Nationalize his assets and deport him to South Africa
Tesla was built off the backs of the US taxpayer. It's so crazy to me that he's too dumb to realize being a toxic right winger is bad for business. He gets tax payer funds from the Democrats, his customers definitely skew left of center. I always thought Tesla was insanely over valued, but with all his bullshit and the major car manufacturers giving them competition now Tesla is bound to collapse...
Xesla has shaved $40k of the MSRP of their top end models since January.
I wonder why that is?
You mean aside from them literally losing features over time, adding bullshit recurring payments for basic technologies, and promising for like a decade that every year was THE YEAR full auto pilot would come out? Well aside from that stuff, it's probably all that stuff the guy above said.
Hey, my distrust of autopilot lies in the competency of the surrounding Human drivers. They cray-cray. Not that I own a Tesla, mind. I don't, and won't.
But autopilot on these streets? Pass.
I trust a well-programmed computer with decent sensors more than an ad hoc chemical computer with mediocre and limited sensors hauled around in a meatbag. And when we have one of those, I will get it.
They do it to get under the new lower tax rebate limits for cars. Luxury cars are (rightly) getting less tax breaks than they used to. And Tesla is lowering prices to make sure their customers still get the rebates (which is still a huge reason anyone buys electric cars at this stage).
The irony is that Muskrat was railing against rebates and wanted them to be cancelled, but when sensible lowering of limits made his cars uncompetitive, he could magically lower the price to keep the competitive.
Yeah but in the era of supply side economics, selling bullshit to shareholders is what matters. The product is unimportant, what the shareholders think other shareholders think about the future of the product is what's important to a business now.
Shareholders skew right (some psychotically so when you consider the Saudis), and that's who Musk is selling bullshit to.
He did it to shore up support from manchildren since like 3 of his sex scandals hit the news in one week.
I wouldn't be opposed to a law change where if a company that takes subsidies breaks the law, the state can nationalize it at no cost. That would solve a lot of issues.
why only when they took subsidies?
Companies that violate laws repeatedly or in particularly grave cases should always bs subject to seizure, if the management and bodies representing the shareholders did not adress the issues as soon as they had to know about it.
For publicly traded companies it is a bit tricky, but if the sourxe of problems is a majority shareholder then they should just seize his stocks.
South Africa is where his families money is from and he can still have power there.
Guantanamo Bay is where he belongs
Send him to that big garbage island in the Pacific.
The UK?
When was UK in Pacific?
Nah, we don't want him either
Or extradite him to Ukraine.
The US has spent at least 80 Billion dollars arming and supporting Ukraine in it's defense against Russian genocidal aggression and Western expansion that puts the entire NATO block in jepordy, why is Elon fucking Musk allowed to put his thumb on the scale in favor of the enemy? Why isn't anyone in the Biden administration tearing him a new asshole form stem to stern, why isn't anyone in the Biden administration publicly discussing nationalizing Starlink. We're literally throwing money into conflict (for absolutely necessary, vital, and justified reason) that one man is deciding the outcomes of, and the United States government is just ..... what .... ok with this?
I'm just some dumbfuck but,..money?
Pretty much - Muskrat most likely privately funds (read: bribes) enough government officials to either stand by and do nothing or actively interfere.
This advisor should also consider the lack of response from the US itself as part of the problem - Muskrat is helping out an enemy, but uhhh… what the fuck did the government do to curb that shit from happening in the first place?
Friendly reminder to everyone that all politicians are corrupt pieces of shit that will sell you out in a heartbeat. I don't know what the solution is but anyone who isn't rich is getting absolutely fucked by our own governments.
Money from the guy who moves his companies to dodge taxes?
Oh, ha ha, not tax money, bribes to the right politicians, silly...
One thing that seems to be the case with Biden's administration - there's a lot going on behinds the scenes that we're not aware of.
You're right, there should be some life changing repercussions for Musk. Hopefully we'll find out those are in the works.
That would require holding a billionaire accountable in some way though?
If we’ve learned anything from the Trump indictments, it takes many years to build a watertight case against somebody with lots of legal resources.
Do we need to hold Musk accountable? Yes. But also we need to do it in a way that he can’t wriggle out of, and that means years of legal work first.
It's insane to me that the CEO of a private company can directly engage to change the outcome of a battle without the whole population completely losing their shit over it. This asshole turned off his product to intentionally prevent our ally from succeeding in a battle against our enemy. And his reason is that he was trying to prevent escalation. How the fuck is that his call to make?
Yes. Because a lot of powerful people stand to make a shitload of money off this conflict. The longer it goes, the more weapons it requires. The more weapons it requires, the more money they make.
Isn't most of that $80 billion in the form of weaponry ordered from US manufacturers? Or maybe I've misunderstood. I thought much of the cash hasn't really left America.
But yeah, musk needs to be stopped. No one person should have so much power, it makes a joke of democracy.
Most of it is actually old equipment they're taking out of storage. Of course the US likes to have stuff like that around for various contingencies, one of which is the exact thing it's being used for now. So new equipment will be bought for the US military and existing equipment will be placed into a storage a little sooner than usual.
But a big chunk of that price tag is ordinance, and yeah that needs to be re-ordered right away.
But at any rate, yeah nearly all of it is from US manufacturers, though there may be a few parts and things from allies like Canada.
I don't feel like nationalizing Starlink for the USA is best for everyone. It is a world-wide network, I feel like it would be better as something that isn't controlled by any single country (but, obviously I agree it should not be controlled by a single billionaire fuck-boy either...).
Go check out who runs GPS. Starling being nationalized isn't happening, but if it did the service would likely keep on keeping on.
GPS is quite a bit different. The satellites just orbit and send the same information out. The user device doesn't have to send anything back - the "communication" is only 1-way. Also, GPS is significantly further out from the planet and involves a lot less satellites, so it is not really feasible to turn them off specifically targeting a small area or an individual target - you'd have to black out a huge chunk of the planet to reliably block "an enemy" from using it.
And that is why Russia also uses GPS.
Why with all those billions are we relying on a private company for military communications? I'm not excusing Musk AT ALL, but communications are insanely important in a conflict. Why are these governments spending all of this money and not just doing it themselves? If the military ordered supplies from Walmart and Walmart didn't deliver them, wouldn't we be asking the government instead "why the hell did you do that?"
Another "liberal" who hates democracy...
Why isn't Biden just confiscating a private company??? Are you serious?
How are these things in any way related?
Democracy - the people voting on laws; representative democracy - the people voting for representatives to vote on laws
Nationalizing a company that provides a fundamental, necessary world wide service because one man decided he could determine the outcome of a battle.
Hmm... not really sure how these two things are related.
Sure. 😉
Billionaires are not democratic.
And what do you think calling for the state to take control of a business that disagrees with it's policy goals is?
Nationalization? That's not a new concept.
So you'd be okay with trump nationalizing a company because it disagrees with his foreign policy?
I wouldn't be okay with trump in the first place, so I don't see how that's much of a gotcha.
Of course your don't. You're a partisan.
Yes I support my position over others, what a revolutionary concept
"I don't know what a partisan is"
It's not so hard to understand why, have fun doing simple math...
No. The real question is why does one man, because of his wealth, have so much power over the life and death of other people he has no interest in.
Wealth and capitalism is anti-democratic. And this is a prime example.
Not directly and not necessarily.
Being a little rich isn't a problem. Being very to insanely to disturbingly rich, that is a big problem and should be removed as a possibility by governments. Tax the shit out of people until their riches reach acceptable levels
Capitalism is only anti democratic if left unchecked. It needs to be much MUCH more limited than it currently is. But you don't want to remove it, capitalism is -unfortunately- the most successful way of running societies. Again, you want to limit the crap out of it and right now it's just running in stampede mode which indeed will destroy democracies
Disagree. The more disparity in wealth there is, the more anti-democratic. There are many small towns in the U.S. that are captured by a single large employer (who I guess is a "little rich") through threats to move or lay-off workers, campaigning, "donations," or just straight-up kickbacks to judges and law enforcement.
Capitalism is inherently anti-democratic. It creates an owner class and a worker class, and the owner class has a very large amount of power over the worker class. Something like a worker cooperative is inherently democratic (workers own and control their workplace/means-of-production, democratically).
As for "successful," I suppose that depends on what metrics you use. I'd bet there have been other societies that were on a whole happier than capitalist industrial societies. I think we can do better than capitalism, and I think the survival of the human species depends on it. Capitalism requires unending growth to function, and I don't think that's sustainable on a planet with finite resources and a finite atmosphere that can only take so much greenhouse gasses being dumped in it before it causes a reduction in other resources, such as arable land.
Capitalism is inherently anti-democratic
No its not. At its core, capitalism is about allowing people to directly trade and find the most efficient solutions. This has led to the success of the west.
It creates an owner class and a worker class
Does it? I've been a worker. I've been a company owner (well, technically still am). So?! If you want to own something, you buy it.
As for “successful,” I suppose that depends on what metrics you use.
How about the metric of the largest super power in the world? How about the most advanced power in the world? How about the richest country in the world? Trust me, I'm not trying to woo the USA, it is VERY flawed with a shit tonne of problems, but it is BY FAR the most successful country in the world coming up with "yeah what metric" is bullshit. Ask a poor homeless person in the USA if they would perfer to extrange their lives with somebody in say, Niger, and I think I can be pretty sure they will say "HELLS NO" because as shitty as their lives are, its still a mile better than the alternative. The USA does not have famines.
I’d bet there have been other societies that were on a whole happier than capitalist industrial societies.
Yeah this is just plain naive. This is looking at the problems that our current societies have, and without knowing anything about the alternatives, saying "well the alternatives must be SO MUCH BETTER!" Yes, our capitalist system needs MUCH more checks and balances, we need to tax the shit out of the rich, we need less focus on material things and money and more focus on just being happy, we need universal and free healthcare, we need free education.. So many problems we need to resolve...
But its NOTHING compared to how life was only a hundred years ago where people still got 12 kids because they knew that on average, 4 of them would not even reach adulthood because of diseases, famines, war and whatnot.
Say what you want about the US, and it has done some fucked up shit, but its been a pretty stabilizing force in the world. Without the US, the communist USSR would have overrun Europe and we'd all be enjoying the funs of famines, state terror (read about the chekists!) and just general misery.
There are no other countries that match the successes of capitalism, period...
Now, you want to talk on really how to improve societies?
Try north European countries. Socialist countries that use their capitalist systems to fund their socialist ways. THAT, I believe, is the solution. Control wealth with taxes, but let people free to do what they want. Educate people, have a shared political power system (and not the winner-takes-all shit like everywhere in the Americas) so that you have political stability, use the power from limited and capped capitalism to fund things like free healthcare, free education, a strong army for defense (unfortunately still required).. That will make hte world a better place.
No its not. At its core, capitalism is about allowing people to directly trade and find the most efficient solutions.
No, that's the idea of free-markets. You can have free-markets without capitalism, and you can have capitalism without free-markets (such as State Capitalism). Capitalism is about using wealth (capital) to acquire the means-of-production (capital assets), and hiring and paying workers less than the value of their labor to make profit. It is inherently anti-democratic because the workers have little-to-no say on what labor they do within the company, how their labor should be used, who should manage the various parts of the company, etc.
