If you’re hitting a paywall, here’s a CNN link to the same story: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/elon-musk-biography-walter-isaacson-ukraine-starlink/index.html
random people having this kind of influence on international conflicts because they have a lot of money is good and healthy and okay
The free market will create another satellite network if musk’s isn’t right! /s
This but kind of unironically, him doing this makes it much more likely the US government will blow some of its military budget to fund some sort of competitor.
That would be pretty cool considering they have tons of military budget obviously and more competition is a good thing.
It wouldn’t be free market then.
If Musk doesn’t learn to play ball, the us government might well take control of the tech for the remainder of the war. Geopolitics is the game that is played with all the pieces.
“One of the advantages is the huge amount of innovation coming out of the private sector, which the government wants to leverage to stay ahead of China and others,” said Brian Weeden, the director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, a think tank.
Well if the government had invested in its space and innovation programs they wouldn’t have to rely on the private sector.
The US government has certainly invested in private space programs. SpaceX is just one very expensive and prominent example.
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This is behaviour that gets you killed. Musk may be rich, but not “weapons manufacturer” or “oil magnate” powerful.
That’s how you put yourself on the CIA and KGBs watch list
I’m guessing that as a supervillain (as @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca pointed out), Musk expects the CIA and NSA to have nice thick dossiers on him. Since Musk has Putin on speed dial, the KGB probably shares their file and asks him for updates.
FSB not KGB
In this case, he got on the KGB’s “thank you and we’ll send you some flowers, luvya ❤️” list
Literal supervillain behaviour
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I mean… that’s what the government, more so the political self interest in those of power wanted. Funding for NASA reduced and that easily could have done what SpaceX has accomplished, to pandering and almost begging Elon to get things done.
The system is beautiful.
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I don’t think Ukraine has the resources to create, deploy, and operate its own satellite Internet network.
Starlink’s dominant revenue stream is the US military. It’s seen as a moderately strategic program by the US as they attempt to saturate specific orbits of strategic value with US assets to prevent China from using those orbits.
If Musk actually did this, then he did it with the knowledge and likely the direction of the US military. The alternative is that he didn’t do this but the story is being planted as part of a propaganda campaign in which Musk is playing the role of right-wing mobilizer.
They’re hand in glove, that’s for sure. Any attempt to paint Musk or any other haute bourgeois as separate from the capitalist state is intended to confuse readers and hide the material relations in capitalism.
If you are hitting a paywall, remember to turn off scripts for this particular site on ublock origin
I have Unlock Origin. How do I turn off scripts for a particular site
pin it, click on the extension, you will get this box
Click on to make sure it’s crossed out. Now reload, if you were successful, you would see purple on
ubextensionThanks I’ll try
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Disable or simply not enable , need to be clear in terminology…
Was on. Now off. Also if you bothered to read the first sentence of the article you’d have your answer
