Musk Under Fire for Stifling Ukrainian Attack on Crimea

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Facts

  • Elon Musk — the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and owner of the X social media platform previously known as Twitter — has this week come under fire for stifling a Ukrainian attack on Russia's Black Sea fleet in the peninsula of Crimea.1
  • It comes after CNN, citing passages of a new biography on Musk penned by Walter Isaacson, reported that the entrepreneur ordered his engineers to shut off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the coast of Crimea as an attack with explosive-laden submarine drones was taking place. As a result, the drones 'lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,' Isaacson said.2
  • Starlink, which is operated by SpaceX, is an alternate method of connecting to the internet that came to be heavily relied upon by Ukraine's military after Russia knocked out many of the country's more traditional forms of communication. Musk donated many of the terminals for free but began to question that decision once Ukraine's forces used the platform to launch offensive operations.2
  • 'How am I in this war?' Musk asked Isaacson. '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.' His decision to disable the system near Crimea was reportedly to prevent a 'mini-Pearl Harbor,' which in his eyes, could've prompted Russia to respond with nuclear weapons.2
  • However, writing on the X platform since the publication of the book's excerpts, Musk said that Starlink had not been deactivated in the region, insisting that he instead declined a request from government authorities to extend the coverage that was already in place. 'If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,' he said.3
  • Nonetheless, among those to criticize Musk was Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Podolyak said that Musk's decision prevented Ukraine from destroying part of Russia's Black Sea fleet. 'As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego,' he added.1

Sources: 1CNBC, 2CNN and 3Ukrainska pravda.

Narratives

  • Pro-Ukraine narrative, as provided by CNBC. In preventing Ukraine from striking Russia's Black Sea fleet, Musk allowed those ships to launch further missile attacks on Ukraine, thus allowing them to inflict more destruction and death upon Ukrainian civilians.
  • Pro-Russia narrative, as provided by RT. Musk was quite right to prevent Ukraine from attacking Russia's Black Sea fleet in Crimea. Such an attack would've been a major escalation of the war and would've forced Russia to respond accordingly.

Predictions