Yesterday, the NYT published a piece on a topic that’s come up here a few times: Elon Musk’s dominance of the satellite internet sector and the geopolitical implications of that. Gift link here.
Mr. Musk, who leads SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, has become the most dominant player in space as he has steadily amassed power over the strategically significant field of satellite internet. Yet faced with little regulation and oversight, his erratic and personality-driven style has increasingly worried militaries and political leaders around the world, with the tech billionaire sometimes wielding his authority in unpredictable ways.
But Mr. Musk’s near total control of satellite internet has raised alarms. A combustible personality, the 52-year-old’s allegiances are fuzzy…he alone can decide to shut down Starlink internet access for a customer or country, and he has the ability to leverage sensitive information that the service gathers. Such concerns have been heightened because no companies or governments have come close to matching what he has built.
In Ukraine, some fears have been realized. Mr. Musk has restricted Starlink access multiple times during the war, people familiar with the situation said. At one point, he denied the Ukrainian military’s request to turn on Starlink near Crimea, the Russian-controlled territory, affecting battlefield strategy. Last year, he publicly floated a “peace plan” for the war that seemed aligned with Russian interests.
In Taiwan, officials are wary of Musk because of his commercial interests in China (and, probably, due to Musk’s tendency to roll over for autocratic governments). Musk’s dominance of the satellite sector is why the EU committed billions to a satellite program of their own as a matter of sovereignty.
The U.S. should do the same.
Unlike traditional defense contractors, whose weapon sales to foreign countries are typically done through the federal government, Starlink is a commercial product. That allows Mr. Musk to act in ways that sometimes do not align with U.S. interests, such as when SpaceX said it could not continue funding Starlink in Ukraine, said Gregory C. Allen, a former Defense Department official who worked at Blue Origin.
“It has certainly been a long time since we’ve seen a company and an individual like this go pretty openly against U.S. foreign policy in the middle of a war,” said Mr. Allen, who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Mr. Musk’s behavior has divided Ukrainian officials. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Twitter in February that SpaceX needed to pick a side.
But Mr. Fedorov said questions about Mr. Musk’s commitment were unfair. When Ukraine was under heavy bombardment and facing major power outages in November, Mr. Musk helped expedite the delivery of about 10,000 Starlink terminals, he said.
“SpaceX and Elon Musk have shown through their deeds whose side they are actually on,” Mr. Fedorov said.
It’s true that Starlink has been an essential part of the Ukrainian war effort, but perhaps that’s because Musk knows it’s against his personal interests right now to piss off the U.S. government. That may not always be the case. Musk is a fash-curious gadfly, and that’s not the kind of person whose whims should have national security implications.
Maybe in a second Biden administration, a new head of NASA could end dependence on Musk’s company and develop its own capabilities. Or pay Musk fair market value for SpaceX (making him whole three times over for the Twitter debacle), nationalize the damned thing and tell Musk to go fuck himself. I don’t know what the right approach would be, but the current situation seems untenable.
Open thread.
WaterGirl
YES!
I started thinking that when Musk pulled that crap with Starlink in Ukraine.
Probably the worst thing Musk has done – for himself personally – this year, is to show how completely irresponsible, untrustworthy, arrogant, selfish, and incompetent he is.
trnc
Telling Musk to go fuck himself is always the right thing to do, so I say nationalize.
Alison Rose
“Seemed”. Sure. That’s one way to put it.
Another Scott
Others are working on other systems. ArsTechnica.com – Rocket Report :
Given the need of customers for communications, and the companies to make money, I ass-u-me that the Pentagon (and friendly countries) are going to be paying customers eventually.
Cheers,
Scott.
JPL
Musk is an example of corporate welfare gone wrong. If it weren’t for the Obama policies, Tesla would not exist.
Sister Golden Bear
SF is going after Elon for erecting — get it, erecting, heh, heh, heh — the new X sign without a building permit.
The new sign looks like “yeah, I know how to put together a wall TV mount.”
Also too, waiting for Elon to suddenly care about dead-naming
MattF
Musk is irresponsible and unpredictable, an awful person. It’s unfortunate that Ukraine needs to rely on him.
