Yet he’s taking DoD money for Starlink in Ukraine. At what point do his antics turn from the craziness of a billionaire to espionage and being deemed a Russian asset?
Musk openly stated that he spoke directly with Putin after the Ukraine invasion had started. The super wealthy have no loyalties and will sell anyone and anything to the highest bidder. I've said it before, every penny after $1 billion needs to be taxed at 100%. Time to reign in the oligarchs.
But then who would create the underpaying jobs?!
The state love making those, I wouldn't worryy
Funny how that (along extreme wealth inequality and the destabilizing effects therein) could be improved by taxing billionaires.
Is that just liquid assets, or do you also want to tax them on stock they own in companies?
Honestly I don't know. It's really more the sentiment that I'm expressing. I'm aware that the wealthy are very good at playing shell games. No measures would catch everything.
You can definitely tax the hell out of dividends and sales. They are free to hold as many imaginary value tokens as they like, but the second they try to convert those tokens into actual currency, that should be heavily taxed. This goes for stock as well as cryptocurrency/NFTs.
They use loans currently to get cash against their assets.
Where do they get the money to pay off those loans?
There are lots of ways to sell assets in specific scenarios to reduce tax burden or eliminate the tax rate to 0%. For example, a billionaire can take a loan and pay the interest only for years. Then in a year with losses on investments then can sell some assets to pay off the loan and pay no taxes.
Except if the money they are using to pay the interest and the money received from the sale of those assets is taxed appropriately. Interest on business loans should not be deductible, nor should investment losses. The government is not responsible for their poor business decisions. Of course, there can be delineations for investment loss write-offs based on total gross income from all sources. A small business owner or an individual that holds an investment account with an AGI under $1million or so would reasonably still have access to such write-offs or deductions, but anything over that $1million per year is free game, losses or not.
I agree with your assessment.
Agree in principle but the ultra wealthy would simply find new creative ways to hide their income.
Do not let perfect get in the way of good.
Your reasoning here is irrational, and frequently repeated by many.
"They will find another way, why even try! Gosh!"
Okay, then we'll block that way, and the next, and the next, and the next.
This is iterative development and is how the whole world works. I cannot grasp why so many people have this defeatist attitude toward resolving problems.
Yeah any system that involves humans will require maintenance and adjustments by humans. Because humans always find a way to fuck things up. There's this weird compulsion to demand a system that can't be fucked up by humans. But it's not possible. Also it's not necessary... if a system involves humans it means there's humans around to do the necessary maintenance and adjustments to that system.
Because people are lazy and want a singular solution every time and if they don't get it most quit.
Laziness is honestly our largest inspirational force and it should be celebrated to let us do more interesting and fulfilling work but instead instant gratification has ruined us and made people lazy and shitty.
Although you're right, that sounds like an excuse to not do anything.
Comments like these are not only unhelpful, they hurt progress moving forward. Do you also apply this logic to domestic abusers (wouldn't wife beaters just beat places you can't see or use sexual assault? ), or speeders (won't people just speed when no law enforcement are around?), or regular joe tax evaders? I'm going to assume not. It would be absurd to just thow up our hands and say "you know what? We're never going to stop pedophilia, so lets put no laws or regulations in place to punish pedophiles."
I'm not going to claim that the original commenter's solution is perfect or even very effective, but if we do nothing (and comments like yours are encouraging doing nothing) then the percieved problem will gwt worse. We reward the bad behavior and the bad behavior continues and gets worse. Something needs to be done whether it's perfect or not. If you've ever created anything, especially something to be used or enjoyed by others, you know your first draft of it is shit. There are so many things that you couldn't see until you put the work into it or release it to others and that's okay. You learn, you revise, you plug the holes, you scrap and implement something new, you continue the process. The "rule of thumb" didn't stop abuse, but it was a step. We still haven't stopped abuse, but a lot of us keep plugging along, trying to stop it in our own ways (at individual, local, national, and international levels).
If you do care about this and want to contribute, but don't like the presented solution, offer up your own or maybe point to resources of those advancing a cause from a different angle. If you're here to shit on ideas because you don't care or are trolling and want to actively hinder discussion, you can fuck right off. If you are trolling I'm okay with the offchance the overall message is recieved by someone else who needs it.
I provide no solutions that haven't already been tried and continue to be tried. Have you tried actions outside of lemmy like actually voting and promoting people who want to fix this? I love that a glib comment on lemmy has drawn a novel of a response when everything we say here means jack shit. I'm in the real world doing what I can to change it for the better.
Then
GET
OFF
LEMMY
if nothing anyone says here matters then stop saying shit here
It's fitting that someone who's idea of a novel is 3 barely paragraphs would make an incredible amount of baseless assumption.
We really need to rethink how ownership itself works. All assets should be in a public registry, and no country's laws should recognize any claim of ownership not backed by the registry. For the sake of privacy, I'd make an exception for up to like $1 million in personal assets owned by an individual, but never for business assets and never for ownership of a company or shares of a company.
Wealth taxes are fantastic in theory, but in practice have never worked. They're too hard to implement. I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but I just don't think a wealth tax is the answer.
I mean, the truth is that we've never found a way to prevent some people from hoarding huge amounts of wealth. Probably not a great sign for the future of our species.
Guillotine was pretty effective in France for a bit…
There's more good people than bad people. The only way the bad people win is by convincing the good people to give up.
Yes shitty people will always be fucking up things for everyone else. But that doesn't mean working to stop that is pointless. It's more the opposite, it means we have to be continually working to stop the assholes from fucking things up for everyone.
It's a seriously hard problem. The IRS already can't keep up. In order to implement a wealth tax they would not only have to do what they do now, but also assess the value of every estate of every wealthy person. They would need experts in all sorts of things to even attempt to pull that off. Experts in fashion, jewelry, cars, planes, boats, art, etc... as soon as you let even one of those things slip through, that's what becomes the new wealth sync. Previously it's been attempted by they excluded art because that's notoriously hard to assess the value of. So the wealthy bought and traded a bunch of art to hide their wealth.
I got down voted for my previous comment, but it's the truth. The concept is simple and if it worked I would be all on board. It's the process for implementing it that is the hard part and has historically always caused a wealth tax to fail. It's not a new concept, but there is a reason it isn't used. I'm not saying we should do nothing, but that we should do something different. We could start with adding back some income tax brackets.
Maybe but we were doing better at it before Reagan came along.
But it isn't a silver bullet. If we want to deal with the root of today's problems we need to focus on a number of solutions around anti-trust, pro-labor, wealth tax, lobbying, campaign finance, etc.
Imagine if Lockheed martin "shut off" a jet because it was "getting too close to China"
What would be the response by the DOJ?
I would think the military would call that an act of treason and imprison or disappear any executives they thought were involved
no he's in some SERIOUS shit for this, and it was just a given he was gonna stick his little dick in there
It would be hilarious for the US and/or the EU freeze his assets and punch his market influence to the ground if they accuse him of espionage.
Nationalizing the satellites that we paid for as a national security asset sure seems reasonable here, seeing as he likely broke a contract when he disabled them.
Imagine if Lockheed disabled an allied F16's targeting computer during a mission; there would be hell to pay.
it's more like a violation of War Powers Act or something, but yeah.. he's probably fucked..
I've said in the past that something was clearly wrong when he bought Twitter. His behavior was far too targeted. It's all way too obvious.
