I'd like this to be built by the US government, not a person who turned off Ukraine's starlink access on a whim based on his personal opinion of an international event.
I marked this story to follow up on when it broke, because it interested me.
I'm no Musk fan, but I did find his telling of this story credible: Starlink was initially disabled in Crimea due to sanctions, the Ukrainian uncrewed surface vehicle team assumed coverage would be available all the way to their target, and Musk declined to extend coverage when they asked at the last minute, in the context of a specific, planned military operation. I happen to be a lawyer familiar with those sanctions---and how businesses tend to address them---but you could cross-reference stories about GitHub and others freezing accounts of people logging in from Crimean IPs for a sense.
Either way, I'd be careful with words here. I don't recall any reports of Starlink being shut down for Ukraine or Ukrainian forces overall. There was another news arc some time before about Musk insisting the government pick up the tab for continued service. But as far as I know that never resulted in any major service disruption. I vaguely recall it's now on Department of Defense contract, but you'd want to check that.
That never happened. SpaceX was giving Ukraine Starlink access for free to the tune of 100 million dollars during the war while it was unprofitable to help against Russia and for that crime Musk has been demonized by false information and propaganda. Sad to see this misinformation even on HN.
Starlink was never active in Crimea because it's an occupied Russian territory and Starlink was enabled only in Ukraine controlled territories for obvious reasons.
SpaceX got an emergency request from Ukraine to enable Starlink over Crimea so they can bomb Russian warships, SpaceX refused since Musk was afraid of nuclear escalation. They can't turn off something that was never turned on.
Recently the Pentagon praised SpaceX for blocking Russians' illicit use of Starlink.
He’s very, very far from neutral in this.
Is it really that wild of a take though? The argument as a I understood it was, there's almost no progress being made for Ukraine in taking back that territory. Prolonging the war causes suffering to the young men who have to fight it. So exchange land for peace while still in a strong position instead of current policy of no peace unless a return to original borders.
I don't really see a realistic argument that a Ukrainian counterattack will recover that land.
Surely they'll settle for that, and never push their borders again.
But no one ever seems to propose that there's still a possibility Ukraine can retake that land. I would definitely like to hear it, but for the most part the border has very slowly been moving in the wrong direction.
They’ll retake it at the current pace, but it takes time.
Part of the reason why it isn’t discussed though is 1) Russia gets really freaked out about it, and 2) it’s (somewhat) in Western interests for Ukraine to not ‘win’.
The longer this drags out, the more fucked Russia is. (Also Ukraine long term, but eggs need to be broken to make an omelette!). And from a western perspective, this is a remarkably cheap proxy war.
If we don’t count the damage Russia is doing to us through propaganda and social media manipulation anyway.
Putin has one tactic and one tactic only. Double or nothing and push painful consequences down the road. Well, there is an end to this road and it is mighty foggy.