Elon Musk ‘committed evil’ with Starlink order, says Ukrainian official
Elon Musk ‘committed evil’ with Starlink order, says Ukrainian official
Ukrainian presidential adviser says deaths of civilians ‘the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego’
Ukrainian presidential adviser says deaths of civilians ‘the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego’
A senior Ukrainian official has accused Elon Musk of “committing evil” after a new biography revealed details about how the business magnate ordered his Starlink satellite communications network to be turned off near the Crimean coast last year to hobble a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian warships.
In a statement on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk owns, the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote that Musk’s interference led to the deaths of civilians, calling them “the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego”.
“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian fleet via Starlink interference, @elonmusk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities. As a result, civilians, and children are being killed,” Podolyak wrote.
“Why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realise that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?”
Musk defended his decision, saying he did not want his SpaceX company to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation”.
CNN on Thursday quoted an excerpt from the biography Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which described how armed submarine drones were approaching a Russian fleet near the Crimean coast when they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”.
The biography, due out on Tuesday, alleges Musk ordered Starlink engineers to turn off the service in the area of the attack because of his concern that Vladimir Putin would respond with nuclear weapons to a Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied Crimea.
Musk, who is also the CEO of the Tesla electric car company and SpaceX rocket and spacecraft manufacturer, initially agreed to supply Starlink hardware to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion disrupted Ukrainian communications. But he reportedly had second thoughts after Kyiv succeeded in repelling the initial Russian assault and began to counterattack.
Musk has previously been embroiled in a social media spat with Ukrainian officials including the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, over his ideas for ending Russia’s invasion.
In October last year, Musk proposed a peace deal involving re-running under UN supervision annexation referendums in Moscow-occupied Ukrainian regions, acknowledging Russian sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula and giving Ukraine a neutral status.
“Preliminary analysis suggests that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards.
The EU has also accused Musk’s X of allowing Russian propaganda about Ukraine to spread on its website.
A study released last week by the European Commission, the governing body of the European Union, found that “the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023.”
The study said that the increased reach of Russian propaganda online was “largely driven by Twitter, where engagement grew by 36% after CEO Elon Musk decided to lift mitigation measures on Kremlin-backed accounts”.
Musk on Friday attempted to refute the EU study, writing on his social media platform: “Where is all this pro-Russian propaganda? We don’t see it.”
archive: https://archive.ph/wip/ENe3P
Musk defended his decision, saying he did not want his SpaceX company to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation”.
lol well you fucking failed bro because that's exactly what happened.
I call bullshit. He sold them fucking internet as a fucking contract with the damn Pentagon. What else would they be used for. If you wanted to use that excuse then you should’ve never made the contract. This was planned from the start. He sold the contract to have greater control over their military operations. This is just the first of a long line of items to come
He sold them fucking internet as a fucking contract with the damn Pentagon.
Sounds an awful lot like Elon Musk defrauded the Pentagon.
Yep. With something like this you're either all in or all out. You don't half-ass military support.
Turns out if you're rich enough, you get to try out the trolly problem in real life and then brag about it in your biography.
That needs to be the meme that goes around.
If he did it to the US while we were at war we would call it treason.
Instead he merely did it to a strong US ally to benefit a long-time US adversary. An adversary we have practically as many sanctions on as is feasible before it becomes a declaration of war.
I don't know what crime this is. Logan Act violation? But at this point Starlink is being used as a strategic asset in a US ally's war and should be seized by the US government as a military asset.
I'm sure that DOD lawyers are taring through the contract they signed with him. But, since the dumb SOB admitted to it, if the contract doesn't have a provision to let him do this they can sue him under carriage laws. Ending with the government taking away his operating license and siezing his operating network. The DOD has been wanting to create their own such network in any case.
Just asking, does anybody still like this cunt?
Sadly, he has a bunch of dedicated fanboys on his precious website.
They're all over reddit too. There's nothing more pathetic than witnessing a thread get brigaded by a bunch of Muskrats. Imagine living vicariously though the immature twitter antics of a white supremacist billionaire. They're clowns.
Other dumb cunts do, but not as many as before
Elon Musk is skirting with making StarLink one of the first nationalized companies in the US in a long time. Lets hope its a domino for all ISPs.
jk i hear spectrum and at&t are merging to one company to be called "lmao, get fucked america"
If you want to take his technology to wage foreign wars then do it.
If you'd rather just rely on a private citizens to provide vital military infrastructure to your allies then deal with the fact that private citizens are prone to such behaviors as acting in their own best interest.
The timing is the issue. If Musk had disallowed use of Starlink for drone control from the start, then that's one thing.
If he had notified the Ukraine Armed forces that he was going to do it ahead of time, that would have been best.
However, he ordered that their access be disrupted while an attack on the Russian Navy was going to take place. Meaning Starlink access was cut just at the worst time and caused the drones to simply wash ashore.
That same Navy has been causing thousands of civilian casualties.
How Musk knew Ukraine was going to launch an attack but hadn't hit their targets yet is another concerning fact.
CNN on Thursday quoted an excerpt from the biography Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which described how armed submarine drones were approaching a Russian fleet near the Crimean coast when they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”.
The biography, due out on Tuesday, alleges Musk ordered Starlink engineers to turn off the service in the area of the attack because of his concern that Vladimir Putin would respond with nuclear weapons to a Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied Crimea.
