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Musk Ordered Starlink Blackout During Key Ukraine Offensive Ask ChatGPT · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
• 0:05
  This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads that
• 0:08
  shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neurolink.
• 0:13
  I'm your host, Will Walden. Elon Musk has ordered Starlink
• 0:22
  coverage cut over parts of Ukraine and this is back in late
• 0:27
  September of 2022. And the order disrupted
• 0:30
  Ukrainian counter offensive and damaged Kiev's trust in a
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  service that had supported their military since the start of this
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  invasion. The instruction targeted areas
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  and included kerosene, which sits north of the Black Sea and
• 0:44
  served as a strategic focus for Ukrainian forces.
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  The action marked the first known shutdown of Starlink over
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  an active battlefield in the war.
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  Now, Reuters documented the order and its impact through
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  interviews with people who carried it out and with
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  Ukrainian personnel who experienced the outage.
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  Now, who gets to decide whether a private network that carries
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  battlefield communications stays on during a war with an Elon
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  Musk? Now, one directive inside a
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  company changed the course of a specific operation and exposed
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  how much military communications depend on Elon Musk, the private
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  owner of SpaceX. Now we're going to set off a
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  chain of responses inside Ukraine, Washington and SpaceX
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  that reveal A fragile arrangement around access to
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  Starlink in conflict zones. In this episode, must deliver
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  the order through a senior engineer at SpaceX who ran
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  Starlink operations in California.
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  He told the engineer to cut coverage in set areas that
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  included kerosene and parts of Donetsk, and this is where
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  Ukraine sought to advance to. Staff turned off at least 100
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  terminals and an internal coverage map showed hexagon
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  shaped cells going dark. Team members described an abrupt
• 2:00
  switch off that followed a simple instruction.
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  We have to do this now, Michael Nichols, the star LINK engineer,
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  told colleagues upon receiving the order.
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  Multiple people with direct knowledge confirmed that the
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  team complied with this order. Frontline units saw
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  communications blackout as the cut took hold.
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  Soldiers lost connections, aerial drones that surveilled
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  Russian forces went dark, and long range artillery units lost
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  the data they used to aim. Ukrainian officers who pushed to
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  encircle a Russian position could not complete this
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  maneuver. The encirclement stalled
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  entirely. It failed.
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  Ukrainian forces later reclaimed the city of Karason, along with
• 2:46
  nearby territories without the help of Starlink.
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  People inside SpaceX who watched the cut said the decision
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  shocked some of their employees. They also said the outage helped
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  shape where the front lines settled.
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  During the phase of fighting. They saw a private order create
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  operational effects that matched military decisions.
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  Public statements from Musk did not match the account, though he
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  wrote on X in March. We would never do such a thing.
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  Who do you believe? Let me know in the comments.
• 3:17
  Musk and Nichols did not respond to requests from us or from
• 3:20
  Reuters or from any other news outlet.
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  A SpaceX spokesperson called the reporting inaccurate in an
• 3:27
  e-mail and pointed to a private statement on X.
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  They said Sterling is fully committed to providing service
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  to Ukraine is a blanket statement.
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  The company did not identify specific errors and did not
• 3:40
  answer answer detailed questions about the outage or about
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  Starlink's wartime use. The office President Vladimir
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  Zelinsky and the minister of defense did not respond to
• 3:53
  questions about this either. Starlink continues to provide
• 3:56
  service in Ukraine and the military keeps using it for some
• 3:59
  communications. But Zelensky expressed gratitude
• 4:02
  to Musk for Starlink earlier this year in public remarks.
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  Now, three people that were familiar with Musk's decision
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  said he acted out of concern that the Ukrainian advance could
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  trigger nuclear retaliation from Moscow.
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  The outage began around September 30th, 2022, a few days
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  after after Putin warned that Russia could use nuclear weapons
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  if its territorial integrity were threatened.
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  Officials in Kiev in Washington, who helped secure Starlink
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  access for Ukraine after the February 22 invasion, reacted
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  with alarm when they learned of the blackout.
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  The exact timing of the order remains unclear in the
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  reporting, though Starlink has become central to Ukraine's
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  battlefield communications. Troops pilot drones over the
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  network, units move targeted data access with it, and
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  commanders coordinate frontline operations through its
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  terminals. Ukraine has more than 50,000
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  Starling terminals in use, and Poland supplied about half of
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  them. Now this is alarming, but SpaceX
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  can turn on and off service through geofencing that maps
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  coverage into cells that appear as hexagons and an internal
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  display. Think of like Civilization if
• 5:21
  you've ever played that game. Very similar to that, and
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  engineers can deactivate groups of terminals in those cells with
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  centralized commands. They can just turn anything off
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  they want to. No international process
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  currently sets rules for how a private satellite Internet
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  provider manages access during a conflict.
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  They don't have to go through the military, they don't have to
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  go through Zelensky, they don't have to go through any
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  governments. They can just shut it off.
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  Starlink now operates the world's world's largest
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  satellite network, with more than 7900 spacecraft in orbit.
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  The service is on track to generate nearly $10 billion in
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  revenue this year, which would make up about 60% of Spacex's
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  income. Musk retains private control
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  over the system, too. He can do whatever he wants.
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  Musk has described Starlink as essential to Ukraine's defense.
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  He said. My Starlink system is the
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  backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their entire frontline would
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  collapse if it turned it off. The remark captures the leverage
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  that comes with control over the service.
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  With great power comes great responsibility for Elon.
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  Governments that rely on commercial networks in war will
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  face recurring questions about authority, contracts and
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  continuity. Military planners can define
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  service boundaries and escalation triggers and written
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  agreements, but private owners still execute the switches that
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  route data during combat. The 2022 blackout showed how one
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  internal instruction can ripple through a battle plan and also
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  change the world's fate. Possibly butterfly effect.
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  Think about that. When a single network carries
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  command control and targeting links, it's dangerous.
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  And Musk ordered that shutdown over parts of Ukraine during a
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  key push in September of 2022. Ukraine lost units and
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  communications, and they also lost the planned encirclement
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  and it failed because of this. Let me know in the comments
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  which think, do you think Eli did the right thing or do you
• 7:26
  think he was doing it because he was scared?
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  Do you think he was a reactionary or do you think he
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  had this all planned out and he thinks that, you know, Putin
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  would have caused a nuclear war if Ukraine moved forward?
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  Let me know. Hey, thank you so much for
• 7:45
  listening today. I really do appreciate your
• 7:48
  support. If you could take a second and
• 7:49
  hit this subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast
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  platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly
• 7:55
  appreciate it. It helps out the show
• 7:57
  tremendously and you'll never miss an episode.
• 8:00
  And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you
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  caught up quickly. And please, if you want to
• 8:06
  support the show even more, go to Atreoncom Stage Zero.
• 8:12
  And please take care of yourselves and each other.
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  And I'll see you tomorrow.