This has led to the success of the west.
The West has been very "successful" before capitalism. I'm more in favor of the hypotheses from Guns, Germs, and Steel (for the most part, geography, climate, and natural resources has determined the fate of the nations). There are many very poor capitalist nations after all. Most the wealth of those nations seems to be funneled into the hands of the owning class in rich nations.
Does it? I’ve been a worker. I’ve been a company owner (well, technically still am). So?! If you want to own something, you buy it.
Yes, it does. When you make money from the labor of others, you are in the owning class. I am also, personally, in the owning class. I suppose there is some gray area with 401ks and stock options, but those amounts of ownership are often very low compared to outside investors, founders, executives, so they have virtually no voting power.
Don't get me wrong. I think Social Democracy, which northern European nations are close to, is preferable to the extremely weak regulatory and welfare state the U.S. has; but Democratic Socialism would further reduce exploitation, IMO.
I'm also no fan of the USSR or China, and do not even consider them to be leftist governments (the State owns much of the means of production, not the workers, which is antithetical to leftism). I consider them to be authoritarian State Capitalist nations.
The academic model of capitalism has safeguards in place to prevent the shitshow we're living in now. Leave it to us Americans to knock off those safeguards because we're greedy as hell.
Wait, are you saying Elon Musk's actions directly resulted in innocent women and children being murdered?
It would be terrible if more people started saying that Elon Musk murdered innocent women and children.
The murder is kinda still Putin's doing but he supported it.
These stories about how much of a piece of shit Musk is have been piling up for years now. I think people driving around in Teslas are going to get some damage done to their cars soon.
Needless violence against cars will affect Musk in no way whatsoever. Please direct your anger in a more productive direction
If say the Proud Boys opened up a car manufacturing plant and started producing cars, would it also be wrong to do "violence" (lmao) against people driving their cars? Where do you draw the line? Musk is much more damaging to society with his mainstreaming of fascist, machismo, white supremacist takes than the Proud Boys are, but I bet you'd have no problem with that.
And do you really think making people second guess buying a Tesla wouldn't hurt Musk whatsoever?
I think it would behoove you to stop with this kind of negative thinking. Yes, Musk is bad. Yes, he owns Tesla. But promoting acts of violence like that will not make the world a better place, nor will it discourage people from buying Teslas
You just keep saying violence, no matter what, is bad, which I know you and no one else believes. You're lying to defend Musk and people supporting Musk. What reasoning do you have that acts of violence against Tesla and Tesla owners won't make the world a better place? You seem to be relying heavily on the childish idea that violence is bad no matter what, which again you don't believe. And of course if violence is directed to people who drive Tesla's or their cars, people would absolutely be discouraged from buying Tesla and in return hurting Musk. We all know this, but here you are lying again.
You're arguing in bad faith because you have nothing to counter anything I'm saying.
A lot of Teslas are old enough that some of the people driving them probably bought them used. Also while id be perfectly fine with people for example smashing the screens on tesla charging stations cause I find it funny, it is rather counter productive to attack car owners. I drive a Jeep, Jeep is owned by GM and GM is a shit company would you damage my car even though its old enough to drink and GM saw none of the money from me buying it.
Irregardless if you wanted to damage Tesla park a faulty model S near their factory, its libel to explode and that would be a PR fuckfest.
Honestly there are enough non-critical thinking reactionaries these days that would rush out to buy Teslas the moment they heard they could upset someone on the other side for doing it that the impact to sapes might not be as high as you would hope and the increase to service requests for Teslas would probably generate a lot of revenue as paint and tire replacements tend to be way higher on lrofit margins than you think
There aren't even close to enough of them. They're not going to trade in their Ford F-900 for a "wimpy, girly" Tesla no matter what Musk does. They'd much rather be seen as manly and tough than backing Musk. He doesn't have the cult leader following like Trump does.
Mmmm maybe... I know that honestly his right wing pushes in policy have impacted sales but I wonder if it would be enough to actually tip any scale or just be a rounding error that gets people fired and jobs compressed to save more money
I'd rather not phrase it this way because it's true. The point of this structure is that it was always bullshit.
It's not straight up murder. I might have some (limited) sympathy for Elon in this case. But he should be able to see past the first action in that series of events. I believe he was dumb enough to not think of more than the surface (more on that later). If he's not that dumb, then he truly is evil. Those submarines are not defensive.
I think he's managed to surround himself with alt-right grifters* who have him truly believing most of the absolute bullshit they spout. This doesn't excuse him for what he's doing to the world on their behalf.
*These grifters don't necessarily go after money directly. They also grift to direct his influence and money to their causes.
The right isn't stupid. They use a stupid message to maintain control of the conversation as a diversion tactic that is very effective. The whole point of this is to ensure no legitimate reforms and legislation are put in place. We fall for it every time we get enraged by the bullshit. That is the joke, we are the joke, and there is no way around the fact we will spend the next 2 weeks pushing back before the next prescribed side show drops into the circus. The outcome is fixed and calculated well in advance. This entire thing is planned out. I doubt they expected this one to have quite this big of an impact, but it will disappear just like all the rest. If a supreme court justices can be openly corrupt, there is no question the oligarchic prince will walk away completely free. We have entire states like Georgia fighting against justice for the biggest coup attempt in this country's history. The perpetrator at the center is still free years later. King Musk is invincible because of Republican Russian Red team and their oligarchy.
While I generally agree with you...
The right isn’t stupid.
Some of them absolutely are. Just like the Russians used r/the_donald to attract real, grassroots Americans to their cause. The ones who are using the stupidity as a strategy attract the true believers. I can't tell you how many, but I guarantee the was at least one or two true believers in Congress. (Maybe they've been set straight by now.)
Marjorie Taylor Greene is probably the craziest of the bunch. She is following the Russian/Putin playbook to mobilize convenient idiots just like Trump. Lauren Boebert was a call girl, and is still turning tricks just for a higher end client. All of these people are acting their prescribed roles. They are all just actors playing roles. It has been reported that they all act completely different behind closed doors. Mobilization of convenient idiots is how Putin gained so much power. This is exactly what Republicans are doing. Most are being advised directly by Russia.
I suspect at least one, if not both, started out as true believers. And then this stuff became their job while they were being briefed on classified intelligence. Because, you know, the "deep state" does in fact try to give the legislature the information they need in order to do their jobs well.
r/the_donald I believe started as a psyop, but the strategy they used of getting people in on a joke and then making it real kind of applies here too. I think at the start they were true believers, spouting the idiotic bullshit while fully believing it. They found they were rewarded by that behavior and intentionally escalated it and kept it up. At some point they believe most of it, but still use all of it. Now, even if they no longer believe because they've spent the last several years getting educated for the first time in their lives, they absolutely have to keep the act up.
They're following the playbook because they were recruited by the playbook. Every time they touched the MAGA button they got a treat. Now they're millionaires. A fucking rat can do that.
As an aside, I don't think Trump's much different in many ways in playing to a crowd. One difference is that I do think he was directed by Putin early. But he's not a political rally savant. He just goes to these rallies and likes when people cheer for him. So he pushes the "cheer for me" button. Evidence of that is when he got booed for promoting the vaccine. He's not a genius at controlling the narrative. He just uses the narrative that works (even if much of that narrative was handed to him). He's not the first person who can identify what people want to hear. And he has help. He, like any politician, has advisors doing polls and telling him what his people want to hear.
There exist smart Republicans who have been acting the entire time for grift and were never true believers. Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Jim Jordan. The problem with acting in bad faith and using stupid bullshit is that you do attract those true believers, and those true believers eventually advance. I bet a good chunk of the Republican caucus actually believes in trickle down economics. Because the people they see are the ones that benefit from it, and they're heavily incentivized to rationalize their bullshit however they can.
I'm open to being wrong. It's just a hypothesis.
Elon Musk is afraid of Putin's revenge. Crucial infrastructure like Starlink should be handled by the government, not a corp. Otherwise the corp will prioritize shareholders and profit rather than human's life
Putin 100 percent has kompromat on Musk. Likely the pedophile shit he did with Trump and Epstein.
I think he’s basically gullible. His companies have given him so much money, he just assumes he’s right. However he doesn’t understand diplomacy and Putin played him. He should have deferred to the state department, who deal with that BS all the time
A couple of years ago, Musk stated that Putin is substantially richer than he is.
Add to that Putin's bloodthirsty lunacy. Musk may actually fear his wrath.
But then comes the issue, which government? As Starlink is global infrastructure.
Pretty sure he's talking about the government of the country the company is registered in. As the is the only one that can realistically nationalise it.
Starlink is only 'global' as long as Elon approves of the GPS coordinates. With that in mind, 'global' is about a joke, it's at Elon's whim...
So, explain to me how Elon should not be considered a strategic target now? He is materially supporting the Ruzzians by killing innocent civilians. He cannot be ignored at this point.
It seems he should be considered an obvious target by anyone who wishes to support the Ukranian defense. Maybe someone close enough to him supports Ukraine and will see a moral obligation (and opportunity) to defend Ukraine.
Russia is a sanctioned nation with a public history of cyber attacks and false flag attacks on Americans. They also openly meddled in the 2016 and 2020 elections (thank fuck they didn't pull 2020 successfully).
Providing aid and comfort to Russian military and political figures is explicitly treason.
I think I recall the punishment for treason is pretty stiff. The day he is held accountable will be a day for celebration.
I'm amazed US DOD hasn't torn him a new asshole considering they're now paying to use Starlink in Ukraine. Musks ability to decide how Starlink should be used is a clear security risk.
They might have behind the scenes
If he’d have just been smart and quietly sucked the government teat, he’d be set with DoD contracts.
Agreed! At this point, the DoD would be ignorant to not prioritize their own development of an LEO network. Once in place, they could dislodge or remove any of Elon's floating shitballs to prioritize the safe operation of their own, citing national security. Fuck Elon.
Its interesting that he’s poking the marshmallow here, because Musk can still turn off Starlink, or make it unusable for Ukraine as much as his contract with DoD allows. This implies that Ukraine screamed bloody murder about this months ago, and DoD has given them gear to be able to bypass Starlink.
I think DoD also doesn’t like Elon having this kind of power, and allowed him to be a stopgap now that they never plan to use again. It’s interesting from a geopolitical and financial perspective for Starlink; they blew it and they’re not a future reliable partner for taking Russia’s side.
A lot of people are missing the big picture here. Look up Starshield. SpaceX is aggressively hiring for the Starlink DoD edition essentially. I suspect the US govt is not as worried about this as you think
I’d say at least that’s a black eye. Good observation about the Starshield stuff.
Using starlink is now directly supporting the Russian invasion
Absolute nonsense, Starlink is firmly on the side of the Americans.
Good luck making the average person make this connection. People are still buying and driving Teslas.
He's a saboteur. Detain the mother fucker and try him for treason. At the very least, his removal from his companies is paramount to national security at this point.
No, no, you don't understand...he's rich.
God damn that was so well said. All I could come up with was “Fuck Elon Musk”.
Yeah, "cocktail of ignorance and big ego" is a perfect description of Musk.
