Curious to see if Musk is willing to step in and disable them or if this treatment is reserved for UAF only.
I don’t know what the right answer here is but it would be nice to explore the topic more than “Musk is bad”.
Isaacson’s Starlink claims are muddied.
But Musk has tweeted Kremlin propaganda points, e.g. on its proximate nuclear red lines (which, for the record, we’ve since passed). I blame David Sacks for giving him bad advice. But whatever the reason, it’s fair to question whether this was intentional at some level.
Genuinely curious where you’re getting this. For what it’s worth, no, Musk is not a diplomatic contact for anyone in the West with Russia, though there is rising concern he sees himself as such, which leads to him e.g. leaking Ukrainian firing plans to Moscow’s envoys.
> it's kind of in the US interest to ask musk to gas up putin a bit
Not particularly. Though I can see him being used without knowing it.
I am a huge fan of SpaceX and Musk. But while Starlink is hugely relevant to the war, Musk per se is presently between irrelevant and mildly damaging to American interests.
it's in the text. SpaceX is a provider for Roscosmos. Pretty public knowledge:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-crew-dragon-launch-russi...
It would be crazy for the US state department to NOT use that as some sort of opportunity.
Sure. That doesn't make Musk a "major diplomatic contact," nor even a pertinent one (let alone "most major").
Also, these are NASA launches. NASA paid for them and handled the seat swap with Roscosmos [1], though there was no doubt coördination between the latter and Hawthorne.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/its-official-a-russi...
I'm not sure if you're being naive about international politics, obsessively pedantic, or knee jerk argumentative.
Point being if musk goes anti-russia or possibly even neutral-but-following-sanctions-too-carefully we absolutely risk losing the rideshare (diplomatic point of contact, beyond just musk) and upticking the risk of nuclear conflict. And I imagine the state dept. Is aware of this.
No, this is still wrong.
> being naive about international politics, obsessively pedantic, or knee jerk argumentative
I'm telling you the reality from D.C. Musk is not a diplomatic asset. To the extent he might be, it's indirectly. His contacts in Russia are simply not unique and deep enough to merit that designation. (And the risks of blowback, given his public profile, too high.)
> we absolutely risk losing the rideshare (diplomatic point of contact, beyond just musk)
Roscosmos needs NASA more than the other way now. Due to SpaceX.
> and upticking the risk of nuclear conflict
This is a unique perspective.
I mean, Musk has been on the vanguard of the "Ukraine's resistance is futile" push. You can call speculation on this line specious, unthinking "Musk is bad" rhetoric, but at some point negative criticism of a person is relevant.
It takes zero imagination to conceive of Musk turning a blind eye to Russia's use of Starlink, it would be consistent with the way he speaks on X/Twitter.
It may seem like bashing, but honestly it's easy to run out of good things to say about some people.
My point being that no matter what narrative we want to use for Musk, ultimately there is some accountability to the state department for tools used in war.
> Following the publication of this article, Walter Isaacson retracted the claim. Walter Isaacson said his biography’s claim about Starlink and Crimea was based on “mistaken” information.
He is quite clearly on the side of russia.
I wonder if that's true: Maybe he just wants to be a controversial contrarian and always tries to be on the "non-woke" and "non-mainstream" side.
Doesn't change much in this instance, but still.
US government bought some antennas so even if he loves Putin he can't bite the USA government who gave Tesla and SpaceX a ton of money.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/pentagon-...
He said he "donated $100M to Ukraine" though:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776 resulted in his having to step down as Tesla board chair and have his tweets vetted by a minder. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/elon-musk-ordered-to-ab...
2) so?
1) Not dilute the horrific tragedy of a century in pursuit of my histrionic agenda
2) Try and not overfit the clean simple morality of young adult fiction onto the real world
Trying to portray this as some deeply, historically complicated and nuanced situation is pretentious, and I'd hazard a guess that anyone taking this position likely has little familiarity with the war and why it's happening.
Starlink has a service map that excludes certain areas.
Go take a look at Ukraine