He’s my fun little conspiracy theory. If I could send the CIA to do my bidding, I would have punished him by manipulating him into buying twitter. You can’t nationalize SpaceX because it would signal the failure of privatized space exploration, but you can’t have that idiot out there as a walking national security disaster looking for a place to happen. The only option if he can’t be controlled is to get him out of the way until he retires or another private competitor can become the favorite. Twitter cost him a ton of money and his reputation, exposed him as a fool, and keeps him busy with unimportant bullshit. Everyone just shrugs it off as Elon being Elon. It’s really perfect.
Russian asset
How dare you? This is libelous! He's a Saudi asset.
The asset of all his sponsors
How dare you! He's not monogamous! He's an asset to all the fascists.
Yet he’s taking DoD money for Starlink in Ukraine.
He is now but at the time this supposedly happened he wasn't.
The spin at the end is just fluffy bullshit. Starlink, from the get go, has had bandwidth reserved for military operations albeit US military operation but military operations nonetheless. The real question here is how and why did he know that operation was happening and what other operations has he known about/thwarted/or knowingly or unknowingly passed along information about.
Maybe the same FSB agents that were driving his paranoia. Assuming they knew about the attack, they could get a bigger win by stopping it and removing Starlink from the equation at the same time, than by stopping the attack with military means.
Definitely. He used terms such as "Lenin's mistake" when talking about Ukraine which is rather specific to Russian nationalist ideology. You don't stumble across such a thing by accident.
Even if it didn't, you have to think about military applications of your tech...
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk posted on X, the platform formally known as Twitter that he owns. Sevastopol is a port city in Crimea. “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
“How am I in this war?” Musk asks Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
Musk, transparent as ever, makes sure to tell his biographer that it's about peace, man, and has nothing to do with his love of authoritarian regimes.
Nothing more peaceful than supporting an authoritarian war criminal 🥰
“How am I in this war?”
Bitch, you put yourself there!
And a shit eating little shoe-horn of the phrase "Netflix and chill".
He’s just making sure that his personal brand is associated with sexytimes, as per his naming of the Tesla models.
Didn't his company supply a bunch of Starlinks because of the war? Was he expecting Ukranians needed to watch more Netflix and do more school stuff while getting bombed out by the Ruzzians? What a crock
Yeah, that was when he expected Russia to win easily. Probably figured he'd get a little bit of good PR, then Russia wins and then he could say "I tried to help, but I guess it just didn't work out for Ukraine." Just didn't go the way he expected I guess.
That and I don't think he was quite so far down the fascist rabbit hole back then.
Once the killers have done all the killing they want, peace becomes paramount. Once they've stolen everything they can steal, then theft becomes a crime. A man with a gun kicks in your door, starts eating the food from your fridge and fucks your wife. He's doing good peaceful things and if you resist you're a warmonger.
Maybe if he had any actual knowledge instead of just buying shit and slapping his name on it, he would know that the Internet was originally DARPAnet and was designed for expressly military purposes prior to being co-opted by capitalists.
Musk was reportedly motivated to foil the attack out of concern that a strike on Crimea would constitute a “mini-Pearl Harbor” and lead to Russia retaliating with nuclear weapons
So glad the blue-checks get to dictate our foreign policy now.
What was all that DoD money for? A suggestion box?
Not like Russia invading Ukraine was a mini pearl harbor, nooooooo not that.
TBF Russia invading Ukraine has turned out to be like Pearl Harbor (the Ben Affleck movie).
Michael Bay making a movie that he thought would gain him prestige but it ended up it was way longer than it should've been and no one liked it.
Yup that analogy checks out.
Euronam
Isn't it illegal to screw with the military actions of the U.S. ... and its allies?!!?
I don't think what he did was illegal per se, but he is definitely positioning himself against US geopolitical interests, which is a really bad idea if you are a US citizen, living in the United States. If he were to give away any military secrets that pass through star link, which I'm sure Russia will inevitably ask him to do, he will get arrested for espionage. He should tread very carefully.
Poor people get arrested. Rich people get to walk free and then get a slap on the wrist.
Trump got arrested so will Musk if he fucks around
Trump was arrested by the legal definition, he never had spend time in jail denied bail or waiting for a chance to post bail.
And he fucked around hard.
Yes so what? What are you going to do about it?
You got down voted but you're absolutely right. We, as a collective society, have allowed billionaires and those with obscene amounts of money to operate above the law. We're seeing it play out over and over through different actions of the rich, and those that get charged usually get lighter sentences or are not convicted. It's honestly a large scale problem that is not being addressed.
Cut off their funding. Billionaires don’t earn legit money, they harvest it off the money printer and give it to themselves and all their friends.
Don’t allow these nazis to keep issuing themselves new currency and then forcing everyone else to trade with it in order to sustain their lifestyles.
write my senator ig
Ignoring the obvious implications of these actions, doesn't this also fly in the face of net neutrality?
I mean, a guy who effectively serves as the ISP for millions of people, suddenly and arbitrarily deciding he doesn't like a specific type of internet traffic, then proceeds to block their access entirely. So much for Starlink "opening access" to the full Internet...
Net neutrality is about not favoring (or disfavoring) one type of traffic over another. Turning off the internet entirely doesn't fit that definition. If he had specifically blocked traffic from the Ukrainian drones, that would be a net neutrality violation. It's still bad for other reasons though.
That's fair, and the article doesn't explain exactly how Elon was able to "cut off connectivity" to the drones, but regardless I think his own stance on how Starlink should be used can be reasonably interpreted as him favoring one form of traffic ('Netflix and chill', 'online school', 'good peaceful things') over another ('war', 'drone strikes').
I don't know if this is the same, but it's been previously acknowledged that they shut off service at the contested borders.
So Russia says they own this region now, all starlink would be down there.
Not sure if that's still the case
Hm, I don't think I'd agree. He chose to block this specific traffic. Even if he did it by turning off the internet in the region.
As far as I know Ukraine doesn't have any net neutrality regulations. Since net neutrality is per country then I think it's sort of a moot point. I also think you'd have a hard time arguing that pulling the plug violates net neutrality. You're effectively treating all traffic the same in that there is no more traffic. I do think it would be interesting to see how that would play out though.
Aside from that Ukraine would have to go after Musk for it. Which seems like a really bad idea if you want to remain in favor with the increasingly unstable power broker that controls the infrastructure you need.
I'll clarify that while there's a whole legal/political aspect of "net neutrality," I mean more so the general principle of it, in that ISPs shouldn't be limiting or blocking traffic over any other. Obviously, Ukraine can't go against the one providing them with their Internet and almost certainly doesn't have anything enforcing ISP net neutrality, but still, if I were a Ukrainian on the front lines and knew that the erratic dude providing vital internet connectivity to my country can just throw a tantrum about how "Starlink shouldn't be used for wars and drone strikes" and then coincidentally my drones just stop working... I'd be pretty angry.
I for sure agree that it goes against the spirit of Net Neutrality. I also think it would be interesting to hear what a court would say. I don't think you're outright wrong or anything. I just think it's sitting on the knifes edge. The fact that Ukraine doesn't have net neutrality means we'll never really know (At least I hope something like this doesn't happen again in our lifetimes or ever!)
And yeah, I certainly think the Ukrainian people have every right to want to see keel hauled for this, but I also don't think they have the luxury of makinng enemies at the current juncture. Musk is a giant piece of shit for cutting Star Link during a critical operation. He's a giant piece of shit for a lot of other reasons too, but this one kind of takes a giant piece of the shit cake...
I just think Ukraine is in a very tough spot with him. Even more awkward given that he's a single crackpot that has shown to be ready and willing to throw a monkey wrench in their operations because he felt like it.
You think Elon gives a rats ass about net neutrality?
Net Neutrality is a dead concept and has been for years, there's no walking it back
Why are enemies of the United States allowed to own national security infrastructure?
