In 2022, Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to shut down the Starlink satellite communications network near Crimea in order to thwart Ukraineʼs attack on the Russian Navy.
This is reported by CNN with reference to the published excerpt from Walter Isaacsonʼs biographical book "Elon Musk".
He notes that "Ukrainian underwater drones filled with explosives approached the Russian fleet, after which they lost contact and could not reach the target."
Muskʼs decision was allegedly dictated by "an acute fear that Russia will respond to an attack with nuclear weapons." Intentionally or not, he became a powerful mediator in the war, and American officials could not ignore it.
“Starlink was not designed to participate in wars. This was done so that people could watch Netflix, relax, connect to the Internet at school, and do good peaceful things, not strike with drones,” Musk noted at the time.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov asked Musk to restore the Starlink connection, but he refused, saying that "Ukraine is going too far and may suffer a strategic defeat."
Ultimately, on June 1, 2023, the Pentagon approved an agreement with SpaceX to purchase Starlink for Ukraine, which Musk will not be able to disable at will.
CNN notes that Isaacson writes in the book about Muskʼs "existential fear" of unleashing an even bigger war. He claims that it was this fear that led him to limit Ukraineʼs use of Starlink in military operations against the invasion.
- In February, SpaceX limited Ukraineʼs use of Starlink satellite internet to control drones in the war zone. SpaceX President and COO Gwynn Shotwell said at the time that Starlink, which provided the Ukrainian military with broadband to defend against the Russians, "was never intended to be used as a weapon."