“‘How Am I in This War?’: The Untold Story of Elon Musk’s Support for Ukraine”, 2023-09-07 (; backlinks):
…Ever since he was a scrawny and socially awkward kid getting beaten up on his school playground in South Africa, Elon Musk has liked to imagine himself as a hero rushing to the rescue, engaged in epic quests. He was deeply into comics, and the single-minded passion of the superheroes impressed him. “They’re always trying to save the world, with their underpants on the outside or these skintight iron suits, which is really pretty strange when you think about it”, he says. “But they are trying to save the world.”
The war in Ukraine, when no other company or even country could manage to keep communications satellites working, gave him a center-stage opportunity to show his humanitarian instincts while playing superhero. It also showed the complexities of critical military infrastructure being controlled by an often well-intentioned but mercurial private citizen.
…By September, however, both Musk and military leaders in Ukraine and the United States were realizing the complexity of their relationship. One Friday evening that month, just after spending a week with Musk, I was back home in New Orleans watching a football game at my old high school. (The occasion was that it was one of the final games for the school’s superstar quarterback, Arch Manning.) My phone started vibrating with messages from Musk.
“This could be a giant disaster”, he texted. I went behind the bleachers to ask him what the problem was. He was in full Muskian crisis-hero-drama mode, this time understandably. A dangerous issue had arisen, and he believed there was “a non-trivial possibility”, as he put it, that it could lead to a nuclear war—with Starlink partly responsible. The Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet based at Sevastopol in Crimea by sending 6 small drone submarines packed with explosives, and it was using Starlink to guide them to the target.
Although he had readily supported Ukraine, he believed it was reckless for Ukraine to launch an attack on Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014. He had just spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States. (In later conversations with a few other people, he seemed to imply that he had spoken directly to President Vladimir Putin, but to me he said his communications had gone through the ambassador.) The ambassador had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response. Musk explained to me in great detail, as I stood behind the bleachers, the Russian laws and doctrines that decreed such a response.
…He took it upon himself to help find an end to the war in Ukraine, proposing a peace plan that included new referendums in Donbas and other Russian-controlled regions, accepting that Crimea was a part of Russia and assuring that Ukraine remained a “neutral” nation rather than becoming part of NATO. It provoked an uproar. “F—off is my very diplomatic reply to you”, said Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany. Zelensky was a bit more cautious. He posted a poll on Twitter asking users which Musk they liked better: “One who supports Ukraine” or “One who supports Russia.”
Musk backed down a bit. “SpaceX’s out of pocket cost to enable and support Starlink in Ukraine is ~$80M so far”, he wrote in [2022-10-03] response to Zelensky’s question. “Our support for Russia is $0. Obviously, we are pro Ukraine.” But then he added, “Trying to retake Crimea will cause massive death, probably fail and risk nuclear war. This would be terrible for Ukraine and Earth.”
…Shotwell began negotiating a contract with the Pentagon. SpaceX would continue to provide another 6 months of free service to the terminals that were being used for humanitarian purposes, but it would no longer provide free service to ones used by the military; the Pentagon should pay for that. An agreement was struck that the Pentagon would pay SpaceX $145 million to cover the service.
[Gwynne Shotwell is often credited for making SpaceX run—a typical example of level-headed people getting business done & covering for a bipolar superior’s cycles & impulsivity.]
But then the story leaked, igniting a backlash against Musk in the press. He decided to withdraw his request for funding. SpaceX would provide free service indefinitely for the terminals that were already in Ukraine. “The hell with it”, he tweeted. “Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
Shotwell thought that was ridiculous. “The Pentagon had a $145 million check ready to hand to me, literally. Then Elon succumbed to the bulls—t on Twitter and to the haters at the Pentagon who leaked the story.”
…After his exchange with Fedorov, Musk felt frustrated. “How am I in this war?” he asked me during a late-night phone conversation. “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.”
In the end, with Shotwell’s help, SpaceX made arrangements with various government agencies to pay for increased Starlink service in Ukraine, with the military and CIA working out the terms of service. More than 100,000 new satellite dishes were sent to Ukraine at the beginning of 2023. In addition, Starlink launched a companion service called Starshield, which was specifically designed for military use. SpaceX licensed Starshield satellites and services to the US military and other agencies, allowing the government to determine how they could and should be used in Ukraine and elsewhere.