According to an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s biography Elon Musk, Starlink CEO Elon Musk apparently tried to block Ukrainian access to its satellite communications network last year while Kyiv’s forces were attempting to attack the Russian fleet off the Crimean shore. Musk told the biographer that he was concerned about getting drawn into the war and ordered SpaceX engineers to turn off the satellites because he believed the strike would be a “mini Pearl Harbor” that would result in a Russian nuclear reprisal. According to the book, which is due out next week, after Musk removed the satellites, Ukrainian drones “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” according to CNN.
“How am I in this war?” Musk told the writer, who has previously published biographies of Steve Jobs and Henry Kissinger. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
Musk gave over 20,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine when Russia destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure
In his book, the author also claimed that Ukraine’s previous deputy prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, “begged” Musk to restore access to the satellites. But the millionaire refused, claiming that the drone attack was “going too far and inviting strategic defeat.” Musk gave over 20,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine when Russia destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure at the start of the war in February 2022. According to CNN, Musk wrote to the Pentagon last October to suggest that the Pentagon could no longer afford to continue funding the service and urged the Biden administration to cover the expense, which he estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Earlier this year, the US and European governments reached an agreement with Musk to provide another 100,000 Starlink satellite dishes to Ukraine. It’s unclear whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk has altered his concerns about nuclear war after getting such a large bulk order. After a user, Mario Nawfal—a self-described entrepreneur, business influencer, and “citizen journalist”—shared portions from the book on social media site X, Musk stated that SpaceX would have faced punishment if he had agreed to the Ukrainian government’s request.
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. 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,” he said in response to the post on X.