Considering that the UAF crossed his moral red line by exploiting Starlink for carrying out drone strikes and the SBU didn’t stop its fascist troll network’s thuggish intimidation campaign against him (but arguably orchestrated the whole thing), it makes sense why Musk finally put his foot down. The combination of those two factors powerfully overrode his well-known personal sympathies for Kiev’s cause and forced him to do what he’s convinced was the right thing, which many have praised him for.

CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk explained in two tweeted responses to former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly why his company’s Starlink service decided to stop Kiev’s military exploitation of their wireless internet services for carrying out drone strikes against Russian forces. He was reacting to that pro-war activist’s plea to reconsider his decision, which Kelly claimed would help Ukraine’s “defense from a genocidal invasion”.

Here’s what Musk told him in his two-tweet response:

“You’re smart enough not to swallow media & other propaganda bs.

Starlink is the communication backbone of Ukraine, especially at the front lines, where almost all other Internet connectivity has been destroyed.

But we will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3.

…

SpaceX commercial terminals, like other commercial products, are meant for private use, not military, but we have not exercised our right to turn them off.

We’re trying hard to do the right thing, where the ‘right thing’ is an extremely difficult moral question.”

This is a reasonable explanation that represents a pragmatic balance between his peaceful principles and personal sympathies for Kiev’s cause. On the one hand, Musk truly doesn’t want to enable any escalation that could lead to World War III such as having his Starlink services exploited to organize massive drone swarm attacks, while on the other, he still wants to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) and that’s why he lets them use those same services for communication purposes.

It was always within his private company’s right to cut the UAF off from its wireless internet services from the get-go since they were never supposed to be using them in the first place, seeing as how they aren’t a private actor but an official military one. Nonetheless, he turned a blind eye to their use of it for communication purposes and thus partially compromised on his own values since his personal sympathies for Kiev’s cause overrode his earlier mentioned peaceful principles in that respect.

Where Kiev crossed the line, however, was in exploiting these same services to carry out drone strikes. This means that Starlink has indeed been used to kill Russian soldiers, which thus means that Musk is an indirect participant in the New Cold War’s top proxy war. While cynics might scoff in response to the innuendo that he was only recently made aware that Kiev was exploiting his wireless internet services for that end, what’s important at this point in time is that he’s since stopped them from doing so.

This timing likely wasn’t coincidental either since it occurs in the immediate run-up to what most observers expect to be another imminent large-scale Russian offensive, thus suggesting that he waited until Kiev’s most sensitive military moment in order to stop it from exploiting Starlink to that end. That was likely meant as revenge against the SBU’s fascist troll network for its innumerable death threats against him ever since he shared his peace proposal for ending the Ukrainian Conflict last fall.

That country’s secret police, which back that aforesaid troll network, didn’t do anything to curtail its members’ death threats against him or even signal their displeasure at this via influential figures within their ranks. Musk likely interpreted this as tacit support for their toxic trolling aimed at intimidating him into self-censoring or changing his envisioned solution to that conflict, hence why he plotted until the UAF’s most sensitive military moment to stop it from exploiting Starlink to carry out drone strikes.

The speculative personal motivation about the timing of this potentially game-changing military-strategic decision aside, the fact of the matter is that his official explanation that he shared with Kelly can’t reasonably be criticized. SpaceX, of which Starlink is a part, is a private company that doesn’t even have to operate in that conflict zone. It could also have cut the UAF off from employing its wireless internet services for communication purposes early on since that violated their commercial agreement.

Instead, he turned a blind eye to this out of solidarity with Kiev’s cause, only to have his kindness mistaken for weakness after the UAF subsequently exploited Starlink to the max by utilizing it to carry out drone strikes, which completely goes against Musk’s peaceful principles. That thus prompted him to put the kibosh on their scheme irrespective of whether he chose this particular point in time to do so as part of his revenge against the SBU for its fascist troll network’s innumerable death threats against him.

Considering that the UAF crossed his moral red line by exploiting Starlink for carrying out drone strikes and the SBU didn’t stop its fascist troll network’s thuggish intimidation campaign against him (but arguably orchestrated the whole thing), it makes sense why Musk finally put his foot down. The combination of those two factors powerfully overrode his well-known personal sympathies for Kiev’s cause and forced him to do what he’s convinced was the right thing, which many have praised him for.

Courtesy Andrew Korybko

https://korybko.substack.com/p/musks-explanation-for-stopping-kievs?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=835783&post_id=102610787&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email