Elon Musk ‘Secretly’ Used Starlink To Foil A Ukrainian Attack On Russian Naval Fleet Over Fear Of Nuclear War: Report
Elon Musk ‘Secretly’ Used Starlink To Foil A Ukrainian Attack On Russian Naval Fleet Over Fear Of Nuclear War: Report
What an utter piece of shit.
Is this not treason? Like legitimately, technically.
It may be a violation of the Logan Act, which makes it illegal for private citizens to interfere with foreign relations.
The Logan Act deals with private citizens negotiating with foreign governments. Unless he fucked with Starlink at the direct request of the Russian gov't, I don't see how the Logan Act applies. EDIT: apparently he did it after speaking with Russian government officials. So never mind, Logan Act is absolutely implicated.
Against Ukraine certainly, but since he's not a citizen of Ukraine, then no. If these were US forces that he sabotaged, or the US was actually fighting in the war then it would also qualify, but once again that doesn't apply. It definitely runs counter to US foreign interests, but that's not enough to qualify (and probably good it doesn't, a LOT of stuff people regularly do it could be argued would run counter to US foreign interests).
He did this with federal funds. And the US hasn’t declared war since, what, WW2? The Rosenbergs were executed for treason, and we never declared war with USSR.
This reeks of espionage. With a slight hint of war crimes?
This has nothing to do with being Ukrainian, but everything to do with being American, and actively working against American interests and official national and White house policies.
He is actively working against the support USA is providing, and has paid him for, and has ordered him not to sabotage or diminish.
This is treason, which is logical, since Elon Musk is a Trump supporter and they are both traitors and Elon Musk is a pedophile Nazi.
It's cute how if Ukraine fights back that risks nuclear war, but when Russia invades a sovereign country it doesn't
It's like the rule of money, but with nukes: those who have the money/nukes, make the rules.
Hang on... That's sabotage. Straight up. That's a criminal offence no?
Yes. Assisting putler's genocide against Ukrainian children is a war crime.
Check his party affiliation
Elon is not the president, a leader, the military, nor a government. This parasite should be in a prison or a brig at the very least. This is fucking treason.
If he loves Russia so much, we should deport him there, and nationalize all his assets since SpaceX is a critical security apparatus and he's clearly the foreign agent of a hostile power.
No no, give him to Ukrain, where they can charge and try him. Hopefully end up with life in prison or something better (worse?). Giving him to Russia just makes him more of a Russian asset.
Fucking charge him with something. This is insane... If it's not treason, it sure as hell is undermining the billions of dollars in aid were sending Ukraine. We've sent 76 billion dollars so far.
Yeah, if an unelected CEO can tell a democratically elected government what it can and can't do we're no better than medieval peasants who had to bow and scrape for the nobles' favor
Vote with your wallet. If you hate him so much don’t buy anything from him. It’s a fair meritocracy, if you think you can run a better space satellite company you are welcome to try
we're no better than medieval peasants who had to bow and scrape for the nobles' favor
It's been like that for decades(centuries?). The rich do as they please and the rest of us are treated like livestock. It's impressive citizens don't revolt more than they do these days.
Stop trying to tell a private citizen and businessman what he can and can’t do with his own business
He got to where he is with government funding.
Turn off the tap. Now.
When you have a contract with the federal government it comes with stipulations. Don't "private citizen" this. It's not a mom and pop store.
Where do you draw the line? Should he also be allowed to sell his services to Russia? Should private companies from the US be allowed to sell arms to Russia?
Why? I think capitalism’s a toxic system and he has no moral right to his wealth.
"Citizen" is the critical word here
I know it's an anathema to most in the US but the government needs to step up and take Starlink and Space X off Musk for a fair price. He's way too unstable to be trusted with tech that important.
The older I get the more socialist I am. Yeah, take it away from his dumb ass, but don't keep it ffs. Make it employee owned. Make every business employee owned.
Make it a Co-op with government oversight and maybe security. Its too stategically important to be allowed market level independence.
This is how I feel about Starship. Amazing progress is being made and he's going to fuck it all up before it ever has a real mission. It's sad. World's first fully reusable launch vehicle capable of building real shit in space like colonies and infrastructure and it had to be him that did it.
Did he really do it? I'm pretty sure that was the engineers, which Musk is not.
I’m pretty sure someone at Tesla or SpaceX put the Twitter idea in his head so he would fuck off and meddle with something else and let them do their actual work instead of dealing with his stupidity, micromanaging and narcissism.
He borrowed a billion from it to buy Twatter. What happens the next time he needs money?
I would love a SpaceX without Elon.
But the thing that made SpaceX what it is now is largely that it is not a government entity.