The US should nationalize Starlink. If private business decisions are going to undermine world stability then those decisions are antithetical to any kind of peace and need to be treated as the threat that they are. A single person picking sides shouldn't result in a casual body count that Elon never is punished for but it now does and he looks to be getting away with actual manslaughter.
The response we’ll see is the DoD making their own Starlink, but with $500 toilet seats and $100 hammers. Aw, forget the Starlink, we’ll just do those.
Ukraine should make sure he doesn’t do that again
I've been trying to find the source but I'm certain Ukraine have developed their own.. Technologies now? That their drones rely on. If I dig it up ill edit this post.
Edit, found it was a video I'd heard it from. A combination of technology.
Ukraine can stop using Starlink any moment they want... but for some reason they don't.
How many lives has Starlink saved so far?
Meaning?
"But wait, there's more!"
Seems to be the to not only be a famous line from the late Billy Mayes, but also the correct response when someone is disgusted by what a shit person Musk is...
Didn't think "Child Murderer" was going to wind up on his sin list.
At least we have a public confession, try him.
Starlink is a great system. The problem is its idiot owner, Musk, who is more worried how the use of Starlink in the Ukraine is going to affect his company stock. You're in the big leagues now, Elmo. You cant "sort of" commit to a war unless you're a rich Saudi dilettante, who wants to try his hand at international shiat-stirring.
The use of Starlink was restricted by US Government sanctions: no use on Russian territory or assets.
Tough luck, that also means no using it for attacking on Russian territory or assets.
It's very impressive how someone can be so wrong yet so confident at the same time.
Musk didn’t allow it. Full stop. It’s not so,e government sanction thing.
Even quotes you reference are from Musk, himself, sharing why he decided so. Musk said he chose not to activate it because he’d be apart of escalating the war…
Musk said he chose not to activate it because he’d be apart of escalating the war...
...which was against US Government policy.
Please read all the links before cherry picking only some of them.
What against US policy? Escalating the war? We already are sending tons of military equipment, some used in counter offensives.
Post the link and full article you got that from, I’d like to read but many of the links are pay walled.
Here’s what I read from one of the links you referenced, I would think Musk would say it’s against US policy if that’s the reason he chose not to activate Starlink
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
“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,” Musk wrote.
An excerpt about the raid from American author and journalist Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography on Musk, titled “Elon Musk,” was published by CNN.
Ukrainian submarine drones loaded with explosives were approaching a Russian naval fleet in the Crimean city of Sevastopol when they lost connection and “washed ashore harmlessly,” according to Isaacson.
Musk was concerned about Russia responding to the naval attack with a nuclear weapon, Isaacson wrote in the book, according to CNN. Ukrainian officials
What against US policy?
You can check the list of sanctions imposed on Ukraine/Russia, which regions, types of activity and subjects, along with the exceptions and licenses at:
You may notice that US citizens have been forbidden from providing telecommunications services, including via satellite, in the conflict areas since early 2022, requiring a special license to operate.
Starlink didn't have such license, and only got a DoD agreement in mid 2023.
In late 2022, Musk would've had to break that policy in order to allow the drones to be controlled into the conflict zone.
As for him saying so... I don't think he's the type to paint himself as subservient to the government, even if he is; more like the megalomaniac type claiming to have stopped WW3 barehanded, even if he literally did nothing.
So the only one saying Musk didn’t activate Starlink was because of US sanctions is you, and not even Musk himself.
There’s not article, just you deducing from the US sanctions list.
What's your point, that I should write an article? 🙄
It is a little incredulous that somehow only you have figured out the real reason Musk didn’t activate Starlink.
With so many articles coming out, no officials making a statement, hell even a biographer shadowing Musk at the time. Even Musk gives alternate reasons and doesn’t say it, even if it would save him from a lot of bad press.
Indeed, quite incredible. Maybe I don't get paid by the click, don't have an agenda, and don't blindly follow those who do? Guess only time will tell.
That's a remarkably interesting link, thanks for sharing.
Great example of people downvoting the truth away. The spectacle of American politics can no longer address material truths, outside of merely referencing good or bad actors.
Elon's negative image is proof because he used to be widely considered as someone solving the climate crisis through free market capitalism, but the truth is he never changed and has always been this way, and the system he operates in where people need cars is the problem.
It's also a given that Americans are blind or refuse to acknowledge the effects of their government's sanctions on the world, the private business interests that benefit, and the way they exploit people like themselves in other countries and use them as pawns.
Whether or not any of this bullshit is true, I'm just glad that there's growing distain for billionaires.
Exactly why taiwan is looking to build their own system. You can't entrust anything to musk with his deep saudi-china links
Taiwan, meanwhile, is hesitant to use Starlink’s services for fear of Musk’s close ties with China. A dominant player in the global chips market, Taiwan feels exposed to the constant threat of Chinese invasion. Using Starlink might be one way to bolster its national and data security—especially when Taiwan suspects China of cutting its submarine internet cables. But for Taiwan to rely too heavily on Starlink might prove unwise, in the event that China pressures Musk to limit network access abruptly, as he has done in certain situations in Ukraine.
Lol, his most memorable presentation is showing that the cybertruck is not as durable as he claimed.
Actually, now thinking about it... has that shit even finished? Or close to? A lot of people already paid for it.
That's treason,.... is it not?
For Ukraine yes this treason. But in USA if you an oligarch with a lot of money you can do what you want. I won't be suprise if the republicans will promote to stop the war by not sending ressources to Ukraine. You know, to promote democracy and free world...
I think there’s even a decent case to make this distinction, that Starlink is for communication but not attacking. The problem is making the decision unilaterally, in secret, with no warning, and contrary to customer expectations, with timing that uniquely benefits an enemy of civilization
Russia is an enemy aggressor nation. Helping their military and their government without U.S. Congress approval is treason.
Technically, no. But I doubt that Musk will be getting any contracts in Ukraine after the war. Probably ruined any other future business in any of the other countries in a similar situation as Ukraine bordering Russia as well.
He's not ukrainian so I don't see why or how it would be treason.
They don't have a choice, everything else requires ground based infrastructure.
Starlink technically requires ground based infrastructure but they don't need to be in Ukraine. The closest Starlink ground stations to Ukraine are in Turkey and Poland, according to this map.
Yes, those sites bridge star link and the rest.of the internet, but that doesn't change the requirements for ind users so only have a tmall antenna.
Ok, so I stand corrected. But still, it doesn't need antennae like with cellular internet.
Because Russia blew up domestic infrastructure, so satellite based communication looked like a decent alternative.
the question is why the fuck was a private company allowed to build and operate star link?
Because the DoD can have plausible deniability by not giving Ukraine access to the actual military satellite network.
what do you mean by allowed? as in if you are a private company you should not be allowed to have satellites? is that what you mean?
As in there's only so much air space and it's already crowded...
It's needs regulated, letting any company throw whatever they want up there is fucking stupid.
Name any point in human history when letting companies do whatever the fuck they want in an area hasn't fucked over the majority of people.
as in the only high bandwidth communications network capable of doing things like this. starlink is this little thing called a monopoly and that is what caused this situation...
Turns out it's not very easy to just dump a ton of satellites and pop out a new network whenever you want.
Seriously, the Starlink and Falcon 9 production is unlike anything else. Amazon and China will try to copy it, but it'll take them way more time and money.
Musk needs to be charged with war crimes along with his kremlin allies.
Maybe not war crimes, but definitely charges for directly attacking a sovereign state's military assets while engaged in an active operation. There has to be something in international law about this sort of behavior. Well, maybe not, since the ability for a single citizen to have the power to directly attack an entire military action is unprecedented. Seriously, what is stopping him from jamming any signal he wants if he can manage this? Will a full constellation be able to suppress wifi over a large area? Cell towers? Standard radio signals? Would it be able to be selective?
This action of his constitutes a privately owned and operated military-grade weapon which actually threatens even the super powers.
Actually there is in American law. He actively aided and abetted an enemy of the state he is a citizen. That's called treason.
Oh... I'm crossing my fingers. That said, we don't have the best track record with treason proceedings recently.
I mean.... Jan 6 says all you need to know about whether he'll ever be charged.
It’s because Elon finds Putin more relatable than the people Putin is attacking.
Not really. He's just afraid that his satellite constellation will get targeted by the Russians. They probably threatened him and he being who he is (attached to his companies) started to cave.
Plausible but wouldn’t they already be a target at this point, and to counter wouldn’t this have been a known risk when he signed the contract with the US Government on providing the coverage for Ukraine?
It's also not a mistake when we know he's buddy buddy with Russia. We know why they did it.
I really hope Mr free speach doesn't do anything about this scathing entirely accurate tweet about what an egoistical monster Elon is posted on the platform Elon owns.
Not only a fraud, but also a terrorist support.
Don’t forget a disgusting billionaire, authoritarian, hater of his own children, and a fascist
Oh and sexual abuser, can’t forget that one
There's a good chance Putin is richer than Musk....just saying. And since there is that chance, what are the chances Putin has money in Musk's various businesses?
Starlink fails if Russia or any other country decides to shoot down its satellites. That’s enough reason for musk to be a patsy of any government that threatens to do it.
If one state starts shooting down satellites, they're going to get their own ones targeted and it only ends when neither has any satellites left. That's not a box anyone is willing to open.
I'm pretty confident that Musk has insurance for that. They can't shoot down enough of them to make a big difference, you may have a hole but the network will be ok.
Yup, they're already having problems without even getting attacked. Shooting "down" (they wouldn't fall down) some of the satellites, could easily create enough debris to start a cascading collision effect and turn the whole orbit into a minefield.
It's even worse, because they are in orbits creating a crisscross grid, meaning debris from one satellite would cross the paths of dozens of others in a short period of time.
Also, disabling a dozen or a thousand satellites, wouldn't create a "hole" in the network over any single place, since every single satellite goes over the whole globe, replacing any disabled one.
Someone trying to attack Starlink, would either have to trigger a cascading effect, or get no effect at all.
They'll avoid the debris as they do now. It's every day business
The number of debris avoidance maneuvers is growing faster than the number of satellites. Even without an attack, it's anyone's guess when the amount of debris will overcome their ability to avoid it.
In the case of an attack, they'd quickly run out of avoidance ability (onboard fuel) and either have to use the remaining fuel to de-orbit, or become part of the cascade of collisions.
couldn't you toss up a towing satellite that goes from sat to sat and hooks them together?
If you mean to "scoop them up" as a means of attack... there are thousands of them already, they're all over the globe, with plans to go up to 40k. They do have engines, and while not particularly powerful (hall effect ion thrusters), they could try to counter the attack by trying to deorbit, along with the attacking satellite. My guess is it would be too slow and ineffective.
The best physical attack would be to cause a collision cascade at their orbital height... or set off a nuke in orbit and EMP them by the hundreds, but that would also EMP a bunch of other satellites, mess up the Van Allen belts, hit anything in a wide area on the ground, and breach several international treaties.
No business wants to rely on insurance. It will never cover all the future losses in a business like this.
A network with regular outages is nearly worthless for most use cases..
Oh you could put a million dollar missle on a 25 thousand dollar satellite. But, you're going to run out of missiles.
So that constitutes a war crime at this point, correct?
Nope.
Either elon is a ficking idiot or has Russian allies
Bourgeois solidary does not know national borders.