They are allowed to be president and run for re-election too so I wouldn't hold my breath
I don't think Musk qualifies, being South African though.
What a weird fucking place for a GG reference, but I dig it.
Arrest this treasonous scumbag. Slava Ukraini!
As much as I despise Musk for being a total piece of shit, this isn't treason. Technically, we aren't even allies with Ukraine. The argument could certainly be made that this works against the interests of the United States, but that alone isn't treason because it isn't a crime for citizens to oppose the US, especially when it's private property the US is being lent. Because at that time, the US hadn't signed a contract with Musk yet.
If he did this again, then it would be a breach of contract, but still wouldn't be treason. People being charged with treason is very rare, because it's a such a high bar to meet.
This guy aided the Kremlin. He's helping russians in their genocide of Ukrainian children. Fuck that pile of shit and lock him up.
I agree. I'm just saying, he's not guilty of treason.
This scenario happens to me all the time. People usually just assume that someone else adding details or pedantic corrections means they’re invalidating your whole argument rather than trying to strengthen it (ultimately, I assume)
That would be up to a court to decide that.
I never claimed he was. But he's guilty of being an ally of russia
arrest this treasonous scumbag
You literally just did
I accused him of being treasonous -- which he ABSOLUTELY IS. End of discussion.
No he's not by definition. He isn't Ukrainian so he can't commit treason against the Ukrainian people. He didn't commit any treasonous acts against the US or our allies here either (Ukraine is not an US ally last I checked).
I despise Musk and pretty much everything he stands for. I think it's borderline societal insanity to allow private industry to put satellites in space and think it takes a certain kind of awful megalomaniac to think they can control that infrastructure single handedly. But saying he's treasonous for this? That cheapens the word when you use it against people that ARE treasonous. For instance when certain ex-Presidents decide to steal classified documents despite numerous warnings...
I didn't say he was a traitor. I said he is treasonous in his actions. Please, people -- There is a difference. And BTW, Musk's actions, by assisting a terrorist regime currently trying to commit a genocide upon a country of people, are equally as treasonous to anything trump has done.
treason (noun): The betrayal of allegiance toward one's own country, especially by committing hostile acts against it or aiding its enemies in committing such acts.
You can't commit treason against a country if you aren't a citizen of that country by definition.
Treasonous. Learn to read, musk-lover
treasonous (adjective): involving or guilty of the crime of betraying one's country.
This is the very definition of treason. What you're talking about is messing with words. The bare fact is that musk betrayed the trust you could have with him or any business he has any power into.
In brief, it may not be a legal crime in your country, but it is the very definition of betrayal. He acted against the interests of nato and in favour of an enemy of nato. You can hardly deny that, but the law and this scumbag are about technicalities, not morale or justice.
Treason =/= betrayal.
You can only commit treason against your own country, or at most against a coalition of allied forces.
Since Ukraine is not a NATO member, he couldn't commit an act of treason against the NATO either (if that's even a thing), since the NATO has not formally allied with Ukraine either. They have sanctioned Russia and condemned the war, but have not openly declared Russia an enemy.
You see, that's exactly the technicalities I'm talking about. Nato is allied to Ukraine. They sent so much stuff, they are training their soldiers, they are providing real time intelligence and secret services are all in on this. They're not participating directly in the war, but they definitely are allies and it's hypocritical to deny it.
I don't know the difference in English between betrayal and treason though. But I'm pretty sure it'll be technicalities too.
I mean, the differences between most words are "technicalities," but that doesn't make them meaningless. It is the technicalities and nuance that makes them useful. Treason is an act of betraying or undermining a state that you belong to, and is not necessarily morally right nor wrong- but obviously extremely negative from the states perspective.
You just wrote that treason is betrayal in a specific case.
Of course it is. Treason is a specific type of betrayal- a subset of betrayals if you will. That's why there is nuance- they aren't the same thing, because treason is more specific and doesn't apply in this case
Yeah for real, this straight up sounds like the setup for an Iron Man villain or something
Agreed I read the title as something you'd see a villain nonchalantly do in a comic book/movie series.
Took longer than I thought it would for Musk to do this. Been waiting for it since he threw his little fit about starlink in Ukraine was costing him money.
Then he said he’s talked to Putin directly.
Seriously someone reign this dude in, somehow, before he really fucks shit up.
So the article says this is from a year ago so I'm thinking this may have actually been from around that time and the complaints about money was a smoke screen to cover him being a little traitor and we just haven't heard about it because this is coming from a book with someone once again waiting to blow the very important whistles until they can make money off of it.
Shit you’re probably right. Fuckin buncha gross, greedy, crybaby assholes the lot of em
Seriously the US needs to take Starlink away from Musk.
Its a national security issue at this point.
Mr. Free Speech wants to decide what we can and can’t use our ISP’s for eh?
Fuuuuuuck Elon Musk
ETA: he said he did it to avoid a nuclear attack. Everybody with two brain cells to rub together knows this is an empty threat from Putin, so either Elon is an idiot or he’s lying.
Likely both.
Glad a billionaire gets to dictate US foreign policy on his whim. How is this not treason? How is he not being dragged in front of Congress as we speak?
Man the old geezers really think they still have absolute control over everything and don't realize the ultra wealthy they have enabled are getting and have been operating far beyond the control of the western governments.
God the fucking narcissism of those in charge to think that they still rule with perfect wisdom. I'm waiting for when these companies that the US built leave and take up residence with new hot authoritarian countries and leave misery poverty in their wake.
Singular rich people should not have this much say.
I'm waiting for when these companies that the US built leave and take up residence with new hot authoritarian countries
This is my first time seeing this theory. Kinda interesting take.
Why would the companies leave, rather than just expanding into those authoritarian countries? I guess... Why not both?
Alternatively, why not just turn the US into one of those authoritarian countries?
I'm guessing it will happen in some way with someone, at this rate, but keep in mind most tech company employees aren't going to want to move to a banana republic.
Cheap labor and less expectations, and with the jobs they are giving to remote workers they are giving them higher purchasing power. Eventually they will realize they can basically start over with a much more subservient audience.
Granted we can see that not all of them are super accepting and would rather their own internal companies become big but I can see the investors behind ours happily moving and pushing for partnerships or acquisitions when they decide they need the extra cash.
Not that I expect a single damn thing to happen, but isn't this the definition of treason?
No.
Elon Musk is American.
It's just called being a dick. I dunno, maybe there is a better word, but Treason is not the word.
I thought he was south African?
It's complicated.
He was born in South Africa, but he holds citizenship in the US & Canada as well. He went to Canada because he couldn't get access to the US, but his mother was a Canadian national so he was able to convince her to get them Canadian passports to attend school in Canada and then transfer to the US. So after a couple years at Queens Uni he transferred to Upenn. Then after completing his Bachelors, in order to stay in the US he pretended he was going to get his PhD, but then started a company sort of like online yellow pages called Zip2. His investors realized that as a student couldn't work, they needed to get him a green card. So they got him a an "investor green card" (Eb-5) and 5 years later he became a naturalized US citizen.
No. Elon Musk is American.
Right. He aided a foreign enemy of the US, Russia.
Holy shit! I'm guessing fighting (even in an EW capacity) for a US adversary is actually a criminal offence, or something similar.
Thanks for the original source, OP. It's hard to trust just a headline these days.
As an oligarch, he stands with the other Russian oligarch who need and benefit from this war. If the rouble is at an historical low, the ones who have money in other currencies have an historical purchasing power in Russia...
Sure would be a shame if Starlink got nationalized.
Talk about fixing the rural internet problem. That would be amazing.
