SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk reportedly caused a geopolitical crisis last year, when Ukrainian forces—which have relied heavily on the company’s Starlink satellite communications—were on the verge of striking Russian naval vessels off the coast of Crimea with submersible drones. Concerned that the attack would provoke Russia into using nuclear weapons, Musk unilaterally opted to sever the submarines’ satellite connection, throwing a wrench in the entire assault.
The incident—shared by CNN based on an adapted excerpt from an upcoming book by Walter Isaacson—demonstrates Musk’s increasing unwillingness to lend his satellite network to offensive maneuvers waged by Ukraine. “How am I in this war?” “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.”
After foiling the attack, Musk reportedly received a desperate text from a Ukrainian deputy prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who asked that Musk reinstate the Starlink connection to the drones. “I just want you—the person who is changing the world through technology—to know this,” Fedorov wrote. But Musk refused to reverse course, telling Fedorov that Ukraine “is now going too far and inviting strategic defeat.”
Apparently he was worried that the assault would provoke nuclear war. Musk showing actual thought for the first time in ever.
he gets a lot of subsidies from the government, yes. I don’t know if he’s a government asset so much as the american government is an asset of the bourgeoisie as a class. It’s sort of a chicken and egg problem at this point, but I’m inclined to believe the latter rather than the former.
There are some bourg which hold the leash and some that are on the leash. Musk on the leash but thinks he holds it. His shit wagons and wunder rockets would not exist without government subsidies.
I think the bourgeoisie collectively, as a class, holds the leash of government, and the government, like a good dog, fetches subsidies for them. The state is an instrument for the suppression of one class by another, which is why we should seize the state from the bourgeoisie
Oh absolutely, but there are definite distinctions between the bourgeoisie. Generally speaking, the financial capitalists have more control than the industrial capitalists. They always have class solidarity when it comes to suppressing the proletariat, but have different views on the economy at large.
I think chicken and egg is apt. Rather than one controlling the other, it’s a feedback loop, and ultimately no one is in charge of it. it’s just a stable self-sustaining dynamic process
Great way of putting it