[flagged]
"SpaceX’s out of pocket cost to enable & support Starlink in Ukraine is ~$80M so far. Our support for Russia is $0. Obviously, we are pro Ukraine.
Trying to retake Crimea will cause massive death, probably fail & risk nuclear war. This would be terrible for Ukraine & Earth."
The dude is obviously seeped in pro-Russian propaganda now. I dunno why or how he got to this state, but... Elon made this very clear yesterday.
If Russia wasn’t a threat, I’m 100% sure he would say that the rest of the world should help in reclaiming Crimea. So I don’t think he’s saying that Crimea belongs to Russia at all.
His claims are 100% Kremlin propaganda.
No one else was ever claiming the things he said, aside from Russia. The timing of it was especially egregious, as Ukraine made a *HUGE* advancement over the frontlines this past weekend.
Pro-russian propaganda coming in exactly as Russia's front line collapses? What? The timing and speech pattern here (ie: the Kremlin-style argument of "Khrushchev’s mistake") suggests _direct_ Russian influence.
No one else was saying things like that. No one speaks like that, not here in USA at least.
--------
If Elon Musk said this when Ukraine was losing, then maybe you'd have a point. But Elon Musk decided to say this when Ukraine was __WINNING__ on the battlefield.
This will go down in history just as Lindbergh's pro-Hitler cowardice did.
-----
EDIT: Wow. You completely changed your post wholesale with your edit.
Elon Musk isn't "pushing for peace". Elon Musk is pushing for Crimea to be part of Russia. Its the same bit as when Lindbergh publicly stated to not help Poland or France in WW2 in the "name of peace".
Its a clear mistake.
But to be honest, the majority of people would not do, and will just continue to throw talking point all over the internet, with projection of perspective under influence of information bubble they live in. What is the point of all this chatter ?
I think he sees it as a compromise that has a chance of being accepted by both parties. He's allowed his opinions. He isn't saying we should give it to them ala Chamberlain.
This is a Russian / Kremlin talking point.
> He isn't saying we should give it to them ala Chamberlain.
No, its worse than that. Elon Musk has adopted the language of the Russian side entirely with that tweet. "Khrushchev’s mistake" is not a Western talking point from any legitimate person. It is exclusively a Russian idea and Russian concept.
It'd be as if some Western official started defending Hitler's Lebensraum. There are words and meanings that specific sides use. Elon used an incredibly wrong one yesterday.
This isn't "Chamberlain" level of mistake. This is closer to Nazi sympathizer or German-American Bund level kind of talking here if you want a WW2 era example.
--------
Look, dude reads Russian propaganda. He's even admitted it at this point openly. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3667902-musk-said-russ...
The specific phrasing and use of language was enough of a tipoff from yesterday's tweets. But its one of those things: understanding the Russian side is good and fine and all, but the minute you start spreading their propaganda, yeah... people are going to get pissed, ya know?
> It'd be as if some Western official started defending Hitler's Lebensraum
If you were proposing a compromise Hitler would accept then saying the phrase "and this provides them the 'Lebensraum' he needs to save face..." would be reasonable. Proposing a compromise that would be an out for Putin does require offering him something that Russia wants. Fwiw many libs were talking off-ramps and such early in the war.
For the record, I think they should fight, but I can understand that other people disagree and think a brokered-peace is necessary.
> the minute you start spreading their propaganda, yeah... people are going to get pissed, ya know?
Well, "using their talking points". But that's fair.
At a minimum, wait for Ukraine to suffer a setback before asking them to compromise. Ukraine's victories on the battlefield today, and yesterday, only make Musk's words ever more ridiculous.
--------
This isn't someone hoping for peace when the Nazis were advancing. This is more akin to someone asking for Peace with Hitler *AFTER* the Normandy landing.
I agree that they shouldn't stop fighting. I simply don't mind that other people feel differently and will even change their minds at times.
> This is more akin to someone asking for Peace with Hitler AFTER the Normandy landing
Most negotiated peace treaties seem to come after one side realizes it will eventually lose so that's how it would have happened.
