2023-09-08 05:50:09
Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian attack on the Russian naval fleet, a new biography of the billionaire reveals referred to on Thursday 7 September by CNN.
The American channel publishes an extract from this biography, entitled Elon Musk, to be published on September 12 in the United States by Simon & Schuster (September 13 in France by Fayard). According to the author of the book, Walter Isaacson, known for his biographies of personalities such as Steve Jobs or Albert Einstein, the Ukrainian underwater drones loaded with explosives were ready to attack the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, but they “lost their connection and washed up on shore without damage”.
The billionaire told the biographer that he feared the attack would trigger a “mini-Pearl Harbor” if Russia had responded with nuclear weapons. “According to Walter Isaacson, (his) decision was motivated by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons, a fear reinforced by Musk’s conversations with senior Russian officials,” reports CNN, which notes that these fears have not been “not materialized in Crimea”.
The solution of “Putin’s bootlicker”, is indignant The New Republic, “consisted therefore of interfering in a conflict in which he had no business interfering, and which he was not in a position to resolve.” In August, recalls the media, the journalist “Ronan Farrow published an article about Mr. Musk in the New Yorkerrevealing that the latter has repeatedly threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to the Starlink network, which has become essential to the country’s military success.
“Not meant to be involved in wars”
The incident pushed kyiv to beg Elon Musk to turn the satellites back on, reports the CNN website. “Ukrainian and American officials […] appealed to Musk directly. The latter ended up accepting.”
If the press had already reported on the affair, these new details “highlight the extent to which many governments have become dependent” of the entrepreneur, “a man who controls both a dominant means of high-speed communication and a major platform for public discourse, X (formerly Twitter)”, decrypted The Washington Post. They also recall “that the founder of SpaceX has gained considerable influence because his competitors have proven unable to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation” of the society.
SpaceX began providing Starlink internet service to Ukraine after the Russian invasion, in February 2022, “thus creating a lifeline for the country, while its communications systems were largely out of service,” remembers the newspaper.
“The Ukrainian military has relied heavily on this system for communications between frontline troops and commanders further away from the fighting, while Russian forces target the country’s communications infrastructure,” note for his part Forbes.
The Verge observes for his part that, “As the conflict drags on, Musk feels increasingly uncomfortable because of the leading geopolitical role SpaceX gives him.” “How am I involved in this war?” he asks in an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s book relayed by CNN. “Starlink was not designed to be involved in wars. It was so people could watch Netflix and relax, connect to school and do good, peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
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