“How am I in this war?” Musk asked Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
Almost certain he took DoD money for testing starlink with fighter jets shortly after he turned starlink on... so he's being a little disingenuous....
Edit: search Global Lightning program...
Hopefully some skepticism can finally be focused on the concept of giving a single billionaire unfettered control over who is allowed to access the internet, and what they are allowed to do with it.
The whole endeavor to “arm” Ukraine with Starlink has always been a shameless attempt to dodge any future criticism of the company, by claiming to be a “military asset”
I always knew Elon was a Russian bitch but this proves it
maybe if starlink was being sold to russians lmao.
starlink said they are not interested in being used for war, you expect a bunch of civilians behind it to be responsible for human death?? do you even fucking consider what that implies lol?
this is them making a statement that says "look, you're killing people who deserve it but we're not willing to be reliable either way for if you die bc we fuck up or if you kill other humans thanks to this tech"
could you imagine the media SHITSTORM if they agreed? "WARMONGER MUSK working responsible for innumerable deaths"
If you own a new Tesla purchased since he took over Twitter, I suspect you may start having some increased tire and paint bills. I could see it becoming a trend; feels like the kind of thing kids could get into.
Fuck that. We don’t need some Tesla version of that Kia challenge shit. I happen to drive a Tesla that I bought when Elon was still cool. I would never buy another thing from him (for a variety of reasons, many of them related to the car), but I’m still stuck with what I have because it’s a bad financial decision for me to change the car now. He already has my money and it pisses me off every day. The last thing I need is some anarchist, vigilante twat slashing my tires to “teach me a lesson”. Go fuck up Elon’s shit instead of taking it out on people who just might feel the same way about him as you do.
Elon’s shit is untouchable to the kids. New Teslas are not.
You use his charging network?
So maybe don’t do it at all instead of taking it out on people who didn’t do anything wrong?
I’m not promoting it. Just wonder if Musk is getting dangerously close to becoming a generational bête noire, and his enablers with him.
Wat?
Graffitiing cars or keying them and puncturing tires.
Haha thanks, I would not have gotten there on my own.
I just wonder how much it cost Kremlin to stop the sinking of their fleet?
I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
Well, not that shocked.
All these (I'm guessing) stock photos of Elmo are amazing! He looks like an idiot in all of them!
“Secretly.”
So secretly that we know about it.
You can't keep secrets from the future. It was probably secretive at the time.
Yeah I never heard about it. I heard about him wanting to up the price for Ukraine using Starlink around that time (which was controversial enough) but shutting down drones, that's a whole other level.
There was already a lot of talk about the military no longer using SpaceX in the future just because of the price hike thing. But sabotaging an ally's military hardware? Holy shit. At the very least Elon Musk cost SpaceX many billions of dollars in revenue in the future because of this.
God he is such a shitheel
I'm not sure if that is "on brand" for TESLA.
i'm not sure what tesla has to do with starlink...?
The same narcissistic ass runs both are they not related?
Musk
Yes you are
That utter swine!
I have no doubt if Ukraine was sufficiently aggrieved they would seek retribution directly against him.
He's a fair enough target.. nothing of value would be lost.
The traffic going to and from these drones isn't encrypted?
It is, but if you control the endpoints then there is no traffic to be had if you block it.
How did they know what device to block if they don't know what's being sent/recieved?
If you provision a range of IP addresses to use specifically for the Ukrainian government, you can just cut access to all of them at once. Claiming an "outage" of 15-30 minutes would be pretty easy to do.
I have no doubt that starlink can geolocate a client device by triangulation or trilateration.
The article states they essentially geo-fenced the area. So when client devices entered that area, their traffic was dropped.
I could believe that too
by looking where it is
Did you read the article? It wasn't about the traffic being encrypted. It's about starlink turning off service in a certain area so the drones didn't have Internet access to communicate:
Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet, according to an excerpt adapted from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the eccentric billionaire titled “Elon Musk.”
As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes.
It's more complex than that, especially when all you're looking for is denial of service. As an example: I don't have to decrypt anything if I can use traffic analysis to determine which packets are sent to or coming from a drone and just drop them. Standard Internet security, TLS, encrypts the content of a packet but not the source or the destination. You could use a VPN wrapper but then it's as simple as dropping traffic to and from the VPN.
But surely you'd then need to have prior knowledge of the intent of the endpoint
Not really. You just have to know that the comms are going to or coming from a drone, which should be easy enough given that the AP needs to know how to route the comms so that information must be visible to it (and it can therefore decide to drop comms at that step in transport). Even with the content, origination and destination being perfectly secret you can do this like track which APs a given client connects to over a certain amount of time and infer airspeed and rough direction. Something flying at $droneTopSpeed +/- 10%, headed roughly toward some juicy target? Drop comms.
Remember that starlink is already in their communication chain and start thinking in terms of what you'd do if you wanted to intercept letters between two people and you're already the mailman for one of them.
With the comms down, the Ukrainian submarine drones packed with explosives “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes, according to CNN.
Wait, does this means the military drone is equipped with starlink antenna? In that case, I think it make sense for a company to not want their product to be used in a military weapon. IIRC many tech companies and even open source projects have extra clauses in their license to forbid use in military weapon. Musk should have warn Ukraine first before they launch it in the field though.
He didn't think giving it to Ukraine (I say give but he basically got the US military to pay for it) to defend against a Russian invasion would mean it would be used by the military??
Defending is one thing, but putting it on a weapon platform is another thing. A few years ago there were a lot of discussion when one of the popular open source library (I forgot which) explicitly said they won't allow their work to be included in any weapon system that used to kill human. A lot of people in tech were in agreement, so it's not a stretch to imagine western tech companies typically don't want their product to be weaponized.
Ehh, musk is a marketer who happens to own tech companies. He's doing this either to help the brand (collect military dollars while publicly being anti-war) or to leverage more contracts (US military didn't explicitly contract for this use, please pay me more next time).
It was an invasion, they were attacking Russia on Ukrainian soil, everything they are doing is defensive.
He timed it being unavailable during a major planned offensive, he was working for the other side, you cannot defend this.
At no point did I say do nothing.
I mean, it's his company, nothing secret about it.
Other than that - a loitering munition requiring internet connectivity on approach to target sounds awfully stupid.
And, of course, he provided that connectivity by his own initiative with his own idea as to how it should be used in the first place.
Being given a certain kind of gift many times doesn't mean you become entitled to it.
Musk considers Russian presence in most of Ukraine aggression he wants to help foil, but a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive something he doesn't want to help. If you accept his choice in the former, you should accept it in the latter.
Or maybe not steal fucking billions of funding intended exactly for that counteroffensive to not rely on one billionaire's ideas of cool. Maybe Ukraine should do something about that pervasive corruption first, then blame Musk. With that amount of funding they should have been able to simply overwhelm Russia FFS.
I need more proof than one guy whose trying to sell copies of his book.
Walter Isaacson is an incredibly seasoned, respected biographer. He’s not just “one guy trying to sell copies of his book.”
He is Iron Man. Leave him be.
"I had to betray the Avengers because Thanos made me scared!"
Damn Phony Stark
More like aluminum foil man
Yes
Please don't use thedailybeast as a source...
Why not?
It makes right-wingers sad.
Why do you think wanting a proper source makes someone right wing?
Have you seen what kind of website it is?
In this case it was just a summary of a cnn article, linking directly would be better.
In this case then, that makes sense. I was just wondering if you had something against the site generally. Is it trash generally? Not defending it, just curious.
Yet he’s taking DoD money for Starlink in Ukraine. At what point do his antics turn from the craziness of a billionaire to espionage and being deemed a Russian asset?
