Musk claims that the fleet was entering into Crimea, a territory where the access was not available, and he refused to turn it on [1,2], and that he never actually turned anything off. He also claims that the terms of the Starlink usage agreement with Ukraine expressly prohibits using Starlink for offensive means.
If true, this graph seems to show otherwise, UNLESS this was a mobile unit moving into the unserviced territory.
> To the dismay of Pentagon officials, Musk volunteered that he had spoken with Putin personally. Another individual told me that Musk had made the same assertion in the weeks before he tweeted his pro-Russia peace plan, and had said that his consultations with the Kremlin were regular.
> On the phone, Musk said that he was looking at his laptop and could see “the entire war unfolding” through a map of Starlink activity. “This was, like, three minutes before he said, ‘Well, I had this great conversation with Putin,’ ” the senior defense official told me. “And we were, like, ‘Oh, dear, this is not good.’ ”
The United States is providing aid to the Ukraine to fight off Russia. While Russia may not technically be an enemy of the United States at the moment, the two nations aren't on the best of terms. This action can be construed as Musk aiding and abetting the Russians, with whom the United States is having "difficulties" with at the moment. Musk should keep in mind the United States has the power to denaturalize him and revoke his citizenship.
Denaturalizing and revoking citizenship would be the least worst outcome assuming the US government tires of someone providing an enemy nation state material support.
Would he even care? Probably a few dozen other nations would be happy to have him and his wealth. Billionaires like that exist outside the national borders that you and I live in...
And plus, he probably still has South African citizenship?
He is literally the person outiside Ukraine who has done the most for Ukraine. Othernations couldnt buy capability that Starlink provides. And they got it for free for months. Starlink was attacked by Russians.
So its ridiculous to claim Musk is some anti-Russian element.
I don't see the same outrage for hundreds of privileged telecoms providers that also see at a higher and greater level of detail the same thing Elon was looking at, even lower level sysadmins.
He's in charge of Starlink and it doesn't make any data privacy claims to prevent him from even intercepting data if he wanted to.
If the CEO of Vodafone or something was saying that they could see military operations in the metadata, and also talking about their chats with Putin, _eyebrows would be raised_. (For a number of reasons; I'd be astonished if the CEO of Vodafone or similar has casual access to just look at call metadata for fun, plus also, yeah, the Implication).
Location data is specifically covered and Musk was not using the location data for 'goods and services' but instead in violation of privacy rights was using this information for geopolitics instead:
"Location Data (not precise geolocation), which includes your general location in order to provide you with the appropriate goods and services."
The fact you haven't heard that outrage simply suggests that you haven't been a network operator before. We have an RFC, in fact, that addresses this very point.
> (4) Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational network.
Most people have not ever wrestled with operating a network. To get outraged about the exploitation of user activity/metadata and violation of end user trust perpetrated by today's network operators, you have to have wrestled with having at least tried to operate or build out one yourself.
Only once you have (and it doesn't take many) multiple users completely dependent on you as a single point of failure or as a vector for intrusion into their intimate affairs, will you truly appreciate the burning white anger the more ethical of us feel at the behavior of the largest network operators.
In fact, policymakers and law enforcement have all but weaponized that fact. Usually couching any further abrogation or unraveling of end user expectation of privacy under the guise of "keeping you safe" or "protecting the children" (which a vast majority experience first hand), without at the same time pointing out that "oh, hey, this means we basically get to intrude on all activity you conduct over a network".
Which nowadays is "all activity you conduct with someone else that doesn't involve meeting face to face"
It's the moment of this night's attack what is depicted on OP's graph, here is a news story:
>Ukrainian missiles strike Russian warships in Crimean naval base
>Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukrainian armed forces attacked the Sergo Ordzhonikidze shipyard in Sevastopol, which Russia uses as a repair base for its Black Sea Fleet, with 10 cruise missiles and three unmanned boats.
Yes, the implication being that there's been a second round of funny business by mr musk.
I cannot comprehend how self-sabotaging this is. Ok, sure, starlink was going to have rural subscribers which is a lot of people but not as nearly a large market as urban telecom. And yeah, they'd have some customers in less developed countries that lack infrastructure. And sure, there's maritime shipping. But at the end of the day the real money maker, the one they could charge a premium to, was going to be the DoD. And he's pissing all over them.
I don't know if anyone's ever had the scale of launches necessary for a system like Starlink though. As far as I know rocket launches are public even if what they're carrying is confidential.
I’m sure they do, and it’s probably 45 years behind Starlink technologically. Starlink is the only game in town for low latency, high bandwidth satellite communications.
Somehow, none of the news outlets cared to ask if the Pentagon is ok with enabling Starlink coverage over Crimea, and Starlink terminals strapped on drones to bomb the Russia sea fleet.
