How is this legal? Can Starlink get in trouble from EU and the US?
I'm also sure they can distinguish between terminals used by ukrainians and russians on a front line that probably changes daily. Again, it's their fault.
Musk can be blamed for a lot of things, but for this, not really.
And so if Musk were to be providing material support he could see Starlink placed on the export control list. Which if it happened would then open Musk up to severe criminal charges if he didn't take steps to prevent devices being used by Russia.
So I suspect he might want to do the right thing ahead of time given the US government is a pretty important customer for SpaceX.
Nato have always acted as though that's true, and have pursued expanding the alliance to countries bordering Russia, and established missile defence installations there.
The closest we ever got to nuclear war was when Russia moved missiles to Cuba, so it doesn't take a geopolitical scientist to understand that the US is very uncomfortable about threats near its borders, but expects Russia to accept it the other way round.
I'm not up to date with what the propaganda systems are belching out in Russia, but I believe the original reason was something about Nazis in Ukraine, and it would not surprise me if the narrative is shifting to be 'Nato is creeping up on us again'. Which is odd, because Russia already has borders with Nato countries, and controlling Ukraine actually brings them closer to where Nato already has a strong foothold.
A lot of what's going on in Ukraine at the moment is linked to Sevastopol, I think. Russia absolutely cannot afford to lose Sevastopol. Not sure quite what happened that triggered the full scale invasion after the annexation of the Crimea, mind.
Edit: added a quite important “not”
A couple of minutes with a globe would answer many of those questions. Not the propaganda ones, of course.
I'm also sure they can distinguish between terminals used by ukrainians and russians on a front line that probably changes daily.
So it should be trivial to determine who is Ukrainian and who is not Ukrainian.
Actually, I'd hope this is already happening regularly anyway so they can cut off any terminals captured by the enemy
That's not how starlink works. At all.
If your truck would have an extension cord going back to your factory so it can run and running the truck would be sanctioned, you could be blamed if you don't cut the cord.
export and re-export laws, especially from the US, are extremely complicated
comment i replied to was acting like you would not be legally at fault
in reality, it's way too complicated to say. at best it's ethically shady, at worst it's a mega fine and jail time
For example, we had a customer from Malaysia who was in jail in US because he sold normal hardware devices bought in USA to Iran and that is banned.
that's one of the primary reasons a service isn't necessarily a good.
> “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.
Musk himself has used the ostensible fear of becoming complicit as a justification to disable Starlink access for the Ukrainian military.
So yes, he's already taken the position that he would be to blame. You can't then turn it around and say he wouldn't be to blame for russian military success through the use of the same technology.
If your truck gets traced back to you, expect a government audit. If you sold it to a denied party due to lack of due diligence, you will be held liable.
(A truck is probably an extreme example. I'm not sure we're spending time tracing vehicles, but you better believe we are for our state-of-the-art radio tech.)
Source: I with export controls for the semiconductor industry.