Both? He's been trying to meddle and play "peacekeeper" this entire time. Except his version of peace is. Let the Russians keep everything they've taken, take the L and deal with it so I can continue to sell products and services there.
As a fan of some of Musk’s technical vision and how he’s revolutionizing society, I stringly believe he’s an effing idiot. People have given him so much praise, adulation, money, that he thinks he’s right and is easy to manipulate.
He’s a sucker who should go back to what he’s good at. Step back from the war and attempts at diplomacy, put Twitter on fire sale to someone who can fix it, and go back to your core. Let’s get cyber truck and semi out in force. Let’s deliver Roadster v2 and get to work on that rumored $25k cybercar. Let’s continue the revolution. Let’s get Starship/Superheavy flying, and continue through to Mars. Let’s continue the revolution of humans stepping out into the solar system. While he’s at it, it’s time to bail on some of the less successful sideshows. Stop wasting time and money trying to make a go of residential solar: great idea but if you can’t deliver something people can adfird, it’ll never work
SpaceX literally has somebody whose job it is to wrangle Musk, and keep him from fucking things up. They get great things done in spite of him, not because of him.
The real person in charge of SpaceX and keeping it successful is Gwynne Shotwell.
Except at the time the US Government's policy was for Starlink to NOT extend coverage outside of Ukraine's borders.
Musk followed US stated policy by disobeying Ukraine's request.
I'm not for the guy and think he's done waaay more wrong than good, but wasn't everyone against him even offering starlink on the first place? Now everyone is mad that they didn't use more starlink? Honestly just seems like a lose lose situation right now for him. Had he overstepped his bounds and used starlink as an aggressor, instead of defense like he has been doing (which is one thing the US said to Ukraine, defend your land not attack theirs) people would have dragged him through the mud for that instead.
I'm all for being critical when it's due, especially for a guy trying to role-playing Edison and his shitty tactics, but idk about this one.
Edit: Here's a link explaining it a lot more clearly about why the news is making this bigger than it was.
Edit edit: link broken lemmys hard lol
Precisely. For the one time the guy follows the rules... like there haven't been a thousand other things he's been doing that deserve criticism... this one is a really weird smear campaign to pick.
And a full year after the fact, at that. Where were all these people in 2022 when all this happened?
My favorite was seeing a comment where someone said "i'm not going to believe the words of some dude trying to sell a book"
At this point I am now cheering for his rockets to expose on the launch pad.
As a fan of SpaceX, I'm so sad that this company is tied to him, as they are doing amazing stuff. Today he could have zero involvement with it it would continue to be great, but his name makes it look bad to the public.
SpaceX wouldn't be a thing without Elon.
It could be more than a thing.
It could be the SLS, which US Congress keeps pouring billions into despite NASA itself saying it's a waste of money.
AKA: it could be a way to funnel money into campaign-funding contractor's pockets.
It sounds sort of like Elon Musk, a private citizen, just committed conspiracy to perpetuate war crimes. That's a pretty serious accusation with grave penalties that is somehow not being prosecuted.
B-b-but Elon wouldn’t want to get involved in war!! Aside from all the ways he’s involved himself in the war….
Jfc
Their deaths are on elons hands
He probably gets off from that.
Piss of Elon, now he takes away starling completely for Ukraine, giving Russia the edge they need
He has a contract with the DoD now, he won't breach it.
He didn't have a contract before... didn't breach it either.
If he did that he would become an open enemy of the state. Which means starlink would become propriety of the USA gov?
I think if you interfere with a military intervention of the currently most important proxy war party of the united states then you are already an enemy of the state. the question is if they will finally do something about him...
Fucking lol, obviously they won't. That's not how liberals work. Biggest consequence Musk will face is not getting future government contracts.
Why did you decide to assign this to liberals here? Serious question
Liberal idealism, with all it's positives and negatives, dominates the way America thinks and American government works. Personal freedom and private enterprise are much more highly valued than state loyalty.
yeah no im not expecting them to do anything but it would be nice if they did :)
For anyone interested in posting to this community, please keep rule 6 in mind. This post will be kept up because of the valuable discussion and activity that came with this post, but please mind the rules in the future. Thank you (:
Will try to remember to check the rules of each community before posting. Added a link to a news article. Thanks for the heads-up.
No problem. Thank you for responding (:
that's why we cannot trust billionaires and big corporations
I wonder what would happen if a national intelligence agency was tasked with eliminating a billionaire.
Could private security, however sophisticated, really deflect assassination attempts from a state?
That has nothing to do with Elon Musk, though. He is way too beloved and cherished to ever become a target.
On the one hand, we have "reaper" missiles that are basically flying guillotines, that can strike with enough accuracy to kill a particular person in a particular car seat while not harming the other occupants.
On the other hand, how many times did we fuck up killing Castro?
musk is just a cooker with money
Ukraine special ops downs Elmos jet....
Starlink wasn't enabled in that region to begin with.
Lol! That's why disabling it prevented Ukraine from launching an offensive, right?
In the CNN article I read they say musk was specifically asked to expand the network for the operation. It seems like a weird spin.
He did not disable anything, he refused a foreign (Ukrainian) request to enable it, that was contrary to his country's (US) stance at that moment: sanctions forbidding him to provide any service over Russia or Russian assets.
Others say he disabled the system. Malicious narcissist & pathological liar says he didn't. If Musk disabled the system it makes him look very bad and may result in a major government response that would harm Musk and his business.
Gee, I wonder who is telling the truth?
This isn't "who said what", these are facts:
Musk had no contract with the DoD
The US imposed sanctions on private businesses from offering services to Russia
Starlink blocked all service over Russia and Russian assets
Ukraine asked Musk to extend the service over Russian assets
Musk followed US's rules
Shit happened
Suddenly, the US DoD scrambled to get a contract for Starlink... wonder why?
As much as I dislike Musk —and I wouldn't be surprised if he used this to negotiate a better contract—, this one was a total fuckup by the US DoD, and in part by Ukraine for not pressuring the DoD into signing a contract much sooner.
Where do you get your "facts'? Especially like the "shit happens" addition to explain an admitted action by Musk. Very creative.
Facts come from history, most are recorded for everyone to check, particularly these ones are public. You may even find the exact dates for each one.
The "shit happens" is Ukraine botching a military operation because they asked a private US citizen to break US law. You may have confused "action" with "inaction as ordered".
Thanks for the link. So many people online just pull stuff from their ass it's a surprise when sources actually exist.
I see nothing in those links regarding the DoD contract specifics and I think you're making assumptions about how US law is applied in foreign war zones involving our allies and hostile adversaries. US law is amazingly flexible in just about any situation that can be said to involve our or our allies national security. The Defense Department has withheld almost all information about the Starlink contract, and from what I can see even the date it was signed hasn't been made public. All I can find at multiple sites is that a contract has been signed with almost zero additional information.
The Defense Department acknowledged the decision but withheld virtually all details about the agreement, including how much it will cost U.S. taxpayers and when the contract was signed.
SpaceX, Musk’s space-exploration company, had for months been providing Internet access across Ukraine, allowing the country’s forces to plan attacks and to defend themselves. But, in recent days, the forces had found their connectivity severed as they entered territory contested by Russia.
At a conference in Aspen attended by business and political figures, Musk even appeared to express support for Vladimir Putin. “He was onstage, and he said, ‘We should be negotiating. Putin wants peace—we should be negotiating peace with Putin,’ ” Reid Hoffman, who helped start PayPal with Musk, recalled. Musk seemed, he said, to have “bought what Putin was selling, hook, line, and sinker.” A week later, Musk tweeted a proposal for his own peace plan, which called for new referendums to redraw the borders of Ukraine, and granted Russia control of Crimea, the semi-autonomous peninsula recognized by most nations, including the United States, as Ukrainian territory. In later tweets, Musk portrayed as inevitable an outcome favoring Russia and attached maps highlighting eastern Ukrainian territories, some of which, he argued, “prefer Russia.”
By then, Musk’s sympathies appeared to be manifesting on the battlefield. One day, Ukrainian forces advancing into contested areas in the south found themselves suddenly unable to communicate. “We were very close to the front line,” Mykola, the signal-corps soldier, told me. “We crossed this border and the Starlink stopped working.” The consequences were immediate. “Communications became dead, units were isolated. When you’re on offense, especially for commanders, you need a constant stream of information from battalions. Commanders had to drive to the battlefield to be in radio range, risking themselves,” Mykola said. “It was chaos.” Ukrainian expats who had raised funds for the Starlink units began receiving frantic calls. The tech executive recalls a Ukrainian military official telling him, “We need Elon now.” “How now?” he replied. “Like fucking now,” the official said. “People are dying.” Another Ukrainian involved told me that he was “awoken by a dozen calls saying they’d lost connectivity and had to retreat.” The Financial Times reported that outages affected units in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk. American and Ukrainian officials told me they believed that SpaceX had cut the connectivity via geofencing, cordoning off areas of access.
The senior defense official said, “We had a whole series of meetings internal to the department to try to figure out what we could do about this.” Musk’s singular role presented unfamiliar challenges, as did the government’s role as intermediary. “It wasn’t like we could hold him in breach of contract or something,” the official continued. The Pentagon would need to reach a contractual arrangement with SpaceX so that, at the very least, Musk “couldn’t wake up one morning and just decide, like, he didn’t want to do this anymore.” Kahl added, “It was kind of a way for us to lock in services across Ukraine. It could at least prevent Musk from turning off the switch altogether.”
I find it laughable that Musk would assert that Putin wants peace and that Ukraine should negotiate. Putin can achieve peace by unilaterally withdrawing his forces and restoring pre-war borders. In other words Musk wants peace on his and Putin's terms and that means victory for Russia.
We don't know the specific timelines of what else has gone on with Musk and Ukraine yet. We do know that Musk lies constantly about things as important as major government contracts, buying out major corporations, taking companies private, the capabilities of Telsa vehicles and even about things as mundane and ridiculous as showing up for a cage match with Zuckerburg. It strains credulity to suggest he's not lying about what he's done with Starlink if telling the truth might make him look bad. Given his history of openly siding with Putin and pushing Ukraine to surrender significant parts of their country, it is more than reasonable to assume he's lying in support of that goal too.
Not sure if it was in an article or on TV, but at some point there was a map showing Starlink coverage over Ukraine, and how it faded towards the borders in order to go down to zero in the conflict areas. Obviously the moment Ukrainian forces started to push, they went into the blackout areas and were SOL.
Regarding the DoD agreement... I'm not sure where I've read it, but apparently he asked the DoD to foot the bill for Starlink around the end of 2022... and then when the agreement was drafted and they were about to pay for it, he decided that "nah", he'd follow providing the service for free. I highly suspect that was a weasel way to negotiate better terms and/or amount, knowing that the DoD needed a contract to hold him accountable, and that they were actually willing to pay.
You're not wrong in not trusting the guy, nobody should; according to his recent biography, he seems to take everything as a big game with the main objective of making more money.
What I find especially disturbing about this entire scenario is that Musk is literally choosing to protect the Russian war machine instead of the people who are being attacked - including seniors, women, infants and children. Taking steps to protect an aggressor while actively preventing a country from defending its non-combatant citizens from unprovoked attacks is just plain evil.
I expect Musk will have a movie made about him someday. It won't be flattering.
