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Written by Eric Zuesse
An article from CNN that’s based upon Walter Isaacson’s upcoming new bio, Elon Musk, says that Musk turned down the insistence from the governments of America and Ukraine to enable them to possibly destroy Russia’s largest naval base, which is in the Crimean region of Russia — a naval base that Ukraine claims to be Ukrainian territory though it had been Russian territory from 1783 to 1954 when the Soviet dictator Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine — and that Musk did it because Russia’s Government had told him that if such an invasion would succeed, then Russia would use any means necessary in order to defeat Ukraine, up to and including a nuclear attack against the United States itself. In Russia’s view, Crimea is Russian territory again since the 16 March 2014 plebiscite produced more than 90% voting to rejoin Russia; and, so, any Ukrainian invasion of it would be a Ukrainian invasion of Russia. (Independent Gallup polling of Crimeans, done both before and after that plebiscite, likewise showed — both times — that over 90% of Crimeans wanted and supporting Crimea’s being returned to Russia.)
On September 8th, CBS News headlined “Elon Musk says he denied Ukraine satellite request to avoid complicity in ‘major act of war’ vs. Russia”, and reported that,
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that he prevented a Ukrainian attack on a Russian Navy base last year by declining Kyiv’s request to activate internet access in the Black Sea near Moscow-annexed Crimea. Satellite internet service Starlink, operated by Musk-owned company SpaceX, has been deployed in Ukraine since shortly after it was invaded by Russia in February 2022.
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk posted Thursday on X, formerly named Twitter.
Elon Musk
If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and and conflict escalation.
Musk was posting in response to a published excerpt of an upcoming biography of the tech tycoon by Walter Isaacson.
In the excerpt published by The Washington Post on Thursday, Isaacson wrote that in September last year, “The Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet based at Sevastopol in Crimea by sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives, and it was using Starlink to guide them to the target.”
Musk had “spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States… (who) had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response,” Isaacson wrote.
Musk “secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”, according to Isaacson.
On September 7th, the book’s author, Isaacson, headlined in the Washington Post, “The untold story of Elon Musk’s support for Ukraine”, with an excerpt from it, which said that Musk had warned Ukraine’s government that “Russia will stop at nothing, nothing, to hold Crimea. This poses catastrophic risk to the world.” (He didn’t say “World War Three” — he wasn’t that direct.) He gave that as his reason for saying no to Zelensky and to Biden. But the Biden Administration decided that since Musk wouldn’t simply donate to Ukraine the satellite linkage it had needed in order to be able to destroy Russia’s Sevastopol (Russia’s largest) naval base, American taxpayers would simply buy from his Starlink the right to control it there and provide that ability to Ukraine, so that, in the future, whatever the U.S. and Ukrainian governments want to use Starlink for there, they’ll be able to do. This matter was basically a financial issue for Musk, and he got the money he wanted from it:
In the end, … SpaceX made arrangements with various government agencies to pay for increased Starlink service in Ukraine, with the military and CIA working out the terms of service. More than 100,000 new satellite dishes were sent to Ukraine at the beginning of 2023. In addition, Starlink launched a companion service called Starshield, which was specifically designed for military use. SpaceX licensed Starshield satellites and services to the U.S. military and other agencies, allowing the government to determine how they could and should be used in Ukraine and elsewhere.
elon musk remains an asshole, his technology is used every day by the ukrainian army and he knows it very well and he won’t stop no matter what happens
if anyone actually believes this article (or indeed anything that musk ever says) then i have a nice bridge for sale. better hurry though, as i’ve just had a call from ‘gullible’ george galloway (but that would be like takin’ candy frae a wain).
yes you are right musk remains an asshole, he just did not want to die. he did the right thing for the wrong reasons.