Not a whole lot of gratis.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/14/23404069/spacex-ukraine-...
> CNN’s report also sheds light on who’s been footing the bill for Ukraine’s Starlink connectivity until now, and says that around 85 percent of the terminals were at least partially paid for by American, Polish, and British governments, as well as other organizations like NGOs.
I personally find it a bit odd that Musk would suddenly publicly make these demands instead of just having SpaceX call their contacts in the DOD. I presume it makes the DOD question future involvement with companies controlled by Musk.
From the outside the only fact we can ascertain is that we know his services are not net 0 in cost, so by that assumption any expense is one he can argue he deserves support on.
Well like I said it all basically comes down to whether you consider Musk trustworthy. Personally I see a him as a grandstanding, lying charlatan. This is a belief I've held for many years long before you say it now has become the cool thing. But I don't run the DOD and only watch this from the sidelines. We'll just have to see how the the DOD and other portions of the government react.
> From the outside the only fact we can ascertain is that we know his services are not net 0 in cost, so by that assumption any expense is one he can argue he deserves support on.
This is a bit of a straw man. I haven't heard anyone argue that he must give out services for free. The criticism I've heard has been to question the actual numbers Musk has provided and the way he's gone about doing it.
Instead he called Putin to talk about "peace" (read: appeasement) and then posts literal Kremlin talking points to Twitter and only mentioned getting money to maintain starlink after getting a ton of people telling him to fuck off.
Literally first DuckDuckGo result.
Third:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/10/12/kremlin-de...
He has access, has talked in the past, repeats kremlin talking points, threatens to withhold access to strategic technology from the kremlin’s victims, and then claims to not be involved when he starts taking heat for it.
Musk is notoriously dishonest, I don’t know why his claims are seen as trustworthy given the surrounding context.
Pay attention to the details. A year and half ago he was not engaged in a conflict with Ukraine. Plenty of people send letters and or talk with heads of state. You think Bill gates hasn't spoken with numerous heads of state? Sure has, otherwise microsoft wouldn't have been in Russia, China, and other nations.
So proof of this peace call is where?
EDIT: I think you editing your post after being proven wrong is just as dishonest. Further your second post does nothing to help your argument. The kremlin will say what ever they need to for their agenda regardless. In this case they deny it and there is no way to prove it happened.
He literally fell for Russian disinfo claiming that he was on some "Ukrainian hitlist": https://twitter.com/uamemesforces/status/1581068904021241857
The guy cannot do basic due diligence on easily verifiable crap spewed out on the platform that he is buying.