But he imagines that people see him as trustworthy, which adds ‘delusional’ to the mix. At some point, acting on that belief, he’s going to try to make the social-media-network-formerly-known-as-Twitter into a financial services app, then we’ll all have a larf, then go on with our lives.
Layer8Problem
My personal best choice would be to subsidize development of a technically better and easily extensible system, undercut Mr. Genius with stupid cheap rates, and then say “Hey, I’m sure capitalism will come up with something much, much better, I just know it; competition, baby” when the Republicans and libertarians start screaming. In a perfect world.
And “StarFink” made me happy, thank you Betty Cracker.
Nukular Biskits
On one hand, I like the idea of global internet connectivity.
On the other, there’s already enough junk flying around in Earth orbit.
Anyway, yes, Musk is an ass.
Geminid
Virginia has never elected a female governor and the closest we ever came was in 1993, when Attorney General Mary Sue Terry lost by 17 points to the odious George Allen.
Now there is a good chance our next Governor will be a woman. Rep. Abigail Spanberger is reported to have told Democrats she will not run for reelection in the 7th CD, but instead will run for Governor in 2025. She will likely be favored in the primary.
On the Republican side, Attorney General Jason Miyares has let Republicans know he will run for reelection, potentially clearing the field for Lt. Governor Winsome Sears.
Ms. Spanberger was born in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1980 and worked with the Postal Inspectors for two years before serving in the CIA. Spanburger retired and in 2018 ran against Rep. Dave Brat and won, becoming the first Democrat to represent the 7th since the party realignment of the 1970s.
Ms. Sears was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1964, and emigrated to the Bronx as a six year old. After a stint in the Marine Corps 1983-86, Sears managed a Salvation Army shelter. She served a term as a state Delegate and lost House and Senate primaries before winning election in 2021 as Lt. Governor. Sears now lives in Winchester and is the author of the Christian self-help book Stop Being a Christian Wimp! (2009).
Citizen Alan
Every billionaire is an aspiring Bond villain. Every fucking one of them.
Ruckus
@MattF:
musk is an irresponsible and unpredictable awful person
we’ll all have a larf, then go on with our lives.
I’m not laughing but I’ve already gotten on with my life. I completely stopped using twitter. I have a lot more free time. I use the least amount of my time possible worrying about $FB, the least amount being zero. He’s going to be the schmuck he acts and looks like/is and I can’t change that so I’m not going to bother.
RaflW
I’d go with nationalize the damned thing and tell Musk to go fuck himself.
But I’m a grumpy liberal who doesn’t think that, as long as the payout is fair (net of past subsidies!), it would be government overreach.
WaterGirl
YES!
RaflW
@Citizen Alan: Every American billionaire is a failure of our tax system.
If you can’t imagine living the rest of your life with, say $985,000,000, then you’re a greedy scourge on this earth of limited resources.
Nukular Biskits
@WaterGirl:
There are times I wish BJ had a “like” button.
This would be one of them.
Spirula
Well, if he’s going to tinker with international relations, nationalize the fker! After all, how many USAmericans lost property due to eminent domain? What’s good for the goose…
Gin & Tonic
@Citizen Alan: I’ve mentioned this before, but by all accounts Michael Dell is a decent human being.
WaterGirl
@Citizen Alan: I generally agree, but there are exceptions the prove the rule. Gov. Pritzker is worth 3 billion, and he is doing a ton of good in Illinois.
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: Maybe it’s old-fashioned, but I think the U.S. government should have its own capabilities for space travel.
@Geminid: We talked about Spanberger’s bid a bit at the tail end of an open thread yesterday and were wishing you were around to give us your take. As for Sears, she has a cool first name, but didn’t she make an ass of herself by posing with an AR-15 right after a mass shooting or something like that?
Geminid
@Spirula: There are a number of people living in my county whose families were kicked off the Blue Ridge to make way for Shenandoah National Park.
I think some of them may still have a bad attitude about it. At least, there are a couple hollows west of me that are considered no-go zones for outsiders.
laura
Some core government functions just should not be performed by the for-profit private sector. Similarly, the government should step in and nationalize some enterprises that become to risky too leave to the tender mercies of unrestrained capitalism. Give Appartheid Clyde a more than fair market value and take away a few of his toys. Then tax the fuck out of him and every other billionaire. This may be extended to our critical need for journalism to counteract our infotainment problem and the vast wasteland where local news used to flourish.
