On 9/14/23 6:34 AM, Dave Taht wrote:
This is one of those threads where I do think folk would benefit from
hearing from the horses' mouths. In a recent bio of musk published
this past week, the author claimed that starlink withdrew service over
crimea based on the knowledge it was going to be used for a surprise
attack. Starlink - and that author - now state that (
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1700345943105638636 )
The onus is meaningfully different if I refused to act upon a request
from Ukraine vs. made a deliberate change to Starlink to thwart
Ukraine. At no point did I or anyone at SpaceX promise coverage over
Crimea. Moreover, our terms of service clearly prohibit Starlink for
offensive military action, as we are a civilian system, so they were
again asking for something that was expressly prohibited. SpaceX is
building Starshield for the US government, which is similar to, but
much smaller than Starlink, as it will not have to handle millions of
users. That system will be owned and controlled by the US government.
Quote
Walter Isaacson
@WalterIsaacson
·
Sep 8
To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was
enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to
enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did
not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would
cause a…Show more
<https://twitter.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1700342242290901361>
Furthermore, Musk stated yesterday that had the request come from the
us government, he would have complied.
I will refrain from editorializing.
I guess this is a lesson on diversity which every military should pay
attention to. I had forgotten about other wireless options that Bill
pointed out, though I'm not sure if geostationary latency would fit
their requirements. But is trying to reclaim your territory "offensive"
after being invaded? How would other providers interpret that? Or maybe
this is just a unicorn.
Mike