Elon can't be trusted with it, but NASA would just stall all progress on it for the next fifty years
All the downvoters should take a good close look at the cockup that is the SLS program
“How am I in this war?” Musk asked Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
That's a pretty glib way of looking at it.
It’s his company that he built from the ground up, and the government doesn’t know what to do with stuff like satellites, that is best left to the free market
I mean if a person does anything directly affecting a war (for any side) I'd say that person is a wartime volunteer.
Wartime volunteers that have taken up arms are a absolutely viable target for military strikes.
Just saying 🤷♂️
Any system capable of manipulating the outcomes of international conflict needs to become property of the government via eminent domain...especially if that system is used...especially if used by an entrepreneur operating without oversight.
Deactivating US military hardware in the middle of a conflict sounds a lot like an act of treason...
From what I understand he didn't deactivate it.. it was already deactivated and he refused to turn it on.
He had disabled starlink systems over Russian territories - in order to help Ukraine. This included Crimea. Ukraine last year wanted to do a drone-strike on Crimea, so they asked Musk to turn them on. He refused, claiming he was scared of war escalation and that he didn't want to be involved in offensive war operations.
You mean Ukrainian military hardware?
Whose government though? That's the issue with this thinking. As a person who does not live in the US, I'm not sure I want the US to own everything that can be used in war.
It would obviously be the government of the country of origin.
Starlink was designed, built, and deployed from the United States, by SpaceX (a US company) which is owned by Elon Musk (a US citizen), and launched from US soil. Obviously all that junk and and people are subject to US governance, so when I say this specific stuff should be seized by eminent domain, I mean seized by the US Government.
Other junk in other countries built by other people of similar magnitude and ability to interfere with global conflicts would be subjected to those other governments. I wouldn't expect the US Government to seize, under eminent domain, foreign owned stuff in other countries.
Musk is a war criminal. This is a crime against humanity.
It's neither of those things. Words have meanings, and legal terms have very specific meanings.
Hey look a rational person.
Musk is treasonous war criminal.
Spoken like a true ttrpg player.
Legally though, does he still qualify as a piece of shit? Cause he is a piece of shit.
It is neither of those things, but he may be subject to an act of retorsion, which isn't bound by the rule of "proportionate response," from both the government of the US, and the government of Ukraine. I don't expect that to happen, but that's what would happen to any of us doing something like that.
Elon is a Russian bitch just like the rest of the billionaires.
If true, my respect for Musk just dropped a .... well, none at all. It would be totally in character.
Make sure to save this for the next time that shitbird or one of his moron suckups tries to say he helped Ukraine. Fucker oughtta be treated the same as any Russian collaborator.
No, save this when he eventually sneaks in a putin missile somehow.
But the truly galaxy brain move is in this article:
After CNN’s reporting, Musk reversed course, tweeting “the hell with it … we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
Gwynne Shotwell, Musk’s president at SpaceX, was livid at Musk’s reversal, according to Isaacson.
“The Pentagon had a $145 million check ready to hand to me, literally,” Isaacson quotes Shotwell as saying. “Then Elon succumbed to the bullshit on Twitter and to the haters at the Pentagon who leaked the story.”
Muskovite belongs in prison with the other russian war criminals.
Yeah we keep finding out more and more ways this mofo sucks. Somebody needs to strap him to the front of his stupid rocket and launch him into orbit.
Between the drag and the weight it’d be a waste of payload capacity.
So use him as ejection mass to help the propulsion?
From the moment he gutted 80% of twitter staff very soon after a secret meeting with Putin, its all been pretty obvious Musk is a Russian asset. Twitter helped rally international support for Ukraine and he hasnt been subtle in sabotaging it
Musk is whatever his narcissistic personality wants him to be to get the most attention.
I think the implication is compromat.
Throw that fuck in prison and nationalize all his shit.
“Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
Yes my satellite that is actively being used in a war should be designed only for Netflix and chill.
Exactly. This rule should have made clear from the start (instead of gifting Ukraine access to Starlink at the beginning of the conflict), not taken back later on - and silently, too, with a high cost for the Ukrainian army.
Musk / Starlink is absolutely in the wrong here. But since we're seeing Musk stray further and further from grace, is this surprising?
Fuck you, Elon - you festering vomit of a man.
That's insane
So there is an Elon piss-tape kompromat?
Working theory is the P in P-tape is from pedophile, as in pootin has serious kompromat lorded over drumft. Among other financial leverage.
Same could easily be true for Elon. Where did the billions in Twitter purchasing money come from? Etc.
If he's not careful the US will simply nationalize SpaceX. It's not going to happen in the next couple of years, but this kind of shit will cause it to happen eventually.
He'd probably love that, gives him more reasons to complain about the left on Twitter.
We have nationalized utility companies in the past. In fact we even did a satellite data network.
