Elon Musk's Starlink Fiasco
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Technocrat Elon Musk, the new CEO of Twitter, played the humanitarian card, claiming he could no longer allow the Ukraine government/military to use Starlink to help them in their drone wars against Russia. Such a noble technocrat.
Space X president Gwynne Shotwell said February 8 at a press conference, “We know the military is using them for comms, and that’s ok, but our intent was never to have them use it for offensive purposes.”
Starlink is crucial to Ukrainian soldiers to communicate on the battlefield, coordinate artillery fire and operate drones.
The obvious has to be stated, that Musk is an American Dept of Defence contractor. He does not work for the Ukrainians or the Russians. Space X recently secured a $2.9 billion contract with NASA to send two astronauts to the moon, one man and one woman. SpaceX will receive $135 million start up capital, along with several other contractors, including Blue Origen, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Dynetics and the nonprofit research group Draper.
The notion that Elon is now a “Russian asset” is patently absurd.
Starlink is one of Space X’s many projects. It consists of a constellation of low orbit satellites that provide internet coverage to 48 countries. Currently, it has about 3600 in orbit, with future plans to have a total of 12,000 satellites in space, with possible expansion to 42,000. Starlink is expected to generate $30 billion in revenue by 2025.
Musk is long time pals with former Q-In-Tel COO Michael Griffin who is now the Under Secretary of Defense. Q-In-Tel is a venture capital company that funds projects for the CIA. Griffin and Musk took a trip together to Russia with engineer Jim Cantrell, to buy used ICBM’s in 2001. Rockets were going for $2 million in Russia, compared to prices of $80 to $100 million elsewhere. They met with Russian military designers, one of whom literally spit on Musk’s shoes, yelling at him that, “this is a machine of war, not a toy for some young kid from Silicon Valley... we’re talking life and death.” Needless to say, the deal did not go through.
Fast forward to December 2008, with SpaceX on the verge of bankruptcy, and Griffin awarded SpaceX, (along with his own Orbital Sciences company) contracts with a combined value of $3.5 billion. It’s great to have friends in high places.
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s chief operating officer, said at a conference in the US, on Feb 9, 2023, that the surprise decision to stop Ukrainian military from using Starlink, had been taken because it had never been the company’s intention to allow Starlink to be used “for offensive purposes.” The Ukrainian military were using Starlink to monitor Russian troop movements via the Ukrainian military’s fleet of surveillance drones.
And what a coincidence, Starlink unveiled StarShield in December, 2022, the new and improved military-friendly product. Starshield boasts of its capabilities: “… unparalleled end-to-end user data encryption. Starshield uses additional high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely, meeting the most demanding government requirements.”
Read: American government requirements.
On October 24, Elon Musk offered to commit his company SpaceX to keep providing Internet access to Ukraine with its Starlink satellite, reversing his position from days previous, after saying he could no longer afford it.
Musk requested funding from the Pentagon for the use of Starlink in Ukraine, earlier in October, arguing it would cost SpaceX $100 million by the end of the year. Musk tweeted his assurances to Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov that Starlink would remain online even if the Department of Defense declined funding. Fedorov replied with his appreciation for Musk's decision.
And just in case Russia gets trigger happy with its hypersonic missiles, Space X was also awarded $149 million contract to develop four satellites to track hypersonic missiles. These satellites will communicate with each other via Optical Intersatellite Links, instead of the much slower speed of sending data to ground based stations, that resends the data to the other satellites. The constellation will consist, “… of tens of satellites providing periodic, regional sensing and data transport capabilities, including the capability to detect hypersonic glide vehicles and to disseminate time sensitive targeting solutions over tactical data links.”
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Medvedev ordered any Starlink satellites operating over Russian and Ukrainian territory to be destroyed in April 2022, after it was learned that Starlink was used “to guide and modify fire” in the missile attack of the Moskva, Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea. According to a report, “Moskva was a floating Air Defence centre with three tiers of potent Air Defence weapons, including 64 long-range S-300F missiles, 40 medium-range OSA-AM missiles, and six AK-630 close-in Weapon systems. The sinking of this ship has left a big hole in Russian air defence in the Black Sea, exposing all Russian ships operating near Odessa.”
Somehow, I doubt there is any “satellite insurance” policy that Musk can buy that would protect his precious space junk, in case Russia makes good on its threats and blows up billions of dollars of satellites.
You will not find any mention of Starshield on Musk’s Twitter account. The simplest explanation for what is happening is that Musk wants more money from the US and Ukrainian government to use Starlink for military purposes. Or at the very least, some assurances, that if it is destroyed by Russia or whoever, Space X is compensated. Also it is probable that Space X has tweaked its product, and created a separate service with greater encryption and other capabilities that the average person is not going to know about without top security clearance.
And speaking of top security clearance, Space X is hiring. If you have “Active Top Secret, Top Secret SCI, or DOE Level Q clearance,” you can make $160K - $220K a year as an engineer, working on Starshield projects to help the US military find new innovative ways to kill people.
Meanwhile, Musk carries on with his social media charade on Twitter, which I have mentioned in another article here. The American billionaire class have a modus operandi that they all adhere to, of creating a benevolent public persona that placates the more gullible and compliant masses, and even fools many of the supposedly “awake” community.
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