He did not disable it, he refused to enable it in that region.
Stop blaming your weaknesses on others. don't get into a war you can't win. no one owes you nothing
Big "she should have dressed differently" energy
What about The Pimps who push the weak to do the dirty work for them
your military industrial complex has never had it this good, proxy wars without local push backs, no western blood shed so even the antiwar crowd has gone silent in the west.
Peace at all costs has a price that should not be paid
The sane part of the anti war crowd knows that there have been peace settlements with Russia but that they don't last. Settling with Russia is just giving them time to re-arm
So Ukraine should do what when they're attacked?
Surrender and comply to their brothers /s
his dudes opinion brought to you by the cooked shit he got told to think
Get fucked, Russia apologist.
Russia started the war you fucking donkey.
Why are you lying in your post title
Whoops, it seems you accidentally posted here instead of a maga site, like Russian supported Parler.
I'm not even going to check what it is, but kbin.projectsegfau.lt sounds like a sketchy place.
Lots of sketchy places on Lemmy. "In other news" on sh.itjust.works is a textbook example of Horseshoe Theory, right down to banning users who dare to question the propaganda posted by the "liberal" running it. I'm proud to be one of those users.
In what way are Podolyak's words not being accurately paraphrased in the headline?
Nationalize his assets and deport him to South Africa
Tesla was built off the backs of the US taxpayer. It's so crazy to me that he's too dumb to realize being a toxic right winger is bad for business. He gets tax payer funds from the Democrats, his customers definitely skew left of center. I always thought Tesla was insanely over valued, but with all his bullshit and the major car manufacturers giving them competition now Tesla is bound to collapse...
Xesla has shaved $40k of the MSRP of their top end models since January.
I wonder why that is?
You mean aside from them literally losing features over time, adding bullshit recurring payments for basic technologies, and promising for like a decade that every year was THE YEAR full auto pilot would come out? Well aside from that stuff, it's probably all that stuff the guy above said.
Hey, my distrust of autopilot lies in the competency of the surrounding Human drivers. They cray-cray. Not that I own a Tesla, mind. I don't, and won't.
But autopilot on these streets? Pass.
I trust a well-programmed computer with decent sensors more than an ad hoc chemical computer with mediocre and limited sensors hauled around in a meatbag. And when we have one of those, I will get it.
They do it to get under the new lower tax rebate limits for cars. Luxury cars are (rightly) getting less tax breaks than they used to. And Tesla is lowering prices to make sure their customers still get the rebates (which is still a huge reason anyone buys electric cars at this stage).
The irony is that Muskrat was railing against rebates and wanted them to be cancelled, but when sensible lowering of limits made his cars uncompetitive, he could magically lower the price to keep the competitive.
Yeah but in the era of supply side economics, selling bullshit to shareholders is what matters. The product is unimportant, what the shareholders think other shareholders think about the future of the product is what's important to a business now.
Shareholders skew right (some psychotically so when you consider the Saudis), and that's who Musk is selling bullshit to.
He did it to shore up support from manchildren since like 3 of his sex scandals hit the news in one week.
I wouldn't be opposed to a law change where if a company that takes subsidies breaks the law, the state can nationalize it at no cost. That would solve a lot of issues.
why only when they took subsidies?
Companies that violate laws repeatedly or in particularly grave cases should always bs subject to seizure, if the management and bodies representing the shareholders did not adress the issues as soon as they had to know about it.
For publicly traded companies it is a bit tricky, but if the sourxe of problems is a majority shareholder then they should just seize his stocks.
South Africa is where his families money is from and he can still have power there.
Guantanamo Bay is where he belongs
Send him to that big garbage island in the Pacific.
The UK?
When was UK in Pacific?
Nah, we don't want him either
Or extradite him to Ukraine.
The US has spent at least 80 Billion dollars arming and supporting Ukraine in it's defense against Russian genocidal aggression and Western expansion that puts the entire NATO block in jepordy, why is Elon fucking Musk allowed to put his thumb on the scale in favor of the enemy? Why isn't anyone in the Biden administration tearing him a new asshole form stem to stern, why isn't anyone in the Biden administration publicly discussing nationalizing Starlink. We're literally throwing money into conflict (for absolutely necessary, vital, and justified reason) that one man is deciding the outcomes of, and the United States government is just ..... what .... ok with this?
I'm just some dumbfuck but,..money?
Pretty much - Muskrat most likely privately funds (read: bribes) enough government officials to either stand by and do nothing or actively interfere.
This advisor should also consider the lack of response from the US itself as part of the problem - Muskrat is helping out an enemy, but uhhh… what the fuck did the government do to curb that shit from happening in the first place?
Friendly reminder to everyone that all politicians are corrupt pieces of shit that will sell you out in a heartbeat. I don't know what the solution is but anyone who isn't rich is getting absolutely fucked by our own governments.
Money from the guy who moves his companies to dodge taxes?
Oh, ha ha, not tax money, bribes to the right politicians, silly...
One thing that seems to be the case with Biden's administration - there's a lot going on behinds the scenes that we're not aware of.
You're right, there should be some life changing repercussions for Musk. Hopefully we'll find out those are in the works.
That would require holding a billionaire accountable in some way though?
If we’ve learned anything from the Trump indictments, it takes many years to build a watertight case against somebody with lots of legal resources.
Do we need to hold Musk accountable? Yes. But also we need to do it in a way that he can’t wriggle out of, and that means years of legal work first.
It's insane to me that the CEO of a private company can directly engage to change the outcome of a battle without the whole population completely losing their shit over it. This asshole turned off his product to intentionally prevent our ally from succeeding in a battle against our enemy. And his reason is that he was trying to prevent escalation. How the fuck is that his call to make?
Yes. Because a lot of powerful people stand to make a shitload of money off this conflict. The longer it goes, the more weapons it requires. The more weapons it requires, the more money they make.
Isn't most of that $80 billion in the form of weaponry ordered from US manufacturers? Or maybe I've misunderstood. I thought much of the cash hasn't really left America.
But yeah, musk needs to be stopped. No one person should have so much power, it makes a joke of democracy.
Most of it is actually old equipment they're taking out of storage. Of course the US likes to have stuff like that around for various contingencies, one of which is the exact thing it's being used for now. So new equipment will be bought for the US military and existing equipment will be placed into a storage a little sooner than usual.
But a big chunk of that price tag is ordinance, and yeah that needs to be re-ordered right away.
But at any rate, yeah nearly all of it is from US manufacturers, though there may be a few parts and things from allies like Canada.
I don't feel like nationalizing Starlink for the USA is best for everyone. It is a world-wide network, I feel like it would be better as something that isn't controlled by any single country (but, obviously I agree it should not be controlled by a single billionaire fuck-boy either...).
Go check out who runs GPS. Starling being nationalized isn't happening, but if it did the service would likely keep on keeping on.
GPS is quite a bit different. The satellites just orbit and send the same information out. The user device doesn't have to send anything back - the "communication" is only 1-way. Also, GPS is significantly further out from the planet and involves a lot less satellites, so it is not really feasible to turn them off specifically targeting a small area or an individual target - you'd have to black out a huge chunk of the planet to reliably block "an enemy" from using it.
And that is why Russia also uses GPS.
Why with all those billions are we relying on a private company for military communications? I'm not excusing Musk AT ALL, but communications are insanely important in a conflict. Why are these governments spending all of this money and not just doing it themselves? If the military ordered supplies from Walmart and Walmart didn't deliver them, wouldn't we be asking the government instead "why the hell did you do that?"
Another "liberal" who hates democracy...
Why isn't Biden just confiscating a private company??? Are you serious?
How are these things in any way related?
Democracy - the people voting on laws; representative democracy - the people voting for representatives to vote on laws
Nationalizing a company that provides a fundamental, necessary world wide service because one man decided he could determine the outcome of a battle.
Hmm... not really sure how these two things are related.
Sure. 😉
Billionaires are not democratic.
And what do you think calling for the state to take control of a business that disagrees with it's policy goals is?
Nationalization? That's not a new concept.
So you'd be okay with trump nationalizing a company because it disagrees with his foreign policy?
I wouldn't be okay with trump in the first place, so I don't see how that's much of a gotcha.
Of course your don't. You're a partisan.
Yes I support my position over others, what a revolutionary concept
"I don't know what a partisan is"
It's not so hard to understand why, have fun doing simple math...
No. The real question is why does one man, because of his wealth, have so much power over the life and death of other people he has no interest in.
Wealth and capitalism is anti-democratic. And this is a prime example.
Not directly and not necessarily.
Being a little rich isn't a problem. Being very to insanely to disturbingly rich, that is a big problem and should be removed as a possibility by governments. Tax the shit out of people until their riches reach acceptable levels
Capitalism is only anti democratic if left unchecked. It needs to be much MUCH more limited than it currently is. But you don't want to remove it, capitalism is -unfortunately- the most successful way of running societies. Again, you want to limit the crap out of it and right now it's just running in stampede mode which indeed will destroy democracies
Disagree. The more disparity in wealth there is, the more anti-democratic. There are many small towns in the U.S. that are captured by a single large employer (who I guess is a "little rich") through threats to move or lay-off workers, campaigning, "donations," or just straight-up kickbacks to judges and law enforcement.
Capitalism is inherently anti-democratic. It creates an owner class and a worker class, and the owner class has a very large amount of power over the worker class. Something like a worker cooperative is inherently democratic (workers own and control their workplace/means-of-production, democratically).
As for "successful," I suppose that depends on what metrics you use. I'd bet there have been other societies that were on a whole happier than capitalist industrial societies. I think we can do better than capitalism, and I think the survival of the human species depends on it. Capitalism requires unending growth to function, and I don't think that's sustainable on a planet with finite resources and a finite atmosphere that can only take so much greenhouse gasses being dumped in it before it causes a reduction in other resources, such as arable land.
No its not. At its core, capitalism is about allowing people to directly trade and find the most efficient solutions. This has led to the success of the west.
Does it? I've been a worker. I've been a company owner (well, technically still am). So?! If you want to own something, you buy it.
How about the metric of the largest super power in the world? How about the most advanced power in the world? How about the richest country in the world? Trust me, I'm not trying to woo the USA, it is VERY flawed with a shit tonne of problems, but it is BY FAR the most successful country in the world coming up with "yeah what metric" is bullshit. Ask a poor homeless person in the USA if they would perfer to extrange their lives with somebody in say, Niger, and I think I can be pretty sure they will say "HELLS NO" because as shitty as their lives are, its still a mile better than the alternative. The USA does not have famines.
Yeah this is just plain naive. This is looking at the problems that our current societies have, and without knowing anything about the alternatives, saying "well the alternatives must be SO MUCH BETTER!" Yes, our capitalist system needs MUCH more checks and balances, we need to tax the shit out of the rich, we need less focus on material things and money and more focus on just being happy, we need universal and free healthcare, we need free education.. So many problems we need to resolve...
But its NOTHING compared to how life was only a hundred years ago where people still got 12 kids because they knew that on average, 4 of them would not even reach adulthood because of diseases, famines, war and whatnot.
Say what you want about the US, and it has done some fucked up shit, but its been a pretty stabilizing force in the world. Without the US, the communist USSR would have overrun Europe and we'd all be enjoying the funs of famines, state terror (read about the chekists!) and just general misery.
