Ukrainian presidential adviser says deaths of civilians ‘the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego’
A senior Ukrainian official has accused Elon Musk of “committing evil” after a new biography revealed details about how the business magnate ordered his Starlink satellite communications network to be turned off near the Crimean coast last year to hobble a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian warships.
In a statement on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk owns, the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote that Musk’s interference led to the deaths of civilians, calling them “the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego”.
“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian fleet via Starlink interference, @elonmusk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities. As a result, civilians, and children are being killed,” Podolyak wrote.
“Why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realise that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?”
Musk defended his decision, saying he did not want his SpaceX company to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation”.
CNN on Thursday quoted an excerpt from the biography Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which described how armed submarine drones were approaching a Russian fleet near the Crimean coast when they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”.
The biography, due out on Tuesday, alleges Musk ordered Starlink engineers to turn off the service in the area of the attack because of his concern that Vladimir Putin would respond with nuclear weapons to a Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied Crimea.
Musk, who is also the CEO of the Tesla electric car company and SpaceX rocket and spacecraft manufacturer, initially agreed to supply Starlink hardware to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion disrupted Ukrainian communications. But he reportedly had second thoughts after Kyiv succeeded in repelling the initial Russian assault and began to counterattack.
Musk has previously been embroiled in a social media spat with Ukrainian officials including the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, over his ideas for ending Russia’s invasion.
In October last year, Musk proposed a peace deal involving re-running under UN supervision annexation referendums in Moscow-occupied Ukrainian regions, acknowledging Russian sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula and giving Ukraine a neutral status.
“Preliminary analysis suggests that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards.
The EU has also accused Musk’s X of allowing Russian propaganda about Ukraine to spread on its website.
A study released last week by the European Commission, the governing body of the European Union, found that “the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023.”
The study said that the increased reach of Russian propaganda online was “largely driven by Twitter, where engagement grew by 36% after CEO Elon Musk decided to lift mitigation measures on Kremlin-backed accounts”.
Musk on Friday attempted to refute the EU study, writing on his social media platform: “Where is all this pro-Russian propaganda? We don’t see it.”
archive: https://archive.ph/wip/ENe3P
Musk defended his decision, saying he did not want his SpaceX company to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation”.
lol well you fucking failed bro because that’s exactly what happened.
Right?
The “escalation” was the invasion, Elon, you simpering pile of shit.
musk is clearly a russian sympathizer, if not asset, as has been documented time and time again among conservatives/fascists.
But this is pretty much the same verbiage that NATO has been using the entire time. We want to help Ukraine but don’t want to escalate.
Assuming anyone cares enough to investigate this, that will hold up as far as the international crimes thing goes. Whether The Pentagon is cool with this is a very different discussion.
NATO is a Russian asset confirmed
Damn you guys really didn’t like this joke huh
Obviously not the way you are implying but… kind of? There is a long history of us actively letting russia do whatever they want so as to not escalate things. Like… when russia invaded and stole the Crimea a few years back. Or even the weeks leading up to the war where we all assumed Ukraine would be steamrolled and we would just be supporting an insurgency… rather than watching them time and time again push russia’s shit in.
I don’t think it is active malice and sabotage. It is more just the nature of NATO not wanting to actually have to get involved in any wars. But being expected to be the first line of defense.
Giving a bunch of them to Ukraine as a marketing tactic… wasn’t being explicitly complicit in a major act of war?
Where is the line at? Space?
I call bullshit. He sold them fucking internet as a fucking contract with the damn Pentagon. What else would they be used for. If you wanted to use that excuse then you should’ve never made the contract. This was planned from the start. He sold the contract to have greater control over their military operations. This is just the first of a long line of items to come
He sold them fucking internet as a fucking contract with the damn Pentagon.
Sounds an awful lot like Elon Musk defrauded the Pentagon.
Sounds an awful lot like elon musk needs to be sent to the Russian front his fucking self. I hope ukraine charges him as a Russian spy and puts out a bounty on him.
