Elon Musk ordered a “slowdown” to Starlink in Ukraine that set off a “panic” in the country and “confusion inside” the Trump administration.
The Wall Street Journal dropped a report on Tuesday diving into a disruption in Ukraine’s Starlink-internet service as they continue fighting a war with Russia.
According to U.S. officials and three people familiar with the situation, “Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration.”
They didn’t need to sit Musk down to play ball.
Musk offered starlink to Ukraine for non military weapon usage on their commercial service for free. It had military use restrictions on it because as a commercial service it had to, and Musk didnt want it being used in Russian controlled territory because there were sanction against Russia, and yes, he was personally worried about the risks that invovled.
Being used as a weapon could land them in trouble and become an ITAR issue which could have destroyed SpaceX.
That ultimately led to Biden getting them using starshield instead so the military was the one paying and in control and they could authorize military usage for Ukraine in the military version of the service.
It should have always been starshield being used, but people were dragging their feet making that happen and happy to let SpaceX offer what they were for free.