JPL
OT We need a category that says will this make my grandson gay? I was looking at clearance jammies at Macy’s and came across this comment. Apparently there are no coupons this week, so I’ll wait but purchase the brand later on. link
zhena gogolia
@JPL: WTF?
The sleeves look totally normal, what are they talking about?
Barbara
@Geminid: I don’t know the details, but there is an exhibit at Big Meadows on how the park came into existence. There was a lodge at Skyland, along with a few other “recreational” areas prior to the establishment of the park, and I thought many people were permitted to continue farming at least for a while. Eventually of course they lost their property.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: Who knows? We live in strange times.
What are butterfly sleeves?
gene108
@RaflW:
The problem with StarLink is monopoly power. If the U.S. buys out Musk, then the USA has that monopoly power.
It might all and good to it nationalized, with President Biden, between the technological know nothings in Congress and the eventual election of a Republican president, I don’t want the USA to have that power.
What we need, and not just with StarLink, is enforcement of anti-trust laws, including re-evaluating what constitutes anti-competitive behavior.
Tehanu
Works for me! And the sooner the better.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I would bet on Spanberger in the primary and in the general election. She’s a hard worker and a good fund raiser, and I expect party leaders like Kaine, Warner, Northam and her House colleagues to endorse her. That will carry Spanberger through the primary at least.
Sears has an interesting life story, but she just doesn’t seem that impressive a politician to me. If she wins the nomination, I think it will be because Republicans believe they could win if they just peel off enough of the Black voters who anchor the Democratic coalition. I don’t think they can.
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker:
Be careful what you wish for. We have that, it’s called SLS which ostensibly stands for Space Launch System but often people replace the first word either with Senate or Shelby, since it’s an enormously expensive exercise in pork-barrel politics that the Senate and Richard Shelby in particular forced NASA to build in such a way as to enrich a specific set of well-connected contractors.
(short version: the legislation required NASA to design something using bits and pieces of the old Shuttle design, thereby steering contracts to the builders of those bits and pieces, even though it made no sense for use in a very different rocket and ignored the thirty or so years of development since the Shuttle was designed)
Dorothy A. Winsor
I have two words for you: Space Force. //
Mai Naem mobileI
Deport the fucker. People have been deported for much much less. He doesn’t deserve US citizenship.
NotMax
R-A-T-TS-T-A-RF-I-N-K
Starfink!
.
zhena gogolia
@JPL: I have no idea, but they’re certainly not those plain old T-shirt sleeves that are depicted.
Kelly
In my fantasy history the US Postal Service broadened it’s mission and added telegraph stations at every Post Office back when that was high technology. Then telephones and internet as they came along. Satellite internet would have been a follow on to GPS. Initially military then opened to the public. My feelings about public infrastructure are informed by sometimes living in areas with public electric utilities and other times private. Currently have a great local co-op phone company. Also my granddad was a postmaster ;-).
cope
If I remember correctly, Musk’s plan is to use revenue from Starfink to pay for colonization of Mars.
Kristine
If we don’t nationalize StarLink, are there subsidies that can be yanked?
Parfigliano
Nationalize it. Deport Musk Russian style out a window. Tax the estate. Win. Win. Win
Alison Rose
@JPL: “Fellas, is it gay to…wear short sleeves?”
I don’t even know what the hell she means. Butterfly sleeves are loose and ruffled. These look like completely standard t-shirt sleeves. Maybe her grandson has skinny arms so they fit more loosely?? In any case, JFC you old bat, shove your ludicrous homophobia up your ass.
Alison Rose
@zhena gogolia: This is the basic idea, which is nothing at all like what that item looked like.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: Yeah. I think you’re right that maybe the child has skinny arms so the sleeves drape. People are nuts!
Mai Naem mobileI
@JPL: those aren’t butterfly sleeves or “semi” butterfly sleeves whatever that means. I had to look up butterfly sleeves. They are those floral petal kind of sleeves.