I’m okay with this. They’ll pull him out and try to get secrets from him… Only to realize he knows literally nothing about rockets and electric cars. Then he’ll get thrown back onto the front line.
Sounds kinda like somebody is playing both sides and needs a strong reminder as to what hand feeds him.
Yep. With something like this you’re either all in or all out. You don’t half-ass military support.
Turns out if you’re rich enough, you get to try out the trolly problem in real life and then brag about it in your biography.
That needs to be the meme that goes around.
Just asking, does anybody still like this removed?
Sadly, he has a bunch of dedicated fanboys on his precious website.
They’re all over reddit too. There’s nothing more pathetic than witnessing a thread get brigaded by a bunch of Muskrats. Imagine living vicariously though the immature twitter antics of a white supremacist billionaire. They’re clowns.
Other dumb removed do, but not as many as before
The general public does. Check out YouTube’s front page while you’re logged out sometime. At any given moment, you’ll more than likely find at least one video full of simps singing their praises to Musk in the comments. The title is usually something like “Elon’s brilliant new idea will make such and such obsolete!”. It’s disgusting how many people see him as genius who can do no wrong.
Half ruzzian/RW botnets, half morons.
A few right wingers.
Elon Musk is skirting with making StarLink one of the first nationalized companies in the US in a long time. Lets hope its a domino for all ISPs.
jk i hear spectrum and at&t are merging to one company to be called “lmao, get fucked america”
If you want to take his technology to wage foreign wars then do it.
If you’d rather just rely on a private citizens to provide vital military infrastructure to your allies then deal with the fact that private citizens are prone to such behaviors as acting in their own best interest.
What? Do you think Ratheon gets to dictate who’s children we kill with their bombs?
That’s a really awful comparison and not just because you misspelled Raytheon.
Go look up what a strawman argument is.
Not OP but I’d rather have our gov, who is bound by certain rules and regs and SHOULD be serving the people, operate this than one person who only has his own interests in mind.
1 billionaire shouldn’t be able to control the world.
Just think of how much money was saved by letting Musk provide vital defense infrastructure for free.
Sure, Musk is a piece of shit, but when you don’t want to pay for a babysitter and a deranged cannibal offers to watch your child for free, is it really entirely the cannibals fault when he eats your baby despite him totally promising not to.
The Air Force said in its contract justification document, cited in the reports, that the deal involves Starlink supporting US military bases in Europe and Africa with fixed-site and portable satellite internet services.
The contract was for US military bases, not for facilitating offensive strikes. So this was expected au gratis.
by letting Musk provide vital defense infrastructure for free.
He’s not providing it for free. You clearly don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
Article is pretty clear about it being for US military bases, not offensive operations. Which is a very significant restriction.
Initially it was offered without cost as humanitarian aid. When they expanded on the use of it to include military operations, Elon (rightfully) attached a price tag to it. When they wanted to use outside of the scope of the services they contracted it for Elon said no. Once again another reason infrastructure shouldn’t be provided by private citizens.
Is it similar to the ad hominem in your comment?
Hey look, we both used big words to dodge the point while implicitly impugning the integrity of our adversary! Twinsies!
I was pretty direct to the point with my comment. Sorry you got touchy about me correcting your spelling.
It’s not he was sitting there one and his Elon senses started tingling and he suddenly disabled Starlink without warning. They made a request to broaden the usage area and he inferred what they were trying to do and denies it because of the what he felt was a risk he didn’t want to take. The whole Pearl Harbour 2.0 potentially escalating into a nuclear conflict, which is more likely than people are willing to give him credit for.
Whether you agree or disagree with his decision, the issue here isn’t which side he choose, it is the fact he was given the capability to make that choice.
Your turn to explain how this situation is similar to a US arms manufacturer choosing which child has their bombs dropped on it.
Seems like a joyless exercise in frivolity, attempting to teach you why these decisions are matters for the state department and not Daddy Musk. So I’ll pass.
Thank you so much for the opportunity, though!
Won’t? Or can’t?
The fact that your post agrees with my point makes believe it is the latter and you’re just a “eLoN bAd hE b0rKeD tWitUr” moron.
