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You do know subs have rules, right?

This isn't the sub for posting rants.

I've always wondered if Putey called him late one night to discuss all the folks accidentally falling out of windows and such. And then suddenly Elon had the brainstorm to buy Twitter and step out of the starlink limelight.

Yeah, the guy who spent countless millions of his own money to maintain internet for Ukrainian civilians and military is a bad faith actor... That makes total sense.

Or, since NATO is throwing billions of dollars at the Ukraine military, Musk wants them to bankroll Starlink for military purposes because as rich as he is, he doesn't have infinite capital.

Yeah, the guy who spent countless millions of his own money to maintain internet for Ukrainian civilians and military is a bad faith actor... That makes total sense.

Or, since NATO is throwing billions of dollars at the Ukraine military, Musk wants them to bankroll Starlink for military purposes because as rich as he is, he doesn't have infinite capital.

Ukraine switched from using Starlink for CCC to using Starlink as the communications mechanism for drones flying far behind enemy lines.

SpaceX has simply disabled the use of terrestrial Starlink for drone communications. You want in-flight internet, you subscribe to the in-flight internet service.

The rest of this article is a decent run-down of the operation of Starlink in the Ukrainian defense against the Russian invasion.

It's not a rant. It's an English translation of a German blog post.

Posting the full text of an article that's otherwise inaccessible is a thing that Redditors do from time to time.

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You know how illegal it would be if he didn't do what he did? It would make him an Arms Dealer. A space arms dealer. Thats the only reason why he stopped them from linking drones. Because international law forbids it. Morons.

P.s. you realize musk and Russia compete right? And that he is their number 1 competition to a monopoly they've held for a while.

Bravo. Right on the money. Also what they are suggesting breaks US arms export laws because SpaceX is not licensed to export weapon systems.

But couldn't that apply to any military application of Starlink involving combat?

When it first broke I thought he may have suspended the service because the use of it by Ukraine makes starlink, spacex, and musk himself, a military target for Russia to take out.

No, eaponized drones aren't the same as Intel. One kills outright, another leads to killing. You can't supply the thing that is coordinating the killing, unless your the government that is.

Leave it dude. These people are morons.

Some aint, more vocal ones tend to be tho 😞

The title of the article has nothing to do with the article itself. The article is interesting. The title is unhinged.

Well, but couldn't you come up with a scenario where the various comms capabilities delivered by Starlink resulted in some amount of violence and possibly other stuff that wouldn't be that different from what the drones do?

Ok, so a breakdown of what happened:

Starlink provided internet in Ukraine to help keep their people informed and keep their economy running. No other company is prepared to provide this service at the level Starlink can.

Ukraine wanted to use the Starlink connections for military purposes.

Starlink was not prepared to become a military target (including their satellites). Surely there was an internal memo from the risk management department that said, in more words, "I told you so."

Starlink tries to protect the service they're providing to Ukraine and their own infrastructure in literally the only way they can: declare neutrality. (Edit: Except not neutrality, since they aren't offering the same service to Russia.)

People already upset about Elon Musk, in general, express their frustration about Starlink.

No one is upset with Hughesnet or Viasat for not providing their vastly inferior service for Ukraine.

Indeed... that's why we have lines that are clearly defined and don't lead to whataboutisms...

I guess I just don't see that much difference.

Starlink provides the comm links to fly drones to their targets. Starlink also provides comm links to direct other assets to their targets.

I'm not sure if a civilian company has any way of protecting their assets, including orbital assets, other than essentially declaring neutrality in a conflict. And this isn't even neutrality - they're not offering the same service to Russia.

It's not much of a difference, but it's an important one of emphasize. International pressure combine with us regulations makes it impossible for them to do anything other than what the they did once known. Private war profiteering is close upon us already. Let's not blow the dam apart completely.

A lot of us have been questioning the military target thing all along. Particularly because of the whole super giga constellation thing and its potential to wreck LEO.

But as long as Starlink provides military services to whomever, they will remain a military target. That's why it's so risky to mix commercial and military stuff.

Hopefully they might have finally realized that? The world wonders.

And, it's tricky because without Starlink early on, no telling what might have happened to poor Ukraine.

But in the final analysis, drone or some other asset, it's the same basic situation. Certainly from a "making yourself a potential military target" POV :(

yeah the title of the post is pretty misleading too and speaks more to the posters opinion than the thoughts expressed in the article