> At a minimum, wait for Ukraine to suffer a setback before asking them to compromise
I'm not a professional diplomat but that does not seem right, if they did want to negotiate it's generally good to do so from a position of apparent strength.
Which seems like the only moral choice here. Anything else would be rewarding Russia for it's aggression.
While the referendum might have been illegitimate, it would probably have still been a "join Russia" landslide if conducted properly. Unlike Russia's "referendums" in the past month.
If Russia continues to fight as effectively as they have been, sure.
> According to space reporter Joey Roulette, SpaceX donated 3,667 terminals to Ukraine, or around $10 million worth, after also factoring in the three months of data it provided with the terminals.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/8/23016670/starlink-spacex-u...
It seems both the US government and SpaceX donated terminals.
Using the space reporter’s numbers for the SpaceX “donation,” that’s about $2700 per terminal.
I thought the retail price of a starlink terminal was in the $500-600 range?
"SpaceX’s out of pocket cost to enable & support Starlink in Ukraine is ~$80M so far. Our support for Russia is $0. Obviously, we are pro Ukraine."
Knowing and being honest are not the same.
edit: Parent poster rewrote their comment.
https://elonmusk.today/ has a looootttt of exaggerations that ended up being completely incorrect. It also has plenty of outright lies.
Just from scrolling a bit you can find plenty of indisputable lies:
Lie: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1374619379929772034 Lie: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1256239554148724737 Lie: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1078010341651492865
Just to link to a few.
Scrolling through the list, though, you can't help but know that Elon knows at least some of his exaggerations are bullshit, which would turn them into a lie. For example: https://twitter.com/brenttoderian/status/1557224539267817472 turns what seemed to be an exaggeration of a product being ready into a straight up lie.
Does knowingly miscategorizing facts count as a lie? Because I'm not convinced Elon is stupid enough to know that Twitter was not lying about bot numbers.
If $80m turns out to be $10m, is that a lie or an exaggeration?
Yes, that would be considered a lie, or at least a gross exaggeration.
But we can do the math using publically available information - assuming its correct. According to this article ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietl... ) (which honestly feels like a click bait hit piece), as of Apr 8, there were 5000 terminals in the country. It says SpaceX paid for 3670 of those (so about 2/3), plus internet service for all.
As of May, there were 10k terminals (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/02/ukraine-official-150000-usin...). Who knows how many there are now - 4 months later. So at $1500 a pop of what it costs to manufacture, plus probably same, if not more, to fly it to Poland, then transport it via land to Ukraine - the numbers add up. Add to that work being done to overcome Russian attempts at jamming (https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-russia-ramp...). Add things that we are not aware of. I can see how costs can pile up.
> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1374619379929772034
But this isn't a lie. Come on.
And once again (and again and again...), I'm not claiming the $80m number is a lie. You just can't take that number as fact when the only source is his twitter.
>> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1374619379929772034
> But this isn't a lie. Come on.
One month after that tweet, Tesla announced selling 10% of their bitcoin stash, which they accumulated through their own purchases of bitcoin and customer transactions: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-sold-bitcoin-q1-proceed...
I have no idea how you get from that tweet to selling 10% of their bitcoin holdings without saying he lied. It's not like there was a massive time frame between the two.
And you picked one out of a ton of lies to attempt to refute. What about my other examples?
"almost all" possessions is pretty vague. perhaps this is false but it's not obvious at face value and wouldn't be malicious. it seems mostly a question of semantics (does renting = owning? do we mean houses and cars or clothes and silverware?). if someone tweets "i'm selling all my shit" are they lying?
break pads never needing to be replaced is obviously not 100% true since some percentage of every part will inevitably break, but if pads without defects outlive the rest of the car, i don't see how you could disagree with this statement. teslas are barely old enough to evaluate this statement and doubly so for cars produced in 2018.
i don't follow this stuff nearly closely enough to know if these are lies and it's not clear to me the information needed to evaluate those tweets is publicly available or even exists. i don't dispute he's made misleading statements and exaggerated but i'm not convinced it's obvious he's lying or that not seeing it means you have blinders on.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/02/27/elon-musk-deploys-s...