Musk openly stated that he spoke directly with Putin after the Ukraine invasion had started. The super wealthy have no loyalties and will sell anyone and anything to the highest bidder. I've said it before, every penny after $1 billion needs to be taxed at 100%. Time to reign in the oligarchs.
But then who would create the underpaying jobs?!
The state love making those, I wouldn't worryy
Funny how that (along extreme wealth inequality and the destabilizing effects therein) could be improved by taxing billionaires.
Is that just liquid assets, or do you also want to tax them on stock they own in companies?
Honestly I don't know. It's really more the sentiment that I'm expressing. I'm aware that the wealthy are very good at playing shell games. No measures would catch everything.
You can definitely tax the hell out of dividends and sales. They are free to hold as many imaginary value tokens as they like, but the second they try to convert those tokens into actual currency, that should be heavily taxed. This goes for stock as well as cryptocurrency/NFTs.
They use loans currently to get cash against their assets.
Where do they get the money to pay off those loans?
There are lots of ways to sell assets in specific scenarios to reduce tax burden or eliminate the tax rate to 0%. For example, a billionaire can take a loan and pay the interest only for years. Then in a year with losses on investments then can sell some assets to pay off the loan and pay no taxes.
Except if the money they are using to pay the interest and the money received from the sale of those assets is taxed appropriately. Interest on business loans should not be deductible, nor should investment losses. The government is not responsible for their poor business decisions. Of course, there can be delineations for investment loss write-offs based on total gross income from all sources. A small business owner or an individual that holds an investment account with an AGI under $1million or so would reasonably still have access to such write-offs or deductions, but anything over that $1million per year is free game, losses or not.
I agree with your assessment.
Agree in principle but the ultra wealthy would simply find new creative ways to hide their income.
Do not let perfect get in the way of good.
Your reasoning here is irrational, and frequently repeated by many.
"They will find another way, why even try! Gosh!"
Okay, then we'll block that way, and the next, and the next, and the next.
This is iterative development and is how the whole world works. I cannot grasp why so many people have this defeatist attitude toward resolving problems.
Yeah any system that involves humans will require maintenance and adjustments by humans. Because humans always find a way to fuck things up. There's this weird compulsion to demand a system that can't be fucked up by humans. But it's not possible. Also it's not necessary... if a system involves humans it means there's humans around to do the necessary maintenance and adjustments to that system.
Because people are lazy and want a singular solution every time and if they don't get it most quit.
Laziness is honestly our largest inspirational force and it should be celebrated to let us do more interesting and fulfilling work but instead instant gratification has ruined us and made people lazy and shitty.
Although you're right, that sounds like an excuse to not do anything.
Comments like these are not only unhelpful, they hurt progress moving forward. Do you also apply this logic to domestic abusers (wouldn't wife beaters just beat places you can't see or use sexual assault? ), or speeders (won't people just speed when no law enforcement are around?), or regular joe tax evaders? I'm going to assume not. It would be absurd to just thow up our hands and say "you know what? We're never going to stop pedophilia, so lets put no laws or regulations in place to punish pedophiles."
I'm not going to claim that the original commenter's solution is perfect or even very effective, but if we do nothing (and comments like yours are encouraging doing nothing) then the percieved problem will gwt worse. We reward the bad behavior and the bad behavior continues and gets worse. Something needs to be done whether it's perfect or not. If you've ever created anything, especially something to be used or enjoyed by others, you know your first draft of it is shit. There are so many things that you couldn't see until you put the work into it or release it to others and that's okay. You learn, you revise, you plug the holes, you scrap and implement something new, you continue the process. The "rule of thumb" didn't stop abuse, but it was a step. We still haven't stopped abuse, but a lot of us keep plugging along, trying to stop it in our own ways (at individual, local, national, and international levels).
If you do care about this and want to contribute, but don't like the presented solution, offer up your own or maybe point to resources of those advancing a cause from a different angle. If you're here to shit on ideas because you don't care or are trolling and want to actively hinder discussion, you can fuck right off. If you are trolling I'm okay with the offchance the overall message is recieved by someone else who needs it.
I provide no solutions that haven't already been tried and continue to be tried. Have you tried actions outside of lemmy like actually voting and promoting people who want to fix this? I love that a glib comment on lemmy has drawn a novel of a response when everything we say here means jack shit. I'm in the real world doing what I can to change it for the better.
Then GET OFF LEMMY if nothing anyone says here matters then stop saying shit here
It's fitting that someone who's idea of a novel is 3 barely paragraphs would make an incredible amount of baseless assumption.
We really need to rethink how ownership itself works. All assets should be in a public registry, and no country's laws should recognize any claim of ownership not backed by the registry. For the sake of privacy, I'd make an exception for up to like $1 million in personal assets owned by an individual, but never for business assets and never for ownership of a company or shares of a company.
Wealth taxes are fantastic in theory, but in practice have never worked. They're too hard to implement. I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but I just don't think a wealth tax is the answer.
I mean, the truth is that we've never found a way to prevent some people from hoarding huge amounts of wealth. Probably not a great sign for the future of our species.
Guillotine was pretty effective in France for a bit…
There's more good people than bad people. The only way the bad people win is by convincing the good people to give up.
Yes shitty people will always be fucking up things for everyone else. But that doesn't mean working to stop that is pointless. It's more the opposite, it means we have to be continually working to stop the assholes from fucking things up for everyone.
It's a seriously hard problem. The IRS already can't keep up. In order to implement a wealth tax they would not only have to do what they do now, but also assess the value of every estate of every wealthy person. They would need experts in all sorts of things to even attempt to pull that off. Experts in fashion, jewelry, cars, planes, boats, art, etc... as soon as you let even one of those things slip through, that's what becomes the new wealth sync. Previously it's been attempted by they excluded art because that's notoriously hard to assess the value of. So the wealthy bought and traded a bunch of art to hide their wealth.
I got down voted for my previous comment, but it's the truth. The concept is simple and if it worked I would be all on board. It's the process for implementing it that is the hard part and has historically always caused a wealth tax to fail. It's not a new concept, but there is a reason it isn't used. I'm not saying we should do nothing, but that we should do something different. We could start with adding back some income tax brackets.
Maybe but we were doing better at it before Reagan came along.
But it isn't a silver bullet. If we want to deal with the root of today's problems we need to focus on a number of solutions around anti-trust, pro-labor, wealth tax, lobbying, campaign finance, etc.
We agree on all of those points.
Imagine if Lockheed martin "shut off" a jet because it was "getting too close to China"
What would be the response by the DOJ?
I would think the military would call that an act of treason and imprison or disappear any executives they thought were involved
no he's in some SERIOUS shit for this, and it was just a given he was gonna stick his little dick in there
It would be hilarious for the US and/or the EU freeze his assets and punch his market influence to the ground if they accuse him of espionage.
Nationalizing the satellites that we paid for as a national security asset sure seems reasonable here, seeing as he likely broke a contract when he disabled them.
Imagine if Lockheed disabled an allied F16's targeting computer during a mission; there would be hell to pay.
it's more like a violation of War Powers Act or something, but yeah.. he's probably fucked..
I've said in the past that something was clearly wrong when he bought Twitter. His behavior was far too targeted. It's all way too obvious.
He’s my fun little conspiracy theory. If I could send the CIA to do my bidding, I would have punished him by manipulating him into buying twitter. You can’t nationalize SpaceX because it would signal the failure of privatized space exploration, but you can’t have that idiot out there as a walking national security disaster looking for a place to happen. The only option if he can’t be controlled is to get him out of the way until he retires or another private competitor can become the favorite. Twitter cost him a ton of money and his reputation, exposed him as a fool, and keeps him busy with unimportant bullshit. Everyone just shrugs it off as Elon being Elon. It’s really perfect.