There are no other countries that match the successes of capitalism, period...
Now, you want to talk on really how to improve societies?
Try north European countries. Socialist countries that use their capitalist systems to fund their socialist ways. THAT, I believe, is the solution. Control wealth with taxes, but let people free to do what they want. Educate people, have a shared political power system (and not the winner-takes-all shit like everywhere in the Americas) so that you have political stability, use the power from limited and capped capitalism to fund things like free healthcare, free education, a strong army for defense (unfortunately still required).. That will make hte world a better place.
No, that's the idea of free-markets. You can have free-markets without capitalism, and you can have capitalism without free-markets (such as State Capitalism). Capitalism is about using wealth (capital) to acquire the means-of-production (capital assets), and hiring and paying workers less than the value of their labor to make profit. It is inherently anti-democratic because the workers have little-to-no say on what labor they do within the company, how their labor should be used, who should manage the various parts of the company, etc.
The West has been very "successful" before capitalism. I'm more in favor of the hypotheses from Guns, Germs, and Steel (for the most part, geography, climate, and natural resources has determined the fate of the nations). There are many very poor capitalist nations after all. Most the wealth of those nations seems to be funneled into the hands of the owning class in rich nations.
Yes, it does. When you make money from the labor of others, you are in the owning class. I am also, personally, in the owning class. I suppose there is some gray area with 401ks and stock options, but those amounts of ownership are often very low compared to outside investors, founders, executives, so they have virtually no voting power.
Don't get me wrong. I think Social Democracy, which northern European nations are close to, is preferable to the extremely weak regulatory and welfare state the U.S. has; but Democratic Socialism would further reduce exploitation, IMO.
I'm also no fan of the USSR or China, and do not even consider them to be leftist governments (the State owns much of the means of production, not the workers, which is antithetical to leftism). I consider them to be authoritarian State Capitalist nations.
The academic model of capitalism has safeguards in place to prevent the shitshow we're living in now. Leave it to us Americans to knock off those safeguards because we're greedy as hell.
Yes, so is individual freedom.
They all do, this action is just more obvious.
Because the government didn't want to pay for it... that would be "communism". (they're paying now, way to be coherent!)
Wait, are you saying Elon Musk's actions directly resulted in innocent women and children being murdered?
It would be terrible if more people started saying that Elon Musk murdered innocent women and children.
The murder is kinda still Putin's doing but he supported it.
These stories about how much of a piece of shit Musk is have been piling up for years now. I think people driving around in Teslas are going to get some damage done to their cars soon.
Needless violence against cars will affect Musk in no way whatsoever. Please direct your anger in a more productive direction
If say the Proud Boys opened up a car manufacturing plant and started producing cars, would it also be wrong to do "violence" (lmao) against people driving their cars? Where do you draw the line? Musk is much more damaging to society with his mainstreaming of fascist, machismo, white supremacist takes than the Proud Boys are, but I bet you'd have no problem with that.
And do you really think making people second guess buying a Tesla wouldn't hurt Musk whatsoever?
I think it would behoove you to stop with this kind of negative thinking. Yes, Musk is bad. Yes, he owns Tesla. But promoting acts of violence like that will not make the world a better place, nor will it discourage people from buying Teslas
You just keep saying violence, no matter what, is bad, which I know you and no one else believes. You're lying to defend Musk and people supporting Musk. What reasoning do you have that acts of violence against Tesla and Tesla owners won't make the world a better place? You seem to be relying heavily on the childish idea that violence is bad no matter what, which again you don't believe. And of course if violence is directed to people who drive Tesla's or their cars, people would absolutely be discouraged from buying Tesla and in return hurting Musk. We all know this, but here you are lying again.
You're arguing in bad faith because you have nothing to counter anything I'm saying.
A lot of Teslas are old enough that some of the people driving them probably bought them used. Also while id be perfectly fine with people for example smashing the screens on tesla charging stations cause I find it funny, it is rather counter productive to attack car owners. I drive a Jeep, Jeep is owned by GM and GM is a shit company would you damage my car even though its old enough to drink and GM saw none of the money from me buying it.
Irregardless if you wanted to damage Tesla park a faulty model S near their factory, its libel to explode and that would be a PR fuckfest.
Honestly there are enough non-critical thinking reactionaries these days that would rush out to buy Teslas the moment they heard they could upset someone on the other side for doing it that the impact to sapes might not be as high as you would hope and the increase to service requests for Teslas would probably generate a lot of revenue as paint and tire replacements tend to be way higher on lrofit margins than you think
There aren't even close to enough of them. They're not going to trade in their Ford F-900 for a "wimpy, girly" Tesla no matter what Musk does. They'd much rather be seen as manly and tough than backing Musk. He doesn't have the cult leader following like Trump does.
Mmmm maybe... I know that honestly his right wing pushes in policy have impacted sales but I wonder if it would be enough to actually tip any scale or just be a rounding error that gets people fired and jobs compressed to save more money
I'd rather not phrase it this way because it's true. The point of this structure is that it was always bullshit.
It's not straight up murder. I might have some (limited) sympathy for Elon in this case. But he should be able to see past the first action in that series of events. I believe he was dumb enough to not think of more than the surface (more on that later). If he's not that dumb, then he truly is evil. Those submarines are not defensive.
I think he's managed to surround himself with alt-right grifters* who have him truly believing most of the absolute bullshit they spout. This doesn't excuse him for what he's doing to the world on their behalf.
*These grifters don't necessarily go after money directly. They also grift to direct his influence and money to their causes.
The right isn't stupid. They use a stupid message to maintain control of the conversation as a diversion tactic that is very effective. The whole point of this is to ensure no legitimate reforms and legislation are put in place. We fall for it every time we get enraged by the bullshit. That is the joke, we are the joke, and there is no way around the fact we will spend the next 2 weeks pushing back before the next prescribed side show drops into the circus. The outcome is fixed and calculated well in advance. This entire thing is planned out. I doubt they expected this one to have quite this big of an impact, but it will disappear just like all the rest. If a supreme court justices can be openly corrupt, there is no question the oligarchic prince will walk away completely free. We have entire states like Georgia fighting against justice for the biggest coup attempt in this country's history. The perpetrator at the center is still free years later. King Musk is invincible because of Republican Russian Red team and their oligarchy.
While I generally agree with you...
Some of them absolutely are. Just like the Russians used r/the_donald to attract real, grassroots Americans to their cause. The ones who are using the stupidity as a strategy attract the true believers. I can't tell you how many, but I guarantee the was at least one or two true believers in Congress. (Maybe they've been set straight by now.)
Marjorie Taylor Greene is probably the craziest of the bunch. She is following the Russian/Putin playbook to mobilize convenient idiots just like Trump. Lauren Boebert was a call girl, and is still turning tricks just for a higher end client. All of these people are acting their prescribed roles. They are all just actors playing roles. It has been reported that they all act completely different behind closed doors. Mobilization of convenient idiots is how Putin gained so much power. This is exactly what Republicans are doing. Most are being advised directly by Russia.
I suspect at least one, if not both, started out as true believers. And then this stuff became their job while they were being briefed on classified intelligence. Because, you know, the "deep state" does in fact try to give the legislature the information they need in order to do their jobs well.
r/the_donald I believe started as a psyop, but the strategy they used of getting people in on a joke and then making it real kind of applies here too. I think at the start they were true believers, spouting the idiotic bullshit while fully believing it. They found they were rewarded by that behavior and intentionally escalated it and kept it up. At some point they believe most of it, but still use all of it. Now, even if they no longer believe because they've spent the last several years getting educated for the first time in their lives, they absolutely have to keep the act up.
They're following the playbook because they were recruited by the playbook. Every time they touched the MAGA button they got a treat. Now they're millionaires. A fucking rat can do that.
As an aside, I don't think Trump's much different in many ways in playing to a crowd. One difference is that I do think he was directed by Putin early. But he's not a political rally savant. He just goes to these rallies and likes when people cheer for him. So he pushes the "cheer for me" button. Evidence of that is when he got booed for promoting the vaccine. He's not a genius at controlling the narrative. He just uses the narrative that works (even if much of that narrative was handed to him). He's not the first person who can identify what people want to hear. And he has help. He, like any politician, has advisors doing polls and telling him what his people want to hear.
There exist smart Republicans who have been acting the entire time for grift and were never true believers. Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Jim Jordan. The problem with acting in bad faith and using stupid bullshit is that you do attract those true believers, and those true believers eventually advance. I bet a good chunk of the Republican caucus actually believes in trickle down economics. Because the people they see are the ones that benefit from it, and they're heavily incentivized to rationalize their bullshit however they can.
I'm open to being wrong. It's just a hypothesis.
Elon Musk is afraid of Putin's revenge. Crucial infrastructure like Starlink should be handled by the government, not a corp. Otherwise the corp will prioritize shareholders and profit rather than human's life
Putin 100 percent has kompromat on Musk. Likely the pedophile shit he did with Trump and Epstein.
I think he’s basically gullible. His companies have given him so much money, he just assumes he’s right. However he doesn’t understand diplomacy and Putin played him. He should have deferred to the state department, who deal with that BS all the time
A couple of years ago, Musk stated that Putin is substantially richer than he is.
Add to that Putin's bloodthirsty lunacy. Musk may actually fear his wrath.
But then comes the issue, which government? As Starlink is global infrastructure.
Pretty sure he's talking about the government of the country the company is registered in. As the is the only one that can realistically nationalise it.
Starlink is only 'global' as long as Elon approves of the GPS coordinates. With that in mind, 'global' is about a joke, it's at Elon's whim...
Ha. You can make the R and L smaller.
(And he's not a communist, exact opposite of it.)
Musk is everything but a communist
So, explain to me how Elon should not be considered a strategic target now? He is materially supporting the Ruzzians by killing innocent civilians. He cannot be ignored at this point.
It seems he should be considered an obvious target by anyone who wishes to support the Ukranian defense. Maybe someone close enough to him supports Ukraine and will see a moral obligation (and opportunity) to defend Ukraine.
Russia is a sanctioned nation with a public history of cyber attacks and false flag attacks on Americans. They also openly meddled in the 2016 and 2020 elections (thank fuck they didn't pull 2020 successfully).
Providing aid and comfort to Russian military and political figures is explicitly treason.
I think I recall the punishment for treason is pretty stiff. The day he is held accountable will be a day for celebration.
I'm amazed US DOD hasn't torn him a new asshole considering they're now paying to use Starlink in Ukraine. Musks ability to decide how Starlink should be used is a clear security risk.
They might have behind the scenes
If he’d have just been smart and quietly sucked the government teat, he’d be set with DoD contracts.
Agreed! At this point, the DoD would be ignorant to not prioritize their own development of an LEO network. Once in place, they could dislodge or remove any of Elon's floating shitballs to prioritize the safe operation of their own, citing national security. Fuck Elon.
Its interesting that he’s poking the marshmallow here, because Musk can still turn off Starlink, or make it unusable for Ukraine as much as his contract with DoD allows. This implies that Ukraine screamed bloody murder about this months ago, and DoD has given them gear to be able to bypass Starlink.