All I'm saying is that his tweet is not a reliable source for that number. We'd need another, more reliable source to confirm.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietl...
- That the remaining residents even have the legal/moral right to have such an election.
- That such an election could possibly be morally conducted with armed men camped on your land and the unburied dead scattered on the landscape without the specter of intimidation.
- That such results would be valid given it would be conducted after the Russians drove off or tortured and murdered half the population that didn't agree
- That anyone could possible trust the Russians to conduct it no matter what oversight was provided
- That they would respect the results if they went their way
It re-contextualizes the discussion from an immoral war criminal is slaughtering his neighbor, raping and pillaging their lands, attempting to erase their identity and attempting to cover his tracks with sham elections to somehow the sham elections are a path to peace between warring neighbors if only we conducted them more fairly.
They cannot possibly be conducted fairly and Musk's statement was literally the most stupid and offensive thing he has ever said in his life.
You hate to see it. Or at least, I do. I had an immense amount of respect for Musk based on his work at Tesla and SpaceX, and that respect has basically evaporated now. It's as if he's no longer the same guy at all.
Also, try to steelman the guy. Where do you think this is coming from? That he agrees with Russia or that he wants to avoid nuclear war?
I'm 100% "pro-Ukraine", what Putin is doing is ridiculous and there's literally no justification.
I have been absolutely trashed for pointing out some of the stories coming out of this war are just completely fake, though. Like the "Ghost of Kyiv" thing. I asked if there was any proof and just got instantly accused of supporting a "war-criminal."
Not a fan of an environment where people will straw man you if you venture out of the "pre-defined opinion limits."
I'm not an expert in this at all either... so forgive my ignorance but isn't there a very real risk of insane levels of carnage if the war ramps up to control over Crimea? What is stopping this from becoming a nuclear war?
I know we can't just fold to the demands of every insane dictator... but I think its totally appropriate to ask what the chances of nuclear war (or a war resulting in millions dead) and if we're ok risking that for Crimea. You can do that without even a neuron of support for Russia.
If you notice how Musk handled the children stuck in a cave its a familiar pattern. Every time there is a crisis he chokes and says something stupid. He reverts to form.
If we also can't fold to the demand of every insane dictator we also can't do so for every insane dictator with nukes either or they will in short order run the world because there are several to choose from incumbent and incipient. We can only build a future worth having by being willing to stand up and take the risk and call their bluff even at the risk of everything we hold dear.
Men of small courage and lesser souls would deserve the terrible world their children would inherit.
Giving bullies what they want leads to them wanting more. See the monstrous failure of Chamberlain's appeasement policy in the early stages of WW II.
I'm not a fan of giving in to the demand of bullies either... but what bullies have the ability to trigger the end of the world as we know it?
But sure... this is all based on the idea that simply surrendering Crimea would cause this to stop, which isn't guaranteed. Russia has shown it doesn't care to keep promises.
In this case the contempt is well deserved. One doesn't just "throw stuff out to get the discussion started" regarding an ongoing genocidal rampage complete with rape and torture camps. It's in poor taste. Nobody cares what Elon wants because except interjecting himself uselessly into international politics he is irrelevant.
Like when he says they should do "elections under UN supervision". In a region which just experienced mass deportation of it's habitants and mass migration of native russians, by force, in the last months.
Also, he absolutely glosses over the fact that Russia blatantly broke the Budapest Memorandum. How can you trust them at all ?
I presume it was about as well thought-out as the original Twitter purchase offer.
How about the guy who is being sued to buy twitter way over face value because he decides the disposition of billions by tweet?
The man is a fool who buys and takes credit for better men's work who got his start with apartheid money. He doesn't deserve credit or your hero worship.
No western historian would ever use this, you can only get this from russian propaganda sources like "Moskovskiy Komsomolets" or from someone who's influenced by it.
I wonder where did Musk get this from. And what other memes of russian's version of history he got.
If you paid any attention in 2001 you've heard this song before.
Moldova.
Moronic attitudes like this led to WW2