Did Elon Musk Slow Down The Internet While Civilians Were being Killed? What is Starshield?
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| WS journal |
For years, Ukraine’s armed forces have relied on satellite communication services developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
New York Times
We will continue reports on the Culpability or not of Elon Musk on Murder of Ukraine Civilians....
Russia’s war in Ukraine has been the first major military conflict powered by satellite-based internet connectivity.
Ukraine’s armed forces have carried out and prevented drone attacks by using SpaceX’s Starlink service, which provides internet connectivity from satellites in lower earth orbit, and more recently its military-grade sister service, Starshield, which was developed for the U.S. Department of Defense. The services provide connections for Ukrainian drones to carry out and prevent military strikes.
The technology has helped Ukraine limit Russia’s territorial gains, but it has also made the country beholden to the U.S. government and SpaceX, which can turn off its access.
Early this month, Ukraine’s military reliance on the U.S. satellite system backfired when SpaceX started limiting the service. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Oct. 18 on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the U.S. government had asked SpaceX to curb Ukraine’s access, capping the “maximum speed” of drones at 100 miles an hour. With those limitations, he said, Ukraine “can’t destroy” Russian attack drones.
The U.S. government has disputed Mr. Zelensky’s claims that it interfered with Ukraine’s internet access.
On Oct. 17, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that according to his understanding, Starlink, SpaceX’s commercial offering, was “back up and running” in Ukraine. He added that Ukraine had asked for access to Starshield “in order to conduct deep strikes into Russia” but that the United States hadn’t decided whether to provide it.
“No one at the White House ordered anyone to slow down internet or slow down speeds so certain drones couldn’t use it,” Mr. Rubio said before boarding a flight for a diplomatic trip to Central Asia.
SpaceX and its leaders, Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell, did not respond to requests for comment.
Ukraine’s issues with Starshield are the latest problem in a complicated history with Mr. Musk and his company’s satellite internet offerings.
Here’s what to know:
What is Starshield?
More and more people are becoming familiar with the SpaceX subsidiary Starlink, which now has more than 13 million subscribers including in some homes as an internet provider. SpaceX describes Starshield, which was publicly announced in late 2022, as “a secure satellite network designed specifically for government customers and national security applications.”
Starshield offers deeper security than Starlink so it can host and process classified information. On a company website, SpaceX said that Starshield is “designed to support U.S. National Defense use cases for the Department of Defense and other Government partners.”
The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars on the technology, which makes up a part of the nearly $4.2 billion that SpaceX reported in revenue last year in providing connectivity to governments and enterprises. In turn, the Pentagon allows Ukraine to use Starshield.
SpaceX went public this summer in a blockbuster share sale that made Mr. Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
How is Starshield related to Starlink?
The two services rely on the same underlying satellite technology. SpaceX, which dominates the private rocket launch market, has been sending its own payloads into lower earth orbit for years, building a backbone of interconnected satellites that can beam relatively reliable internet back down to earth.
Mr. Musk has said Starlink is a civilian service, while Starshield is intended for military operations.
“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government,” Mr. Musk said in a post on X on Wednesday. Limits on use, he said, were decided by the U.S. military and “ultimately” the president. “Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company,” he added.
Some experts have raised concerns that Starlink and Starshield aren’t truly independent, as service outages have taken out both services at the same time. And despite the distinction in the services between civilian and military use, governments, including Ukraine’s, have long been using Starlink to conduct their war efforts.
What role does Elon Musk play in these services?
Mr. Musk has expressed reservations about allowing armed services to use SpaceX’s satellite services to conduct offensive attacks. Early on in the Russia-Ukraine war, he denied Ukraine’s request to turn Starlink on over Russian-controlled Crimea, ahead of a planned drone attack on an enemy boat.
In February, SpaceX also cut off Russian troops who had been illicitly using Starlink in battle in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government has maintained an uneasy relationship with Mr. Musk, who has been critical of Mr. Zelensky and his country’s war effort against Russia. Because of their reliance on Starlink and Starshield, Ukrainian officials have alternated between praise and criticism of the world’s richest man.
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