Is that what happened last night? Or was Elon just trying to disrupt Ukrainian communications on their own territory while they conducted their recent attack on Crimea?
Apparently one of his claims was that he could see the whole war unfold via a map starlink terminal locations. Which is highly disturbing considering he also admitting to speaking with Putin.
The current trend in military technology is to have missiles and drones communicate via satellite link. It is much harder to track or jam such communication.
Starlink was down for pretty much the entire world last night. If they were deliberately trying to disturb a Crimean attack, I'm pretty sure they would do something a little more localized.
So if Apple gave Ukraine free iPhones but didn't unlock them so they could be used as a part in drones, that would be evil right?
I am pro-Ukraine, but civilian companies shouldn't be roped into armed conflicts. The DoD can buy and operate a satellite communication service from SpaceX and run it how they see fit.
Additionally, the US is NOT at war. Congress has the power to declare war and it has not done so. No civilian should be forced to help kill people and start wars on the other side of the globe if they don’t want to.
The US government has the ability to print as much money as they want and build their own satellite constellation, or rent/buy them.
> civilian companies shouldn't be roped into armed conflicts
Do you think that in the most general sense, or do you mean they shouldn't be roped into this (Ukraine) conflict?
Historically, civilian companies have always been leveraged by nations to re-tool and produce the vast majority of war materiel during a crisis[0]
[1]:
> The B-29 project was the largest and most expensive project undertaken during World War Two. It was even more expensive than the Manhattan Project. The American Automobile Industry was instrumental in supplying airframe components and engines for the B-29. Below are the automobile companies and their suppliers known to have participated in the building of the most complex aircraft to date.
If the US declares war, then it is justified to use civilian resources. Outside of that it is too ripe for abuse. It just makes it easier to slip into forever "wars" and never think about the tradeoffs.
Probably at this point this is the closest the US can get to declaring war with another major nuclear power. Declaring actual war would probably escalate to a horrific end with nuclear weapons.
The US is explicitly and very loudly supplying a massive amount of weapons to Ukraine for the purpose of killing Russian soldiers and equipment. It feels like a technicality that our troops aren't the ones pulling the triggers.
I'm not weighing in on either side of this argument since I'm undecided, but I think this is what war looks like between nuclear nations.
IBM famously equipped the Nazi's to be able to operate their concentration camp infrastructure with ruthless, industrial-scale efficiency.
Chemical manufacturers knowingly shipped Zyklon B to the Nazi's and to concentration camps as direct buyers as well.
Unfortunately, my new acquaintence, you are laboring under the presumption that militaries/governments build, manufacture, and operate "government owned infra" to do what they do that can be cleanly seperated from "civillian infra". This is not the case. It's why arguments that "private companies working on behalf of the government to do things the government wouldn't be able to do" should be seen as what they are. A bunch of bullocks.
The Government is Us, and We are the Government. "It's a private company" style arguments only hold validity to specifically if you put on blinders to the fact a "Company" is a construct granted legitimacy by it's host State. Break the rules, or make things overly problematic to your host state, and watch how fast the landscape changes.
The government literally has bombed its own citizens because they dared to rise up against them.
Look at the MOVE protests in Philly. The government is not “us”. That’s a fairytale they tell you in AP government classes. If the government “was us”, we’d have actually addressed many of the problems plaguing us today.
Our input to the government is picking from a candidate from a bunch of actual fascists and proto fascists. Whenever they don’t like our pick, the very rare time someone has been outside of that choice pool, a bunch of unheard of systems come into place to nullify our choice.
Doesn't obviate my point. Even if the Government bombs "us"... Who made the bombs? Brewed the explosives? Manufactured the fasteners? Built the loading equipment? Staffed the Armed Forces?
We did. We do. We will continue to. Collective action on our part is indistinguishable from Government.
It just so happens when you try to spawn a new one that doesn't have enough popular support, the response by the incumbent is to crush, delegitimize, and exemplify the consequences of so doing through the treatments applied to the uprisers.
If you would oust the king, you damn well better be fully committed, and better well win. Because for them, to let you succeed or exist is a matter of existential importance.
Nobody would bat an eye if they were compelled by the DoD to cooperate. But enabling Ukraine to launch drone attacks on Russia via satellite would make them very clearly a part of the Ukrainian war apparatus, and I think it is quite understandable why a private company wouldn't want to face that heat.
Yes. In my opinion this is uncomfortably close to us playing Team America: World Police. We are injecting ourselves into a situation where there outcome is unpredictable and there is no clear game plan or win conditions defined such that we can exit the conflict without the entire area collapsing. Reading between the lines, and sometimes said out loud by the ruling class, it's clear that they want regime change in Russia and they're hoping that this forces the issue.