The reason Space X had suck an easy start was lack of competition in the launch business.
Boeing and Lockheed had so fucked up a competition for launch vehicles, the only way to avoid eternal lawsuirlts was to form United Launch Allliance, initially a 50/50 ownership split between the only 2 launch providers.
The military and alphabet agencies want to buy launches not build big rockets. ICBMs being the exception.
*Out of loyalty to Putin
Throw him in jail. That's it, an individual has disengaged from America elected leadership to act as an independent agent. Also known as: a spy.
Like is this even a debate? Any citizen that did this would be in a CIA black site hoping they got to see their family again.
So ungrateful after everything Elon has done for us
Being a troll Musk shill is just as embarassing as being a real one, and everyone else but you can see that.
If Russia offers parity to Ukraine’s “purchases” of Russian hardware, it could conceivably be in the tens of millions. Benedict Muskard is low on liquid assets.
I would reverse it: That's why he has no morals, he's a billionaire. Having social or financial power reduces the brain's capacity for empathy - the rich and powerful become evil.
Biologically, that's how power works. You can't grow up with money (esp. South African diamond money) without being evil.
No crazy person should be allowed to have this much power. Starlink should be nationalized, and instead of a payout Elon can go to jail for all that market manipulation he's constantly getting away with.
I don't think starlink should be nationalized, but i do think the US government should create their own satellite internet system. Creating a satellite network like starlink is relatively easy if you already have the capability to frequently launch satellites into low earth orbit. The physical satellites themselves are relatively simple devices, and the software to make it all operate would take some work but also is relatively easy.
(Note that when I say "relatively easy" I'm talking about relative to other large hightech undertakings, like for example the James Webb telescope)
Nationalised? More like INTERnationalised! Those things aren’t just clogging up the skies over the US, they’re blocking the whole freaking planet.
Putin probably paid more.
This makes Musk a foreign agent by definition, unwitting, semi-witting or otherwise this is textbook foreign agent behavior.
Smells like a war crime to me
War-related crime maybe, but I don't think this is against any Geneva Conventions
“How am I in this war?” Musk asked Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
Lol, this from the guy that literally turned his satellites off on purpose to influence a war. This guy has poo brain.
Time to nationalize Starlink
This is a great article on the subject posted recently:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-shadow-rule
Custom modifications of the Starlink Kits or Services for military end-uses or military end-users may transform the items into products controlled under U.S. export control laws, specifically the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) (22 C.F.R. §§ 120-130) or the Export Administration Regulations (EAR)
It's in their EULA....this has been brought up a million times. Starlink cannot be used for military purposes. Without breaking this law... instead of drinking the slim that comes out of CNNs mouth, maybe look a littler deeper on the topic.
Secretly posted on Twitter that he did this because who is going to hold him accountable?
Wow, this thread. All he did was switching off his satellite network though, not somehow sabotaged the operation.
SpaceX / Starlink does work for the USA Pentagon. he isn't against war.
And people here are thinking that USA is gonna let one rich guy to effect national strategy because he felt like it. I don't know which is worse people believing that these people got government contracts because they are rich or deep state (military industrial complex) letting them do these things just because they are rich. They are forgetting even Elon himself openly stated that his company is under strict surveillance and control because it's seen as a national security matter regarding the rocket technology and he can't even finalize who to employ or share information unless government approved it.
JFC - this guy.
“How am I in this war?” Musk asked Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
What a fucking douche. As usual.
It goes beyond douche I'm afraid
Absolutely, I’m just tired of committing significant wordage towards him.
Elon Musk should be 'secretly' stuffed into a tiny cell on a black site and have his wealth redistributed. All secretly and in the name of helping the world, of course.
Can't wait to see how many times the ElmoBois will use Worthington's Law to "defend" the Space Karen.
I’ll need more info on this. However, if true, it wouldn’t surprise me.
The totality of evidence for this is "a drone stopped working for a bit". It's just baseless waffle.
You mean the totality of evidence apart from:
"Papa puta is happy with muskreek. Papa puta promised not to press death button, muskreek is hero! Why people angry with muskreek papa puta?" - The best model science can build of musk's current thought process
I think I have a new winner for guy who could have been cool but ended up being his own worse enemy.
Thank goodness for our titans of industry. Musk saves the planet yet again by averting nuclear war! What will he accomplish next?
I dunno, but he's probably going to have to buy her a horse just like his last accomplishment.
Well, the USA and EU also attach conditions on delivered weapons - not to be used against targets in Russia. Also, maybe he is afraid of Russians shooting down his satellites, as they threatened to do.
I think technically they're more "terrorists" than "rogue nations"
I mean 9/11 was performed by some rich family member.
Easiest solution in the world is to treat them to the guillotine