How dare you? This is libelous! He's a Saudi asset.
The asset of all his sponsors
How dare you! He's not monogamous! He's an asset to all the fascists.
He is now but at the time this supposedly happened he wasn't.
The spin at the end is just fluffy bullshit. Starlink, from the get go, has had bandwidth reserved for military operations albeit US military operation but military operations nonetheless. The real question here is how and why did he know that operation was happening and what other operations has he known about/thwarted/or knowingly or unknowingly passed along information about.
Maybe the same FSB agents that were driving his paranoia. Assuming they knew about the attack, they could get a bigger win by stopping it and removing Starlink from the equation at the same time, than by stopping the attack with military means.
Definitely. He used terms such as "Lenin's mistake" when talking about Ukraine which is rather specific to Russian nationalist ideology. You don't stumble across such a thing by accident.
Even if it didn't, you have to think about military applications of your tech...
Musk, transparent as ever, makes sure to tell his biographer that it's about peace, man, and has nothing to do with his love of authoritarian regimes.
Nothing more peaceful than supporting an authoritarian war criminal 🥰
Bitch, you put yourself there!
And a shit eating little shoe-horn of the phrase "Netflix and chill".
He’s just making sure that his personal brand is associated with sexytimes, as per his naming of the Tesla models.
Didn't his company supply a bunch of Starlinks because of the war? Was he expecting Ukranians needed to watch more Netflix and do more school stuff while getting bombed out by the Ruzzians? What a crock
Yeah, that was when he expected Russia to win easily. Probably figured he'd get a little bit of good PR, then Russia wins and then he could say "I tried to help, but I guess it just didn't work out for Ukraine." Just didn't go the way he expected I guess.
That and I don't think he was quite so far down the fascist rabbit hole back then.
Once the killers have done all the killing they want, peace becomes paramount. Once they've stolen everything they can steal, then theft becomes a crime. A man with a gun kicks in your door, starts eating the food from your fridge and fucks your wife. He's doing good peaceful things and if you resist you're a warmonger.
Maybe if he had any actual knowledge instead of just buying shit and slapping his name on it, he would know that the Internet was originally DARPAnet and was designed for expressly military purposes prior to being co-opted by capitalists.
So glad the blue-checks get to dictate our foreign policy now.
What was all that DoD money for? A suggestion box?
Not like Russia invading Ukraine was a mini pearl harbor, nooooooo not that.
TBF Russia invading Ukraine has turned out to be like Pearl Harbor (the Ben Affleck movie).
Michael Bay making a movie that he thought would gain him prestige but it ended up it was way longer than it should've been and no one liked it.
Yup that analogy checks out.
Euronam
Isn't it illegal to screw with the military actions of the U.S. ... and its allies?!!?
I don't think what he did was illegal per se, but he is definitely positioning himself against US geopolitical interests, which is a really bad idea if you are a US citizen, living in the United States. If he were to give away any military secrets that pass through star link, which I'm sure Russia will inevitably ask him to do, he will get arrested for espionage. He should tread very carefully.
Poor people get arrested. Rich people get to walk free and then get a slap on the wrist.
Trump got arrested so will Musk if he fucks around
Trump was arrested by the legal definition, he never had spend time in jail denied bail or waiting for a chance to post bail.
And he fucked around hard.
Yes so what? What are you going to do about it?
You got down voted but you're absolutely right. We, as a collective society, have allowed billionaires and those with obscene amounts of money to operate above the law. We're seeing it play out over and over through different actions of the rich, and those that get charged usually get lighter sentences or are not convicted. It's honestly a large scale problem that is not being addressed.
Cut off their funding. Billionaires don’t earn legit money, they harvest it off the money printer and give it to themselves and all their friends.
Don’t allow these nazis to keep issuing themselves new currency and then forcing everyone else to trade with it in order to sustain their lifestyles.
write my senator ig
Ignoring the obvious implications of these actions, doesn't this also fly in the face of net neutrality?
I mean, a guy who effectively serves as the ISP for millions of people, suddenly and arbitrarily deciding he doesn't like a specific type of internet traffic, then proceeds to block their access entirely. So much for Starlink "opening access" to the full Internet...
Net neutrality is about not favoring (or disfavoring) one type of traffic over another. Turning off the internet entirely doesn't fit that definition. If he had specifically blocked traffic from the Ukrainian drones, that would be a net neutrality violation. It's still bad for other reasons though.
That's fair, and the article doesn't explain exactly how Elon was able to "cut off connectivity" to the drones, but regardless I think his own stance on how Starlink should be used can be reasonably interpreted as him favoring one form of traffic ('Netflix and chill', 'online school', 'good peaceful things') over another ('war', 'drone strikes').
I don't know if this is the same, but it's been previously acknowledged that they shut off service at the contested borders.
So Russia says they own this region now, all starlink would be down there.
Not sure if that's still the case
Hm, I don't think I'd agree. He chose to block this specific traffic. Even if he did it by turning off the internet in the region.
As far as I know Ukraine doesn't have any net neutrality regulations. Since net neutrality is per country then I think it's sort of a moot point. I also think you'd have a hard time arguing that pulling the plug violates net neutrality. You're effectively treating all traffic the same in that there is no more traffic. I do think it would be interesting to see how that would play out though.
Aside from that Ukraine would have to go after Musk for it. Which seems like a really bad idea if you want to remain in favor with the increasingly unstable power broker that controls the infrastructure you need.
I'll clarify that while there's a whole legal/political aspect of "net neutrality," I mean more so the general principle of it, in that ISPs shouldn't be limiting or blocking traffic over any other. Obviously, Ukraine can't go against the one providing them with their Internet and almost certainly doesn't have anything enforcing ISP net neutrality, but still, if I were a Ukrainian on the front lines and knew that the erratic dude providing vital internet connectivity to my country can just throw a tantrum about how "Starlink shouldn't be used for wars and drone strikes" and then coincidentally my drones just stop working... I'd be pretty angry.
I for sure agree that it goes against the spirit of Net Neutrality. I also think it would be interesting to hear what a court would say. I don't think you're outright wrong or anything. I just think it's sitting on the knifes edge. The fact that Ukraine doesn't have net neutrality means we'll never really know (At least I hope something like this doesn't happen again in our lifetimes or ever!)
And yeah, I certainly think the Ukrainian people have every right to want to see keel hauled for this, but I also don't think they have the luxury of makinng enemies at the current juncture. Musk is a giant piece of shit for cutting Star Link during a critical operation. He's a giant piece of shit for a lot of other reasons too, but this one kind of takes a giant piece of the shit cake...
I just think Ukraine is in a very tough spot with him. Even more awkward given that he's a single crackpot that has shown to be ready and willing to throw a monkey wrench in their operations because he felt like it.
You think Elon gives a rats ass about net neutrality?
Net Neutrality is a dead concept and has been for years, there's no walking it back
Why are enemies of the United States allowed to own national security infrastructure?
They are allowed to be president and run for re-election too so I wouldn't hold my breath
I don't think Musk qualifies, being South African though.
They were talking about Trump.
This fucking carbuncle.
Hope he eats himself.
What a weird fucking place for a GG reference, but I dig it.
Arrest this treasonous scumbag. Slava Ukraini!
As much as I despise Musk for being a total piece of shit, this isn't treason. Technically, we aren't even allies with Ukraine. The argument could certainly be made that this works against the interests of the United States, but that alone isn't treason because it isn't a crime for citizens to oppose the US, especially when it's private property the US is being lent. Because at that time, the US hadn't signed a contract with Musk yet.
