Say what we will about Elon, but him gambling his PayPal fortune was the best thing that happened to the US space program (and the global space race as whole!)
> Musk told engineers to turn off communications network to hobble Ukraine drone attack on Russian warships
"Update: on 9 September 2023, Walter Isaacson said his biography’s claim about Starlink and Crimea was based on “mistaken” information [see footnote]"
Here's a more accurate summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainia...
You've truly achieved wealth when even people you don't like and don't like you in return depend on your shit to stay alive!
Both sides in the Ukraine War are using "irregular" Starlink dishes.
* Russia is reportedly buying dishes (and the service attached to the dishes) in the Middle East.
* Ukraine has its own fleet of dishes (being paid for by the US, after Musk initially provided free service early in the war after a Ukrainian request), but also many individual dishes that were donated, and being paid for, by private individuals outside Ukraine.
US law prohibits Russia from using Starlink. The problem is, how to stop Russia from doing so? A simple location-based ban won't work, because the front line is constantly shifting. Whitelisting only Ukraine's own dishes to work within Ukrainian territory might work, but 1) what about dishes that get captured by Russia? 2) As noted, what about all the privately paid-for dishes?
Another way to think about this is that this demonstrates just how lifesaving for Ukraine Starlink has become in the past two years. Ukraine could ask Starlink to disable all dishes within its territory. On the contrary, it has decided that the benefits of Starlink to Ukrainians outweighs Russians also benefiting from it.