It would be the difference between GM shutting down your car remotely when it's parked after sending you notice vs GM shutting off your car when you're at highway speeds and taking an exit.
putin ballhandler chose to fuck over ukraine?
My gods just shoot the man already so we can stop hearing about him.
there should be a bounty on the fucker
The bounty wouldn't even have to be money, at this point if you promised to give people twitter back instead, you'd still get interested parties.
Give Ukraine a few more hours it may just happen
Ukraine. Southeast Montana. Doesn't matter.
Aiding and abetting governments hostile to the US and its allies is treason. Musk is a fraud, a traitor and deserves to be imprisoned.
Southeast Montana?
How is he not like a rouge nation unto himself at this point? He's deciding the outcome of international conflicts. We are truly an oligarchy.
Rogue.
Rouge nation is an excellent name for a make-up company that specialises in red/pink cosmetics.
I stand corrected. But, dibs on Rouge Nation!
Rouge is also the term for any kind of face powder regardless of the colour. So yeah it would be a great name for a cosmetics company.
Nationalize StarLink.
Oh no see he prevented Moscow nuking Ukraine by doing this. What a hero! /s
I can't believe we live in this society of appeasers. Him and the Republicans. I remember a time when Republicans accused Democrats of not being able to stand up to dictators, and now they are full throttle.
I remember the last time we tried appeasement on a belligerent authoritarian state. It worked so well in the end, didn't it?
Ukraine is so obviously the sudetenland.
Peace for our time!
I'm generally anti-war, but with this thing, there's no choice. If Ukraine wins, the war is over. If Russia wins, there will be even more war to come.
It's always projection, every accusation is an admission.
I can't be the only person who wondered "what's his real motive" when he volunteered these for free, knowing much of what he is known for. I guess people he's visited in DC have benefitted as well, because surely they knew this wouldn't go well, right?
Elon Musk is an attention starved and has the mentality of an impulsive spoiled child. Slava Ukraini was trending, so he wanted to insert himself into it to get attention. Probably thought Ukraine would lose so he gets a little attention for trying to help these guys fighting the good fight before they were ultimately crushed by Russia.
But that didn't happen. Ukraine continues on and what he thought of as a little in the moment publicity stunt obligated him to helping Ukraine. While most people would happy with the result, but scared little child Elon Musk felt he was in over his head. And being the impulsive child he is, started doing impulsive shit and interfered in an active military conflict, compromising an ally's mission.
It's hard to say how much DC is in the know. It is a new tech, glitches happen, so they might not have suspected Musk was the glitch in the system.
tHe sOCIaL mEdIA pLATfOrm foRmERLy KnOwN aS tWITtER
Broke: The social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Woke: The social media platform, that tries to rebrand itself to X.
Bespoken: The failing social media.
I was talking about this with someone today, and pondering what would happen if a private Ukrainian citizen had decided to deliberately fuck up an American military action, and what the American response would be.
The closest I could think of was Julian Assange, a non-US citizen who leaked a bunch of US military info and probably somewhat fucked up whatever they were up to at the time, or at least drew more attention to it than they would have liked. They're currently trying to extradite him to the US for "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion" and who knows what they'll do to him when that inevitably gets pushed through. I guess Chelsea Manning's treatment is probably some indicator for that too.
So anyway, I expect Elon Musk will probably be extradited to Ukraine and spend a year or so in solitary confinement there right away. Maybe hide in an embassy for a few years first?
Lots of warmongers here who call themselves left libs... do we want a nuclear war? Raise your hand if you supported the iraq war and also voted biden.
So your saying we should all surrender to a nuclear dictator cuz he might nuke us? Sure! Go ahead and take Alaska and Canada! We wouldn't want to start a nuclear war now would we?
Fucking idiot. Self defense is not warmongering.
Do you not believe that a country should be helped to defend themselves after getting invaded?
I tend to feel sympathy for defenders. I was happy to see that one helicopter get shit down in Desert Storm 2, I think we should never have gone to Afghanistan and I think Russia should never have attacked Kiev. It seems consistent to me.
I like to think that there may be a Ukrainian sniper already on American soil. I hope he/she can somehow manage to get a gun.
You have to throw him out a window in the most ironic false flag attack ever.
No way Americans can own guns...
Getting a gun on US soil is trivial, especially if you look European. They could purchase a 30-06 at just about any Courthouse Days without even showing ID.
In america? No way. I heard they actively dislike guns. /s
100% chance there’s a musk piss-tape
I agree, there's probably a tape, but I think there's more than pissing going on in it.
At this point if there's a tape of a prostitute peeing on Musk in a Moscow hotel room, it wouldn't be anything shocking or damage his reputation all that much beyond what he's done to himself already. I think if there is a tape, it's gotta be something really fucked up.
Musk? Evil?? I’m shocked. SHOCKED!
Honestly, how do people think he managed to hoard more money than anyone alive? By being kind? LOL
I never did like Elon
Everybody loved him when he was saving humanity by inventing the electric car and bringing humans to mars but he makes one wartime decision to avert nuclear war and everybody turns on him. It just goes to show that our lazy society doesn’t value job creators and innovators.
Weak bait mate, try to be more convincing next time.
I don't think he's ever invented anything. Certainly not the electric car.
I didn't love him then either. I guess I'm not part of everybody.
I had to go through your post history to see that this is satire. I hope to god it's satire at least.
so that's what i missed