Now I'm not going to shed a tear for Putin if he has to flee Moscow and we find him in a hole in the desert with a long beard, but the US track record for _successful_ regime change isn't exactly stellar. The middle east is still a mess, Korea is still divided, Vietnam was a colossal failure, and there are more examples in Latin/Central America than I care to cite.
IMO "Equipment" is a very tame and benign term for the deadly munitions we're supplying being used directly against an hostile nuclear power. It's not like we're only sending medical supplies and other errands of mercy. It just seem very risky to me to assume that the Putin is forever just going to ignore the fact that his soldiers are getting blow up by American weapons.
> IMO "Equipment" is a very tame and benign term for the deadly munitions we're supplying being used directly against an hostile nuclear power. It's not like we're only sending medical supplies and other errands of mercy. It just seem very risky to me to assume that the Putin is forever just going to ignore the fact that his soldiers are getting blow up by American weapons.
Russia has been doing what they can regarding foreign equipment to Ukraine.
It’s not much because all they can do is not much.
Short of ending his country by attacking NATO there’s not much more they can do.
This is not the same. At all. A foreign government asked them to take down the unlocked and fully functional units to gain defensive advantage. It’s a direct and targeted intervention on Russias behalf at the cost of downtime for all users worldwide. It removes any veil of non-partisanship from Starlink. What would you say if Elon did the same to sabotage a US special forces raid?
The UK Storm Shadow cruise missile does not use Starlink - it is launched from a modified SU-24 bomber and then uses GPS to navigate to a target area via a preplanned flight plan to evade air defenses.
When in the target area , it then uses onboard camera to "look" for a designated target profile (i.e ships, planes on the ground - russians recently put car tyres on their bombers in order to spoof it) before going into terminal descent and going ka-boom.
Fortunately for Ukraine it does not need the internet to do it's job.
Pentagon doesn’t own American companies and if the U.S. government really wants to have global telecommunications everywhere they can build the infrastructure themselves.
Good on Elon for being the only company standing up to the U.S. military industrial complex.
65 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 66.6 ms ] threadIf true, this graph seems to show otherwise, UNLESS this was a mobile unit moving into the unserviced territory.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/09/08/elon-musk...
[2] https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/09/10/exp-ukraine-russ...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-sha...
> To the dismay of Pentagon officials, Musk volunteered that he had spoken with Putin personally. Another individual told me that Musk had made the same assertion in the weeks before he tweeted his pro-Russia peace plan, and had said that his consultations with the Kremlin were regular.
> On the phone, Musk said that he was looking at his laptop and could see “the entire war unfolding” through a map of Starlink activity. “This was, like, three minutes before he said, ‘Well, I had this great conversation with Putin,’ ” the senior defense official told me. “And we were, like, ‘Oh, dear, this is not good.’ ”
Freedom of speech ... peace ... yeah, who does this guy think he is ?
And plus, he probably still has South African citizenship?
So its ridiculous to claim Musk is some anti-Russian element.
SpaceX is literally the only defense company who would get shit on for not providing things for free.
He's in charge of Starlink and it doesn't make any data privacy claims to prevent him from even intercepting data if he wanted to.
"We don’t knowingly sell your personal information, but we still have to tell you what we collect from you and how we use it."
https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1000-41799-67?r...
Location data is specifically covered and Musk was not using the location data for 'goods and services' but instead in violation of privacy rights was using this information for geopolitics instead:
"Location Data (not precise geolocation), which includes your general location in order to provide you with the appropriate goods and services."
There is zero need for plebs to be defending a mentally ill billionaire on HN or anywhere else.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1925
Note truth number 4:
> (4) Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational network.
Most people have not ever wrestled with operating a network. To get outraged about the exploitation of user activity/metadata and violation of end user trust perpetrated by today's network operators, you have to have wrestled with having at least tried to operate or build out one yourself.
Only once you have (and it doesn't take many) multiple users completely dependent on you as a single point of failure or as a vector for intrusion into their intimate affairs, will you truly appreciate the burning white anger the more ethical of us feel at the behavior of the largest network operators.
In fact, policymakers and law enforcement have all but weaponized that fact. Usually couching any further abrogation or unraveling of end user expectation of privacy under the guise of "keeping you safe" or "protecting the children" (which a vast majority experience first hand), without at the same time pointing out that "oh, hey, this means we basically get to intrude on all activity you conduct over a network".
Which nowadays is "all activity you conduct with someone else that doesn't involve meeting face to face"
Which is a lot.
Think about that long and hard.
>Ukrainian missiles strike Russian warships in Crimean naval base
>Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukrainian armed forces attacked the Sergo Ordzhonikidze shipyard in Sevastopol, which Russia uses as a repair base for its Black Sea Fleet, with 10 cruise missiles and three unmanned boats.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/13/europe/crimea-missile-att...
