Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky’s right-hand man accuses Elon Musk of “causing harm and encouraging more harm” for removing connection to his Starlink satellites from underwater drones that wanted to hit Russian ships (as written in a preview) . the businessman’s biography by Walter Isaacson, which will be released worldwide on September 12), enabled these units to fire Kalibr missiles at various Ukrainian cities, resulting in “the deaths of civilians, even children.”
– A Ukrainian soldier next to an antenna used to connect to Starlink’s (Afp) broadband offering.
The owner of Tesla and SpaceX, the space company on which the Starlink satellites, essential for civil and military communications in Ukraine, depend, does not deny having foiled the attack on the Russian fleet (an incident that took place a few months reaches back). but he disputes his biographer by claiming that he did not deactivate anything: he merely reacted negatively to an “emergency request” from the Kiev government to extend Starlink coverage to Crimea and, in particular, to the port of Sevastopol, where the Russian fleet was anchored . According to Isaacson, Musk feared that a small Pearl Harbor in the Black Sea could prompt the Kremlin to use nuclear weapons.
Yesterday, Musk was aware that Putin had not responded in this way to other attacks on the fleet and strategic bridges in Crimea, and yet argued that he would have been responsible for a major act of war if he had activated the satellites in Crimea Meaning that would lead to an escalation of the conflict.
Musk’s argument, which had already angered Kiev in the past by proposing a strange peace plan based on a referendum in the occupied territories on whether they belong to Russia or Ukraine and on the final ratification of the annexation of Crimea, was brutally rejected by the adviser Ukrainian President Mykhaio Podolyak described it as “a cocktail of ignorance and hypertrophied ego.” While Deputy Prime Minister Fedorov went a step further and noted that Musk had no problem making public communications related to the military use of telecommunications, which are secret by definition, and handing them over to his biographer in Kiev without authorization .
Whichever of the two versions comes closest to reality, it is clear that the case represents the anomaly of a private entrepreneur becoming a power broker capable of intervening in war affairs by acting as a sovereign and independent entity on the appears on the international stage. A situation that many analysts currently consider to be unacceptable on social media and that may now even cause concern for Musk himself: at the beginning he also liked to become the protagonist of the defense of Ukraine, which was attacked and deprived of all communication. But then the game became bigger than him, he began to fear Russian reprisals, and now, according to his biography, Elon asks himself: “How did I get into this war?”
It is a problem that American politics, which is unable to regulate digital technologies, even when they become relevant in the military sector, causes wounds, and which will not necessarily only affect Musk in the future: this is what the political scientist asks, for example Ian Bremmer states that the development of artificial intelligence, if left unmanaged, will severely affect the geostrategic balance and raises the question of whether it is acceptable for governments to allow tech giants to become irresponsible political actors.