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Comment by drt5b7j | Hacker News Reader

Disabling Ukraine's use of his satellites when they're about to attack the invader?

That's a messed-up claim. I don't even like Musk, but volunteering to help with disaster relief does not obligate one to facilitate retaliatory warfare.

You'd be calling for his head just the same if Starlink fucked up and guided a missile into a refugee camp.

Patently false. He refused to enable the use of satellites - he did not disable existing satellite connections. Two very different things.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/musk-says-he-refused-ky...

After reading just about everything I can get my hands about this incident, I have to conclude that the narrative that was published was misleading.

I mean Musk still says he talked to Putin, but I think he didn't make a terrible decision in this particular case, as much as I would have loved to see the outcome.

Your source doesn't say what you think it says.

This is spin.

He had never enabled the internet where they asked him to; he declined to do so, which is a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.

If you don't like a single billionaire being able to materially affect the outcome of a conflict between nation states, vote for nationalization of all ISPs and a strong bill of digital rights to protect it.

Eh, Russia is invading a sovereign country. That's not spin.

And Starlink is helping Ukraine a lot to mount their defense.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/10/europe/ukraine-starlink-not-a...

My genes are mostly Scottish, but my adoptive (ie. my real) dad is Ukrainian; make no mistake as to my sympathies in the conflict.

But the problem in this particular instance is not Elon. The problem is that everyone is going along with the system where we let Billionaires run the show as they see fit.

If you want this to not happen, you have to change the system.

All US weapons delivered to Ukraine are delivered with the condition that they not be used on Russian territory. Elon's policy was the same as Biden's.

Crimea is not generally considered to be Russian territory, unless one is Russian.

But what about the bridge? It's in neutral territory. Is it a valid target? Probably yes, but is that a decision a third party like SpaceX should be making?

I mean, large sections of it are in Ukrainian territorial waters. No legal ambiguity there.

And large parts of it are in Russian territorial waters. Lots of ambiguity.

> All US weapons delivered to Ukraine are delivered with the condition that they not be used on Russian territory. Elon's policy was the same as Biden's.

The US is more then happy to see there weapons used on Crimea as they have in the past repeatedly iterated.

Crimea is part of Ukraine not Russia.

Crimea is Ukraine. That's not just a slogan. Taking Ukraine was the first step to reconstituting much of the Soviet Empire using more aggression in Europe. There is way more than Ukraine at stake.

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