West of the Rockies
@zhena gogolia:
Boys should have barbed-wire cuffs. Duh.
NotMax
@Alison Rose
Real men wear margarinefly sleeves.
;)
Alison Rose
@West of the Rockies: @NotMax: LOLOL
Mai Naem mobileI
I am typing this parked behind an older nissan truck with a tfg 2024 bumper sticker. Yesterday I was at a convenience store and the guy had one of those tee shirts with the ‘certified patriot 1776-1976’ with machine guns text. I didn’t want to stare but I was wondering if there was any white supremacist stuff on the shirt. Aannd….I just saw the truck guy leave. Guy is hispanic. Definitely like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.
Geminid
@Barbara: In 1937, at the end of a 6 year process of evicting mountain families (and burning their homes so the wouldn’t return), then-Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes made a list of a few score elderly people who were allowed to stay on Park land. The treatment of the residents had been controversial, but influential Virginians like Harry F. Byrd were determined to have that park.
One of them employed an ingenious public relations stratagem to counter sympathetic reports about the mountain families. He set up a summer school and hired a social worker to teach there a season. Then he paid her to write a report that depicted the parents and kids as a bunch of miserable inbreds.,
Outsiders went from, “Oh, those poor innocent mountain folk” to “Ewww! Get them out of there!”
JPL
@Mai Naem mobileI: haha. I left a thumbs down cuz there wasn’t enough room for Are u f–king nuts
Lyrebird
@JPL: Those are cap sleeves, not butterfly sleeves, and yes they’re shorter and closer to the body than what you find on “youth” tshirts. And anyone who’s having the vapors, inaccurately or accurately as far as clothing vocab, over TODDLER PJs has massive problems and I hope the parents aren’t the same.
Earlier generations on the extra WASP-y side of my stepfamily raised all their toddlers in little dresses. Everyone in their German American community did the same. It made it easier to get little tushies over the pot in a hurry.
FelonyGovt
@Sister Golden Bear: That looks like the kind of antennas we used to put on top of our TVs back when I was young.
Lyrebird
This whole thread is awesome sauce, but that is thhe awesome topping. With no margarine.
Dan B
@RaflW: Seattle billionaires Nick and Adrian Hanauer are some of the very rare “good” billionaires. Nick is promoting progressive causes.
zhena gogolia
The soundtrack on this LP video is perfect!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfCGvoeM2EI
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
I’m kind of inclined to turn him over to The Bear Jew from Inglourious Basterds.
I’d watch that video on a loop as a pay per view.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Won’t inflict the whole thing on anyone, but sample a clip from a RWNJ podcaster (who apparently doesn’t quite grasp what “virtuous” means).
The bottle of tabacky juice is the sh*tcream icing on the fetid cake.
Sure Lurkalot
OT, words of wisdom from our very own Joe Manchin
Hottest summer on record and this yahoo is celebrating fossil fuels. Let’s incinerate the planet for 4500 mostly temporary jobs.
I know we’re the big tent party and there’s no room at the margins and he votes with Dems 90% of the time, yada fucking yada, but I wish we could have entrance exams so that the Manchins, Sinemas, JFK Jrs have no ability to sideline our big policy goals.
Baud
@Sure Lurkalot: Manchin will probably be gone soon enough.
JPL
@Sure Lurkalot: The link that Zhena had at 53 works for Manchin also. If love of fossil fuels was good for the folks of West Virginia, they wouldn’t be one of the poorest states in the nation.
prostratedragon
If we’re polling, another here for nationalizing the thing at a fair price, and also investigating how to limit the amount of junk up there at any one time. “Space” should not become a bad joke.
@JPL: Wow, that stuff’s really bad when it backs up into the eyes. Hope there’s a sensible parental buffer.
Lyrebird
More finks!!! Grrr…
I am not in a position to do this really, but I Googled “how can US citizens sponsor refugees?”
Two sponsored links came up at the top, one from ICNA, a religious charity, and one from these people:
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud:
Gone from the Senate to some cush lobbyist job where he will still advance burning the planet to a crisp to satisfy his bottomless greed.