I think DoD also doesn’t like Elon having this kind of power, and allowed him to be a stopgap now that they never plan to use again. It’s interesting from a geopolitical and financial perspective for Starlink; they blew it and they’re not a future reliable partner for taking Russia’s side.
A lot of people are missing the big picture here. Look up Starshield. SpaceX is aggressively hiring for the Starlink DoD edition essentially. I suspect the US govt is not as worried about this as you think
I’d say at least that’s a black eye. Good observation about the Starshield stuff.
Using starlink is now directly supporting the Russian invasion
Absolute nonsense, Starlink is firmly on the side of the Americans.
Good luck making the average person make this connection. People are still buying and driving Teslas.
He's a saboteur. Detain the mother fucker and try him for treason. At the very least, his removal from his companies is paramount to national security at this point.
No, no, you don't understand...he's rich.
God damn that was so well said. All I could come up with was “Fuck Elon Musk”.
Yeah, "cocktail of ignorance and big ego" is a perfect description of Musk.
The US should nationalize Starlink. If private business decisions are going to undermine world stability then those decisions are antithetical to any kind of peace and need to be treated as the threat that they are. A single person picking sides shouldn't result in a casual body count that Elon never is punished for but it now does and he looks to be getting away with actual manslaughter.
The response we’ll see is the DoD making their own Starlink, but with $500 toilet seats and $100 hammers. Aw, forget the Starlink, we’ll just do those.
Ukraine should make sure he doesn’t do that again
I've been trying to find the source but I'm certain Ukraine have developed their own.. Technologies now? That their drones rely on. If I dig it up ill edit this post.
Edit, found it was a video I'd heard it from. A combination of technology.
Reporting from Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNhc8beBdD0
Ukraine can stop using Starlink any moment they want... but for some reason they don't.
How many lives has Starlink saved so far?
Meaning?
"But wait, there's more!"
Seems to be the to not only be a famous line from the late Billy Mayes, but also the correct response when someone is disgusted by what a shit person Musk is...
Didn't think "Child Murderer" was going to wind up on his sin list.
At least we have a public confession, try him.
Starlink is a great system. The problem is its idiot owner, Musk, who is more worried how the use of Starlink in the Ukraine is going to affect his company stock. You're in the big leagues now, Elmo. You cant "sort of" commit to a war unless you're a rich Saudi dilettante, who wants to try his hand at international shiat-stirring.
The use of Starlink was restricted by US Government sanctions: no use on Russian territory or assets.
Tough luck, that also means no using it for attacking on Russian territory or assets.
Edit: Here's a link with sources and dates.
Crimea is Ukraine. Also that's not how sanctions work at all
Crimea is Stalin's "present" to the Republic of Ukraine after the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Crimean Tatars by the USSR.
Do you support that genocide?
These sanctions work exactly like that: no service, means no service, not "no service, but sometimes some".
If you want an exception, you ask the US Government, not some rando running the service.
It's very impressive how someone can be so wrong yet so confident at the same time.
Musk didn’t allow it. Full stop. It’s not so,e government sanction thing.
Even quotes you reference are from Musk, himself, sharing why he decided so. Musk said he chose not to activate it because he’d be apart of escalating the war…
...which was against US Government policy.
Please read all the links before cherry picking only some of them.
What against US policy? Escalating the war? We already are sending tons of military equipment, some used in counter offensives.
Post the link and full article you got that from, I’d like to read but many of the links are pay walled.
Here’s what I read from one of the links you referenced, I would think Musk would say it’s against US policy if that’s the reason he chose not to activate Starlink
You can check the list of sanctions imposed on Ukraine/Russia, which regions, types of activity and subjects, along with the exceptions and licenses at:
https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information/ukraine-russia-related-sanctions
You may notice that US citizens have been forbidden from providing telecommunications services, including via satellite, in the conflict areas since early 2022, requiring a special license to operate.
Starlink didn't have such license, and only got a DoD agreement in mid 2023.
In late 2022, Musk would've had to break that policy in order to allow the drones to be controlled into the conflict zone.
As for him saying so... I don't think he's the type to paint himself as subservient to the government, even if he is; more like the megalomaniac type claiming to have stopped WW3 barehanded, even if he literally did nothing.
So the only one saying Musk didn’t activate Starlink was because of US sanctions is you, and not even Musk himself.
There’s not article, just you deducing from the US sanctions list.
What's your point, that I should write an article? 🙄
It is a little incredulous that somehow only you have figured out the real reason Musk didn’t activate Starlink.
With so many articles coming out, no officials making a statement, hell even a biographer shadowing Musk at the time. Even Musk gives alternate reasons and doesn’t say it, even if it would save him from a lot of bad press.
Indeed, quite incredible. Maybe I don't get paid by the click, don't have an agenda, and don't blindly follow those who do? Guess only time will tell.
That's a remarkably interesting link, thanks for sharing.
Great example of people downvoting the truth away. The spectacle of American politics can no longer address material truths, outside of merely referencing good or bad actors.
Elon's negative image is proof because he used to be widely considered as someone solving the climate crisis through free market capitalism, but the truth is he never changed and has always been this way, and the system he operates in where people need cars is the problem.
It's also a given that Americans are blind or refuse to acknowledge the effects of their government's sanctions on the world, the private business interests that benefit, and the way they exploit people like themselves in other countries and use them as pawns.
Whether or not any of this bullshit is true, I'm just glad that there's growing distain for billionaires.
Exactly why taiwan is looking to build their own system. You can't entrust anything to musk with his deep saudi-china links
https://qz.com/china-taiwan-starlink-elon-musk-satellite-tensions-1850691740
And if they do they could let Ukraine use it, as they're likely more trustworthy than Musk.
Still, I dont see in that article where it says Taiwan is building its own system, is there another source?
This one is paywalled https://fortune.com/2023/01/06/elon-musk-starlink-ukraine-war-inspires-taiwan-start-satellite-system-china-russia/
This one isn't https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/starlink-20-taiwans-plan-sovereign-satellite-communications-system
Musk is creeping into super-villan territory.
He's already at James Bond villain levels.
No he isn't.
Lol, his most memorable presentation is showing that the cybertruck is not as durable as he claimed.
Actually, now thinking about it... has that shit even finished? Or close to? A lot of people already paid for it.
That's treason,.... is it not?
For Ukraine yes this treason. But in USA if you an oligarch with a lot of money you can do what you want. I won't be suprise if the republicans will promote to stop the war by not sending ressources to Ukraine. You know, to promote democracy and free world...
I think there’s even a decent case to make this distinction, that Starlink is for communication but not attacking. The problem is making the decision unilaterally, in secret, with no warning, and contrary to customer expectations, with timing that uniquely benefits an enemy of civilization
Russia is an enemy aggressor nation. Helping their military and their government without U.S. Congress approval is treason.
Technically, no. But I doubt that Musk will be getting any contracts in Ukraine after the war. Probably ruined any other future business in any of the other countries in a similar situation as Ukraine bordering Russia as well.
He's not ukrainian so I don't see why or how it would be treason.
Just a very shitty move.
The US law Musk violated would be the Logan Act...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act
Why the fuck are they relying on starlink.
They don't have a choice, everything else requires ground based infrastructure.
Starlink technically requires ground based infrastructure but they don't need to be in Ukraine. The closest Starlink ground stations to Ukraine are in Turkey and Poland, according to this map.
Yes, those sites bridge star link and the rest.of the internet, but that doesn't change the requirements for ind users so only have a tmall antenna.
Ok, so I stand corrected. But still, it doesn't need antennae like with cellular internet.
Because Russia blew up domestic infrastructure, so satellite based communication looked like a decent alternative.
the question is why the fuck was a private company allowed to build and operate star link?
Because the DoD can have plausible deniability by not giving Ukraine access to the actual military satellite network.
what do you mean by allowed? as in if you are a private company you should not be allowed to have satellites? is that what you mean?
As in there's only so much air space and it's already crowded...
It's needs regulated, letting any company throw whatever they want up there is fucking stupid.
Name any point in human history when letting companies do whatever the fuck they want in an area hasn't fucked over the majority of people.
as in the only high bandwidth communications network capable of doing things like this. starlink is this little thing called a monopoly and that is what caused this situation...
Turns out it's not very easy to just dump a ton of satellites and pop out a new network whenever you want.
Seriously, the Starlink and Falcon 9 production is unlike anything else. Amazon and China will try to copy it, but it'll take them way more time and money.
Musk needs to be charged with war crimes along with his kremlin allies.
Maybe not war crimes, but definitely charges for directly attacking a sovereign state's military assets while engaged in an active operation. There has to be something in international law about this sort of behavior. Well, maybe not, since the ability for a single citizen to have the power to directly attack an entire military action is unprecedented. Seriously, what is stopping him from jamming any signal he wants if he can manage this? Will a full constellation be able to suppress wifi over a large area? Cell towers? Standard radio signals? Would it be able to be selective?
This action of his constitutes a privately owned and operated military-grade weapon which actually threatens even the super powers.
Actually there is in American law. He actively aided and abetted an enemy of the state he is a citizen. That's called treason.
Oh... I'm crossing my fingers. That said, we don't have the best track record with treason proceedings recently.
I mean.... Jan 6 says all you need to know about whether he'll ever be charged.
It’s because Elon finds Putin more relatable than the people Putin is attacking.
Not really. He's just afraid that his satellite constellation will get targeted by the Russians. They probably threatened him and he being who he is (attached to his companies) started to cave.
Plausible but wouldn’t they already be a target at this point, and to counter wouldn’t this have been a known risk when he signed the contract with the US Government on providing the coverage for Ukraine?
It's also not a mistake when we know he's buddy buddy with Russia. We know why they did it.
I really hope Mr free speach doesn't do anything about this scathing entirely accurate tweet about what an egoistical monster Elon is posted on the platform Elon owns.
Not only a fraud, but also a terrorist support.
Don’t forget a disgusting billionaire, authoritarian, hater of his own children, and a fascist
Oh and sexual abuser, can’t forget that one
There's a good chance Putin is richer than Musk....just saying. And since there is that chance, what are the chances Putin has money in Musk's various businesses?
Starlink fails if Russia or any other country decides to shoot down its satellites. That’s enough reason for musk to be a patsy of any government that threatens to do it.
If one state starts shooting down satellites, they're going to get their own ones targeted and it only ends when neither has any satellites left. That's not a box anyone is willing to open.
I'm pretty confident that Musk has insurance for that. They can't shoot down enough of them to make a big difference, you may have a hole but the network will be ok.
Look up: Kessler syndrome
https://universemagazine.com/en/a-million-avoidance-maneuvers-starlink-threatens-orbit-with-kessler-syndrome/
Yup, they're already having problems without even getting attacked. Shooting "down" (they wouldn't fall down) some of the satellites, could easily create enough debris to start a cascading collision effect and turn the whole orbit into a minefield.
It's even worse, because they are in orbits creating a crisscross grid, meaning debris from one satellite would cross the paths of dozens of others in a short period of time.
Also, disabling a dozen or a thousand satellites, wouldn't create a "hole" in the network over any single place, since every single satellite goes over the whole globe, replacing any disabled one.
Someone trying to attack Starlink, would either have to trigger a cascading effect, or get no effect at all.