If he did this again, then it would be a breach of contract, but still wouldn't be treason. People being charged with treason is very rare, because it's a such a high bar to meet.
This guy aided the Kremlin. He's helping russians in their genocide of Ukrainian children. Fuck that pile of shit and lock him up.
I agree. I'm just saying, he's not guilty of treason.
This scenario happens to me all the time. People usually just assume that someone else adding details or pedantic corrections means they’re invalidating your whole argument rather than trying to strengthen it (ultimately, I assume)
That would be up to a court to decide that.
I never claimed he was. But he's guilty of being an ally of russia
You literally just did
I accused him of being treasonous -- which he ABSOLUTELY IS. End of discussion.
No he's not by definition. He isn't Ukrainian so he can't commit treason against the Ukrainian people. He didn't commit any treasonous acts against the US or our allies here either (Ukraine is not an US ally last I checked).
I despise Musk and pretty much everything he stands for. I think it's borderline societal insanity to allow private industry to put satellites in space and think it takes a certain kind of awful megalomaniac to think they can control that infrastructure single handedly. But saying he's treasonous for this? That cheapens the word when you use it against people that ARE treasonous. For instance when certain ex-Presidents decide to steal classified documents despite numerous warnings...
I didn't say he was a traitor. I said he is treasonous in his actions. Please, people -- There is a difference. And BTW, Musk's actions, by assisting a terrorist regime currently trying to commit a genocide upon a country of people, are equally as treasonous to anything trump has done.
treason (noun): The betrayal of allegiance toward one's own country, especially by committing hostile acts against it or aiding its enemies in committing such acts.
You can't commit treason against a country if you aren't a citizen of that country by definition.
Treasonous. Learn to read, musk-lover
treasonous (adjective): involving or guilty of the crime of betraying one's country.
This still makes him an enemy of Ukraine though
This is the very definition of treason. What you're talking about is messing with words. The bare fact is that musk betrayed the trust you could have with him or any business he has any power into.
In brief, it may not be a legal crime in your country, but it is the very definition of betrayal. He acted against the interests of nato and in favour of an enemy of nato. You can hardly deny that, but the law and this scumbag are about technicalities, not morale or justice.
Treason =/= betrayal.
You can only commit treason against your own country, or at most against a coalition of allied forces. Since Ukraine is not a NATO member, he couldn't commit an act of treason against the NATO either (if that's even a thing), since the NATO has not formally allied with Ukraine either. They have sanctioned Russia and condemned the war, but have not openly declared Russia an enemy.
You see, that's exactly the technicalities I'm talking about. Nato is allied to Ukraine. They sent so much stuff, they are training their soldiers, they are providing real time intelligence and secret services are all in on this. They're not participating directly in the war, but they definitely are allies and it's hypocritical to deny it.
I don't know the difference in English between betrayal and treason though. But I'm pretty sure it'll be technicalities too.
I mean, the differences between most words are "technicalities," but that doesn't make them meaningless. It is the technicalities and nuance that makes them useful. Treason is an act of betraying or undermining a state that you belong to, and is not necessarily morally right nor wrong- but obviously extremely negative from the states perspective.
You just wrote that treason is betrayal in a specific case.
Of course it is. Treason is a specific type of betrayal- a subset of betrayals if you will. That's why there is nuance- they aren't the same thing, because treason is more specific and doesn't apply in this case
this is starting to give comic book villan
Yeah for real, this straight up sounds like the setup for an Iron Man villain or something
Agreed I read the title as something you'd see a villain nonchalantly do in a comic book/movie series.
Took longer than I thought it would for Musk to do this. Been waiting for it since he threw his little fit about starlink in Ukraine was costing him money.
Then he said he’s talked to Putin directly.
Seriously someone reign this dude in, somehow, before he really fucks shit up.
So the article says this is from a year ago so I'm thinking this may have actually been from around that time and the complaints about money was a smoke screen to cover him being a little traitor and we just haven't heard about it because this is coming from a book with someone once again waiting to blow the very important whistles until they can make money off of it.
Shit you’re probably right. Fuckin buncha gross, greedy, crybaby assholes the lot of em
Arrest when?
As if I needed another reason to hate this piece of shit.
If I was Ukrainian, I would say that makes Elon a combatant.
If he wants to play general, he damn well is.
Traitor to Democracy, at it's worst. I see he wants to join Lex Luthor at Amazon. What's the closest villian comparison for someone like Elmo?
I wanna say Booster Gold but like, if he wasn't actually a heroic good guy.
Espionage act?
OP linked to a site that regosted half of the original article, so here's the full one:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/elon-musk-biography-walter-isaacson-ukraine-starlink/index.html
here you have a better link https://web.archive.org/web/20230907125906/https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/elon-musk-biography-walter-isaacson-ukraine-starlink/index.html
Seriously the US needs to take Starlink away from Musk. Its a national security issue at this point.
Mr. Free Speech wants to decide what we can and can’t use our ISP’s for eh?
Fuuuuuuck Elon Musk
ETA: he said he did it to avoid a nuclear attack. Everybody with two brain cells to rub together knows this is an empty threat from Putin, so either Elon is an idiot or he’s lying.
Likely both.
Glad a billionaire gets to dictate US foreign policy on his whim. How is this not treason? How is he not being dragged in front of Congress as we speak?
I can believe he's a scared little wimp that can rationalize that his cowardice is actually a solid strategy to save the human race.
Man the old geezers really think they still have absolute control over everything and don't realize the ultra wealthy they have enabled are getting and have been operating far beyond the control of the western governments.
God the fucking narcissism of those in charge to think that they still rule with perfect wisdom. I'm waiting for when these companies that the US built leave and take up residence with new hot authoritarian countries and leave misery poverty in their wake.
Singular rich people should not have this much say.
This is my first time seeing this theory. Kinda interesting take.
Why would the companies leave, rather than just expanding into those authoritarian countries? I guess... Why not both?
Alternatively, why not just turn the US into one of those authoritarian countries?
I'm guessing it will happen in some way with someone, at this rate, but keep in mind most tech company employees aren't going to want to move to a banana republic.
Cheap labor and less expectations, and with the jobs they are giving to remote workers they are giving them higher purchasing power. Eventually they will realize they can basically start over with a much more subservient audience.
Granted we can see that not all of them are super accepting and would rather their own internal companies become big but I can see the investors behind ours happily moving and pushing for partnerships or acquisitions when they decide they need the extra cash.
Not that I expect a single damn thing to happen, but isn't this the definition of treason?
No. Elon Musk is American. It's just called being a dick. I dunno, maybe there is a better word, but Treason is not the word.
I thought he was south African?
It's complicated.
He was born in South Africa, but he holds citizenship in the US & Canada as well. He went to Canada because he couldn't get access to the US, but his mother was a Canadian national so he was able to convince her to get them Canadian passports to attend school in Canada and then transfer to the US. So after a couple years at Queens Uni he transferred to Upenn. Then after completing his Bachelors, in order to stay in the US he pretended he was going to get his PhD, but then started a company sort of like online yellow pages called Zip2. His investors realized that as a student couldn't work, they needed to get him a green card. So they got him a an "investor green card" (Eb-5) and 5 years later he became a naturalized US citizen.
Right. He aided a foreign enemy of the US, Russia.
Holy shit! I'm guessing fighting (even in an EW capacity) for a US adversary is actually a criminal offence, or something similar.
Thanks for the original source, OP. It's hard to trust just a headline these days.
As an oligarch, he stands with the other Russian oligarch who need and benefit from this war. If the rouble is at an historical low, the ones who have money in other currencies have an historical purchasing power in Russia...
