the US signed a generously valued contract with Starlink, Ukraine no longer had issues with access to Starlink at Sevastopol. Musk did it because he wanted to get paid -- his notions about war was all bullshit.
Oh, I would also like to add that there's been talk going around that Musk committed some vile act that should require Starlink to be seized from him, or that he somehow should be prosecuted.
This is all nonsense. This is his network. The worst he might have done was break a contract.
This puts a different spin on things. It's one thing to secretly shut down existing coverage, but quite another to do no more than deny a request for additional service. If this is really how things went down, there's little reason to condemn Musk's actions.
I am extremely skeptical that this is what happened. For this to be the real story, Ukraine would have had to launch an operation that depended upon Starlink despite knowing that the service did not extend to the target area. They would have to have waited until after the operation was not only underway, but close to completion before asking Space X to extend the coverage to include Sevastopil, and then having all of its drones wash ashore in Crimea when that didn't happen, thus ruining the ability to try again at a future date.
The two choices here are that Walter Isaacson is wrong (whether lying or just mistaken, I'm not sure) or the Ukrainian military was monumentally stupid. I'd bet a lot of money that it's the former.
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"Turning off that coverage without telling Ukraine so their resources are wasted and their plan exposed precisely aids the Russian cause."
Exactly. That's exactly what happened here. And if U.S. ever goes to war again the government needs to nationalize Starlink and Space X and if the little twit objects he can be deported back to South Africa. No way such a technology should be in the hands in that ketamine -addicted meglomaniac.
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