They'll avoid the debris as they do now. It's every day business
The number of debris avoidance maneuvers is growing faster than the number of satellites. Even without an attack, it's anyone's guess when the amount of debris will overcome their ability to avoid it.
In the case of an attack, they'd quickly run out of avoidance ability (onboard fuel) and either have to use the remaining fuel to de-orbit, or become part of the cascade of collisions.
couldn't you toss up a towing satellite that goes from sat to sat and hooks them together?
If you mean to "scoop them up" as a means of attack... there are thousands of them already, they're all over the globe, with plans to go up to 40k. They do have engines, and while not particularly powerful (hall effect ion thrusters), they could try to counter the attack by trying to deorbit, along with the attacking satellite. My guess is it would be too slow and ineffective.
The best physical attack would be to cause a collision cascade at their orbital height... or set off a nuke in orbit and EMP them by the hundreds, but that would also EMP a bunch of other satellites, mess up the Van Allen belts, hit anything in a wide area on the ground, and breach several international treaties.
No business wants to rely on insurance. It will never cover all the future losses in a business like this.
A network with regular outages is nearly worthless for most use cases..
Oh you could put a million dollar missle on a 25 thousand dollar satellite. But, you're going to run out of missiles.
So that constitutes a war crime at this point, correct?
Nope.
Either elon is a ficking idiot or has Russian allies
Bourgeois solidary does not know national borders.
Both? He's been trying to meddle and play "peacekeeper" this entire time. Except his version of peace is. Let the Russians keep everything they've taken, take the L and deal with it so I can continue to sell products and services there.
As a fan of some of Musk’s technical vision and how he’s revolutionizing society, I stringly believe he’s an effing idiot. People have given him so much praise, adulation, money, that he thinks he’s right and is easy to manipulate.
He’s a sucker who should go back to what he’s good at. Step back from the war and attempts at diplomacy, put Twitter on fire sale to someone who can fix it, and go back to your core. Let’s get cyber truck and semi out in force. Let’s deliver Roadster v2 and get to work on that rumored $25k cybercar. Let’s continue the revolution. Let’s get Starship/Superheavy flying, and continue through to Mars. Let’s continue the revolution of humans stepping out into the solar system. While he’s at it, it’s time to bail on some of the less successful sideshows. Stop wasting time and money trying to make a go of residential solar: great idea but if you can’t deliver something people can adfird, it’ll never work
SpaceX literally has somebody whose job it is to wrangle Musk, and keep him from fucking things up. They get great things done in spite of him, not because of him.
The real person in charge of SpaceX and keeping it successful is Gwynne Shotwell.
There must be some way of charging him. Not that it’d stick, but I gotta think there’s some law that was violated, right?
There is. His actions are against the law and he can be charged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act
Except at the time the US Government's policy was for Starlink to NOT extend coverage outside of Ukraine's borders.
Musk followed US stated policy by disobeying Ukraine's request.
I'm not for the guy and think he's done waaay more wrong than good, but wasn't everyone against him even offering starlink on the first place? Now everyone is mad that they didn't use more starlink? Honestly just seems like a lose lose situation right now for him. Had he overstepped his bounds and used starlink as an aggressor, instead of defense like he has been doing (which is one thing the US said to Ukraine, defend your land not attack theirs) people would have dragged him through the mud for that instead.
I'm all for being critical when it's due, especially for a guy trying to role-playing Edison and his shitty tactics, but idk about this one.
Edit: Here's a link explaining it a lot more clearly about why the news is making this bigger than it was.
Edit edit: link broken lemmys hard lol
Precisely. For the one time the guy follows the rules... like there haven't been a thousand other things he's been doing that deserve criticism... this one is a really weird smear campaign to pick.
And a full year after the fact, at that. Where were all these people in 2022 when all this happened?
By the books he should have to register as a foreign agent, and should be penalized for not doing so before engaging in foreign agent activity.
My favorite was seeing a comment where someone said "i'm not going to believe the words of some dude trying to sell a book"
At this point I am now cheering for his rockets to expose on the launch pad.
As a fan of SpaceX, I'm so sad that this company is tied to him, as they are doing amazing stuff. Today he could have zero involvement with it it would continue to be great, but his name makes it look bad to the public.
SpaceX wouldn't be a thing without Elon.
It could be more than a thing.
It could be the SLS, which US Congress keeps pouring billions into despite NASA itself saying it's a waste of money.
AKA: it could be a way to funnel money into campaign-funding contractor's pockets.
It sounds sort of like Elon Musk, a private citizen, just committed conspiracy to perpetuate war crimes. That's a pretty serious accusation with grave penalties that is somehow not being prosecuted.
B-b-but Elon wouldn’t want to get involved in war!! Aside from all the ways he’s involved himself in the war….
Jfc
Their deaths are on elons hands
He probably gets off from that.
Piss of Elon, now he takes away starling completely for Ukraine, giving Russia the edge they need
He has a contract with the DoD now, he won't breach it.
He didn't have a contract before... didn't breach it either.
If he did that he would become an open enemy of the state. Which means starlink would become propriety of the USA gov?
I think if you interfere with a military intervention of the currently most important proxy war party of the united states then you are already an enemy of the state. the question is if they will finally do something about him...
Fucking lol, obviously they won't. That's not how liberals work. Biggest consequence Musk will face is not getting future government contracts.
Why did you decide to assign this to liberals here? Serious question
Liberal idealism, with all it's positives and negatives, dominates the way America thinks and American government works. Personal freedom and private enterprise are much more highly valued than state loyalty.
yeah no im not expecting them to do anything but it would be nice if they did :)
For anyone interested in posting to this community, please keep rule 6 in mind. This post will be kept up because of the valuable discussion and activity that came with this post, but please mind the rules in the future. Thank you (:
Will try to remember to check the rules of each community before posting. Added a link to a news article. Thanks for the heads-up.
No problem. Thank you for responding (:
that's why we cannot trust billionaires and big corporations
I wonder what would happen if a national intelligence agency was tasked with eliminating a billionaire. Could private security, however sophisticated, really deflect assassination attempts from a state? That has nothing to do with Elon Musk, though. He is way too beloved and cherished to ever become a target.
On the one hand, we have "reaper" missiles that are basically flying guillotines, that can strike with enough accuracy to kill a particular person in a particular car seat while not harming the other occupants.
On the other hand, how many times did we fuck up killing Castro?
musk is just a cooker with money
Ukraine special ops downs Elmos jet....
Starlink wasn't enabled in that region to begin with.
Lol! That's why disabling it prevented Ukraine from launching an offensive, right?
In the CNN article I read they say musk was specifically asked to expand the network for the operation. It seems like a weird spin.
He did not disable anything, he refused a foreign (Ukrainian) request to enable it, that was contrary to his country's (US) stance at that moment: sanctions forbidding him to provide any service over Russia or Russian assets.
Others say he disabled the system. Malicious narcissist & pathological liar says he didn't. If Musk disabled the system it makes him look very bad and may result in a major government response that would harm Musk and his business.
Gee, I wonder who is telling the truth?
This isn't "who said what", these are facts:
As much as I dislike Musk —and I wouldn't be surprised if he used this to negotiate a better contract—, this one was a total fuckup by the US DoD, and in part by Ukraine for not pressuring the DoD into signing a contract much sooner.
Where do you get your "facts'? Especially like the "shit happens" addition to explain an admitted action by Musk. Very creative.
Facts come from history, most are recorded for everyone to check, particularly these ones are public. You may even find the exact dates for each one.
The "shit happens" is Ukraine botching a military operation because they asked a private US citizen to break US law. You may have confused "action" with "inaction as ordered".
Edit: Here's a link with sources and dates.
Thanks for the link. So many people online just pull stuff from their ass it's a surprise when sources actually exist.
I see nothing in those links regarding the DoD contract specifics and I think you're making assumptions about how US law is applied in foreign war zones involving our allies and hostile adversaries. US law is amazingly flexible in just about any situation that can be said to involve our or our allies national security. The Defense Department has withheld almost all information about the Starlink contract, and from what I can see even the date it was signed hasn't been made public. All I can find at multiple sites is that a contract has been signed with almost zero additional information.
From the WA Post:
From Ronan Farrow's excellent New Yorker article:
I find it laughable that Musk would assert that Putin wants peace and that Ukraine should negotiate. Putin can achieve peace by unilaterally withdrawing his forces and restoring pre-war borders. In other words Musk wants peace on his and Putin's terms and that means victory for Russia.
We don't know the specific timelines of what else has gone on with Musk and Ukraine yet. We do know that Musk lies constantly about things as important as major government contracts, buying out major corporations, taking companies private, the capabilities of Telsa vehicles and even about things as mundane and ridiculous as showing up for a cage match with Zuckerburg. It strains credulity to suggest he's not lying about what he's done with Starlink if telling the truth might make him look bad. Given his history of openly siding with Putin and pushing Ukraine to surrender significant parts of their country, it is more than reasonable to assume he's lying in support of that goal too.
Not sure if it was in an article or on TV, but at some point there was a map showing Starlink coverage over Ukraine, and how it faded towards the borders in order to go down to zero in the conflict areas. Obviously the moment Ukrainian forces started to push, they went into the blackout areas and were SOL.
Regarding the DoD agreement... I'm not sure where I've read it, but apparently he asked the DoD to foot the bill for Starlink around the end of 2022... and then when the agreement was drafted and they were about to pay for it, he decided that "nah", he'd follow providing the service for free. I highly suspect that was a weasel way to negotiate better terms and/or amount, knowing that the DoD needed a contract to hold him accountable, and that they were actually willing to pay.
You're not wrong in not trusting the guy, nobody should; according to his recent biography, he seems to take everything as a big game with the main objective of making more money.
What I find especially disturbing about this entire scenario is that Musk is literally choosing to protect the Russian war machine instead of the people who are being attacked - including seniors, women, infants and children. Taking steps to protect an aggressor while actively preventing a country from defending its non-combatant citizens from unprovoked attacks is just plain evil.
I expect Musk will have a movie made about him someday. It won't be flattering.
He did not disable it, he refused to enable it in that region.
Stop blaming your weaknesses on others. don't get into a war you can't win. no one owes you nothing
Big "she should have dressed differently" energy
What about The Pimps who push the weak to do the dirty work for them
your military industrial complex has never had it this good, proxy wars without local push backs, no western blood shed so even the antiwar crowd has gone silent in the west.
Peace at all costs has a price that should not be paid
The sane part of the anti war crowd knows that there have been peace settlements with Russia but that they don't last. Settling with Russia is just giving them time to re-arm
So Ukraine should do what when they're attacked?
Surrender and comply to their brothers /s
his dudes opinion brought to you by the cooked shit he got told to think
Get fucked, Russia apologist.
Russia started the war you fucking donkey.
Why are you lying in your post title
Whoops, it seems you accidentally posted here instead of a maga site, like Russian supported Parler.
I'm not even going to check what it is, but kbin.projectsegfau.lt sounds like a sketchy place.
Lots of sketchy places on Lemmy. "In other news" on sh.itjust.works is a textbook example of Horseshoe Theory, right down to banning users who dare to question the propaganda posted by the "liberal" running it. I'm proud to be one of those users.
In what way are Podolyak's words not being accurately paraphrased in the headline?