I cannot comprehend how self-sabotaging this is. Ok, sure, starlink was going to have rural subscribers which is a lot of people but not as nearly a large market as urban telecom. And yeah, they'd have some customers in less developed countries that lack infrastructure. And sure, there's maritime shipping. But at the end of the day the real money maker, the one they could charge a premium to, was going to be the DoD. And he's pissing all over them.
Also I bet aircraft carriers at sea need a good data connection too.
https://www.spacex.com/starshield/
More like he has tons of friends there what to do and what def not to do (i.e. be complicit in attack)
Pentagon has been..conspicuously silent
Export controls are a thing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/16h725g/starlink_...
I am pro-Ukraine, but civilian companies shouldn't be roped into armed conflicts. The DoD can buy and operate a satellite communication service from SpaceX and run it how they see fit.
Additionally, the US is NOT at war. Congress has the power to declare war and it has not done so. No civilian should be forced to help kill people and start wars on the other side of the globe if they don’t want to.
The US government has the ability to print as much money as they want and build their own satellite constellation, or rent/buy them.
Do you think that in the most general sense, or do you mean they shouldn't be roped into this (Ukraine) conflict?
Historically, civilian companies have always been leveraged by nations to re-tool and produce the vast majority of war materiel during a crisis[0]
[1]: > The B-29 project was the largest and most expensive project undertaken during World War Two. It was even more expensive than the Manhattan Project. The American Automobile Industry was instrumental in supplying airframe components and engines for the B-29. Below are the automobile companies and their suppliers known to have participated in the building of the most complex aircraft to date.
There are many more examples.
0: https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com
1: https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/b-29-usautoindustry.ht...
The US is explicitly and very loudly supplying a massive amount of weapons to Ukraine for the purpose of killing Russian soldiers and equipment. It feels like a technicality that our troops aren't the ones pulling the triggers.
I'm not weighing in on either side of this argument since I'm undecided, but I think this is what war looks like between nuclear nations.
Chemical manufacturers knowingly shipped Zyklon B to the Nazi's and to concentration camps as direct buyers as well.
Unfortunately, my new acquaintence, you are laboring under the presumption that militaries/governments build, manufacture, and operate "government owned infra" to do what they do that can be cleanly seperated from "civillian infra". This is not the case. It's why arguments that "private companies working on behalf of the government to do things the government wouldn't be able to do" should be seen as what they are. A bunch of bullocks.
The Government is Us, and We are the Government. "It's a private company" style arguments only hold validity to specifically if you put on blinders to the fact a "Company" is a construct granted legitimacy by it's host State. Break the rules, or make things overly problematic to your host state, and watch how fast the landscape changes.
Look at the MOVE protests in Philly. The government is not “us”. That’s a fairytale they tell you in AP government classes. If the government “was us”, we’d have actually addressed many of the problems plaguing us today.
Our input to the government is picking from a candidate from a bunch of actual fascists and proto fascists. Whenever they don’t like our pick, the very rare time someone has been outside of that choice pool, a bunch of unheard of systems come into place to nullify our choice.
Princeton did a multi year study into this: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
We did. We do. We will continue to. Collective action on our part is indistinguishable from Government.
It just so happens when you try to spawn a new one that doesn't have enough popular support, the response by the incumbent is to crush, delegitimize, and exemplify the consequences of so doing through the treatments applied to the uprisers.
If you would oust the king, you damn well better be fully committed, and better well win. Because for them, to let you succeed or exist is a matter of existential importance.
Leveraged by nations, not on their own will.
A million times this, and America should stop playing world cop.
Now I'm not going to shed a tear for Putin if he has to flee Moscow and we find him in a hole in the desert with a long beard, but the US track record for _successful_ regime change isn't exactly stellar. The middle east is still a mess, Korea is still divided, Vietnam was a colossal failure, and there are more examples in Latin/Central America than I care to cite.
IMO "Equipment" is a very tame and benign term for the deadly munitions we're supplying being used directly against an hostile nuclear power. It's not like we're only sending medical supplies and other errands of mercy. It just seem very risky to me to assume that the Putin is forever just going to ignore the fact that his soldiers are getting blow up by American weapons.
Russia has been doing what they can regarding foreign equipment to Ukraine.
It’s not much because all they can do is not much.
Short of ending his country by attacking NATO there’s not much more they can do.
IMO that assumes that Putin is a rational actor. I'm not sure that's the case.
When in the target area , it then uses onboard camera to "look" for a designated target profile (i.e ships, planes on the ground - russians recently put car tyres on their bombers in order to spoof it) before going into terminal descent and going ka-boom.
Fortunately for Ukraine it does not need the internet to do it's job.
Pentagon doesn’t own American companies and if the U.S. government really wants to have global telecommunications everywhere they can build the infrastructure themselves.
Good on Elon for being the only company standing up to the U.S. military industrial complex.