The timing is the issue. If Musk had disallowed use of Starlink for drone control from the start, then that’s one thing.
If he had notified the Ukraine Armed forces that he was going to do it ahead of time, that would have been best.
However, he ordered that their access be disrupted while an attack on the Russian Navy was going to take place. Meaning Starlink access was cut just at the worst time and caused the drones to simply wash ashore.
That same Navy has been causing thousands of civilian casualties.
How Musk knew Ukraine was going to launch an attack but hadn’t hit their targets yet is another concerning fact.
CNN on Thursday quoted an excerpt from the biography Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which described how armed submarine drones were approaching a Russian fleet near the Crimean coast when they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”.
The biography, due out on Tuesday, alleges Musk ordered Starlink engineers to turn off the service in the area of the attack because of his concern that Vladimir Putin would respond with nuclear weapons to a Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied Crimea.
It would be the difference between GM shutting down your car remotely when it’s parked after sending you notice vs GM shutting off your car when you’re at highway speeds and taking an exit.
My gods just shoot the man already so we can stop hearing about him.
there should be a bounty on the fucker
The bounty wouldn’t even have to be money, at this point if you promised to give people twitter back instead, you’d still get interested parties.
Give Ukraine a few more hours it may just happen
How is he not like a rouge nation unto himself at this point? He’s deciding the outcome of international conflicts. We are truly an oligarchy.
Rogue.
Rouge nation is an excellent name for a make-up company that specialises in red/pink cosmetics.
I stand corrected. But, dibs on Rouge Nation!
Nationalize StarLink.
Oh no see he prevented Moscow nuking Ukraine by doing this. What a hero! /s
I can’t believe we live in this society of appeasers. Him and the Republicans. I remember a time when Republicans accused Democrats of not being able to stand up to dictators, and now they are full throttle.
I remember the last time we tried appeasement on a belligerent authoritarian state. It worked so well in the end, didn’t it?
Ukraine is so obviously the sudetenland.
It’s always projection, every accusation is an admission.
What a complete jackass Elon is.
I can’t be the only person who wondered “what’s his real motive” when he volunteered these for free, knowing much of what he is known for. I guess people he’s visited in DC have benefitted as well, because surely they knew this wouldn’t go well, right?
I was talking about this with someone today, and pondering what would happen if a private Ukrainian citizen had decided to deliberately fuck up an American military action, and what the American response would be.
The closest I could think of was Julian Assange, a non-US citizen who leaked a bunch of US military info and probably somewhat fucked up whatever they were up to at the time, or at least drew more attention to it than they would have liked. They’re currently trying to extradite him to the US for “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” and who knows what they’ll do to him when that inevitably gets pushed through. I guess Chelsea Manning’s treatment is probably some indicator for that too.
So anyway, I expect Elon Musk will probably be extradited to Ukraine and spend a year or so in solitary confinement there right away. Maybe hide in an embassy for a few years first?
tHe sOCIaL mEdIA pLATfOrm foRmERLy KnOwN aS tWITtER
Broke: The social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Woke: The social media platform, that tries to rebrand itself to X.
Bespoken: The failing social media.
Musk defended his decision, saying he did not want his SpaceX company to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation”.
So, in the classic trolley problem, Elon’s choice is to remove the track switch that his company produced so that no one else could use it to make a choice.
“Sorry, guys. Looks like those innocent civilians tied to the tracks are going to have to die so that I am not tangentially and tenuously responsible for your choice to save them in exchange for the deaths of Russian soldiers attacking your sovereign lands and people (cough and lose money from the Kremlin as a result cough)”
There’s no “right” answer to the trolley problem. But there are definitely wrong ones.
I like to think that there may be a Ukrainian sniper already on American soil. I hope he/she can somehow manage to get a gun.
You have to throw him out a window in the most ironic false flag attack ever.
Getting a gun on US soil is trivial, especially if you look European. They could purchase a 30-06 at just about any Courthouse Days without even showing ID.
In america? No way. I heard they actively dislike guns. /s
No way Americans can own guns…