Sure would be a shame if Starlink got nationalized.
Talk about fixing the rural internet problem. That would be amazing.
Defense production act takeover when?
“How am I in this war?” Musk asked Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
Almost certain he took DoD money for testing starlink with fighter jets shortly after he turned starlink on... so he's being a little disingenuous....
Edit: search Global Lightning program...
Hopefully some skepticism can finally be focused on the concept of giving a single billionaire unfettered control over who is allowed to access the internet, and what they are allowed to do with it.
The whole endeavor to “arm” Ukraine with Starlink has always been a shameless attempt to dodge any future criticism of the company, by claiming to be a “military asset”
I always knew Elon was a Russian bitch but this proves it
maybe if starlink was being sold to russians lmao.
starlink said they are not interested in being used for war, you expect a bunch of civilians behind it to be responsible for human death?? do you even fucking consider what that implies lol?
this is them making a statement that says "look, you're killing people who deserve it but we're not willing to be reliable either way for if you die bc we fuck up or if you kill other humans thanks to this tech"
could you imagine the media SHITSTORM if they agreed? "WARMONGER MUSK working responsible for innumerable deaths"
If you own a new Tesla purchased since he took over Twitter, I suspect you may start having some increased tire and paint bills. I could see it becoming a trend; feels like the kind of thing kids could get into.
Fuck that. We don’t need some Tesla version of that Kia challenge shit. I happen to drive a Tesla that I bought when Elon was still cool. I would never buy another thing from him (for a variety of reasons, many of them related to the car), but I’m still stuck with what I have because it’s a bad financial decision for me to change the car now. He already has my money and it pisses me off every day. The last thing I need is some anarchist, vigilante twat slashing my tires to “teach me a lesson”. Go fuck up Elon’s shit instead of taking it out on people who just might feel the same way about him as you do.
Elon’s shit is untouchable to the kids. New Teslas are not.
You use his charging network?
So maybe don’t do it at all instead of taking it out on people who didn’t do anything wrong?
I’m not promoting it. Just wonder if Musk is getting dangerously close to becoming a generational bête noire, and his enablers with him.
Wat?
Graffitiing cars or keying them and puncturing tires.
Haha thanks, I would not have gotten there on my own.
I just wonder how much it cost Kremlin to stop the sinking of their fleet?
I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
Well, not that shocked.
All these (I'm guessing) stock photos of Elmo are amazing! He looks like an idiot in all of them!
“Secretly.”
So secretly that we know about it.
You can't keep secrets from the future. It was probably secretive at the time.
Yeah I never heard about it. I heard about him wanting to up the price for Ukraine using Starlink around that time (which was controversial enough) but shutting down drones, that's a whole other level.
There was already a lot of talk about the military no longer using SpaceX in the future just because of the price hike thing. But sabotaging an ally's military hardware? Holy shit. At the very least Elon Musk cost SpaceX many billions of dollars in revenue in the future because of this.
God he is such a shitheel
I'm not sure if that is "on brand" for TESLA.
i'm not sure what tesla has to do with starlink...?
The same narcissistic ass runs both are they not related?
Musk
Yes you are
That utter swine!
I have no doubt if Ukraine was sufficiently aggrieved they would seek retribution directly against him.
He's a fair enough target.. nothing of value would be lost.
Global terrorist
https://youtube.com/shorts/wx5DO\_jceJc?si=lGWBdHW7tPa68Wxu
The traffic going to and from these drones isn't encrypted?
It is, but if you control the endpoints then there is no traffic to be had if you block it.
How did they know what device to block if they don't know what's being sent/recieved?
If you provision a range of IP addresses to use specifically for the Ukrainian government, you can just cut access to all of them at once. Claiming an "outage" of 15-30 minutes would be pretty easy to do.
I have no doubt that starlink can geolocate a client device by triangulation or trilateration.
The article states they essentially geo-fenced the area. So when client devices entered that area, their traffic was dropped.
I could believe that too
by looking where it is
Did you read the article? It wasn't about the traffic being encrypted. It's about starlink turning off service in a certain area so the drones didn't have Internet access to communicate:
It's more complex than that, especially when all you're looking for is denial of service. As an example: I don't have to decrypt anything if I can use traffic analysis to determine which packets are sent to or coming from a drone and just drop them. Standard Internet security, TLS, encrypts the content of a packet but not the source or the destination. You could use a VPN wrapper but then it's as simple as dropping traffic to and from the VPN.
But surely you'd then need to have prior knowledge of the intent of the endpoint
Not really. You just have to know that the comms are going to or coming from a drone, which should be easy enough given that the AP needs to know how to route the comms so that information must be visible to it (and it can therefore decide to drop comms at that step in transport). Even with the content, origination and destination being perfectly secret you can do this like track which APs a given client connects to over a certain amount of time and infer airspeed and rough direction. Something flying at $droneTopSpeed +/- 10%, headed roughly toward some juicy target? Drop comms.
Remember that starlink is already in their communication chain and start thinking in terms of what you'd do if you wanted to intercept letters between two people and you're already the mailman for one of them.
Wait, does this means the military drone is equipped with starlink antenna? In that case, I think it make sense for a company to not want their product to be used in a military weapon. IIRC many tech companies and even open source projects have extra clauses in their license to forbid use in military weapon. Musk should have warn Ukraine first before they launch it in the field though.
He didn't think giving it to Ukraine (I say give but he basically got the US military to pay for it) to defend against a Russian invasion would mean it would be used by the military??
Defending is one thing, but putting it on a weapon platform is another thing. A few years ago there were a lot of discussion when one of the popular open source library (I forgot which) explicitly said they won't allow their work to be included in any weapon system that used to kill human. A lot of people in tech were in agreement, so it's not a stretch to imagine western tech companies typically don't want their product to be weaponized.
Ehh, musk is a marketer who happens to own tech companies. He's doing this either to help the brand (collect military dollars while publicly being anti-war) or to leverage more contracts (US military didn't explicitly contract for this use, please pay me more next time).
It was an invasion, they were attacking Russia on Ukrainian soil, everything they are doing is defensive. He timed it being unavailable during a major planned offensive, he was working for the other side, you cannot defend this.
At no point did I say do nothing.
I mean, it's his company, nothing secret about it.
Other than that - a loitering munition requiring internet connectivity on approach to target sounds awfully stupid.
And, of course, he provided that connectivity by his own initiative with his own idea as to how it should be used in the first place.
Being given a certain kind of gift many times doesn't mean you become entitled to it.
Musk considers Russian presence in most of Ukraine aggression he wants to help foil, but a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive something he doesn't want to help. If you accept his choice in the former, you should accept it in the latter.
Or maybe not steal fucking billions of funding intended exactly for that counteroffensive to not rely on one billionaire's ideas of cool. Maybe Ukraine should do something about that pervasive corruption first, then blame Musk. With that amount of funding they should have been able to simply overwhelm Russia FFS.
I need more proof than one guy whose trying to sell copies of his book.
Walter Isaacson is an incredibly seasoned, respected biographer. He’s not just “one guy trying to sell copies of his book.”
He is Iron Man. Leave him be.
"I had to betray the Avengers because Thanos made me scared!"
Damn Phony Stark
More like aluminum foil man
Yes
Please don't use thedailybeast as a source...
Why not?
It makes right-wingers sad.
Why do you think wanting a proper source makes someone right wing?
I'm not American and not right wing.
Have you seen what kind of website it is?
In this case it was just a summary of a cnn article, linking directly would be better.
In this case then, that makes sense. I was just wondering if you had something against the site generally. Is it trash generally? Not defending it, just curious.