Geminid
@JPL:
Fun West Virginia Fact: the state had 6 Representatives in 1960. Now they are down to 2.
counterfactual
Let me stipulate that Elon Musk’s brain melted down completely in November of 2021.
Why are folks assuming the FTFNYT’s reporting on space policy is any better than their reporting on Democratic policy?
Elon “Free Speech Absolutist! You’re not the boss of me!” Musk has not tweeted one shitpost about Space Force, NASA, or the FAA in three years. This is a contest between Elon Mush-for-brains and Dark Brandon, and I think Joe has things quietly under control.
The major funder of Firefly Aerospace was a Ukrainian oligarch. He had to sell off his stock in the company in order for Firefly to get National Security Space Launch (NSSL) money. The administration may be holding that over Elon’s head.
In order to break a monopoly you need competitors. Both the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan launcher and the Blue Origin (BO) New Glenn launcher were originally expected in 2020. ULA is hoping to get the first of two certification flights done this year, and enter service in 2024. The only flight hardware that BO has shown is the four BE-4 rocket engines it’s sold to ULA for Vulcan (and one of those just failed in testing). They haven’t shown even test tanks for New Glenn.
Amazon’s Kuiper internet satellites were supposed to be launched on New Glenn, but for now they’ve bought up ULA’s remaining Atlas V vehicles and contracted for Vulcan launches. Their first test satellites therefore aren’t due till next year, and really need the larger launch capacity of New Glenn to build a working constellation.
Eyeroller
@Lyrebird: As someone who has done a lot of sewing in the past, what was shown in the link are standard set-in sleeves. Cap sleeves are similar but cut at an angle. I have no idea what the complaining grandmother was going on about, it’s lunacy either way.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: I got to where he spit into the bottle
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
“Only the best people.”
//
Alison Rose
@zhena gogolia: Same. Gross.
sab
@Lyrebird: We have pictures of my grandfather ( born 1900) in those little dresses.
Sebastian
@Gin & Tonic:
Uhm, how so? He is quite an asshole. I used to work for two companies he owned.
Sebastian
@laura:
The fair market value for Space X is zero. It’s kept entirely afloat by government subsidies and a generous chunk of investor money.
The business is not viable on its own and will eventually fall apart in the not-so-distant future.
Sebastian
I recommend the YouTube channel of CommonSenseSkeptic for comprehensive takedowns of many Elon Musk ventures.
Lyrebird
@Eyeroller: Thanks for the correction! I do less sewing and more tie dyeing, that’s how I even noticed the length difference in the short sleeves on t shirt blanks sold for “youth” and for “girls” . At any rate, yes the complainer has a problem.
BTW if you sew shirts from jersey or other knits then I am impressed twice as much.
NotMax
@Alison Rose
Yes. The guy is an ambulatory
stereooctophonictype.I didn’t expect people to last long with him, just wanted to give a taste of what’s out there in Dolt 45 land.
NotMax
My bad. Fixy fix.
@Alison Rose
Yes. The guy is an ambulatory
stereooctophonictype.I didn’t expect people to last long with him, just wanted to give a taste of what’s out there in Dolt 45 land.
Snarki, child of Loki
Sad that Motorola really screwed up with the Iridium satellite system, before the world was really ready for it. Sometimes “first mover” means “sink a ton of money, and watch some shitweasel copycat come along and cash in”.
Burnspbesq
@gene108:
Antitrust law and economics admit that some things are “natural monopolies” because it would be inefficient to have more than one player. The solution is to call it a “public utility” and regulate the hell out of it.
Starlink is the clearest case of a public utility currently extant. There isn’t enough space in geosynchronous orbit or enough spectrum to have multiple players.
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: Oh dear lord, I have not seen anyone spit his chew juice in a bottle….since my BIL oh so many years ago.
Real men don’t spit…..
CCL
@Snarki, child of Loki: Amen.
pieceofpeace
@Eyeroller: Thanks for explaining.
Some of the artworks displayed here by Mr. Levenson, like last week I believe, are knockout seamstress works of art. All those ruffles and ribbons, oh my!
Ruckus
@RaflW:
If you need 11 multi million dollar homes, 9 of which you’ve never spent one night in, or more than 1/2 hr signing the papers, you have too much fucking money. And you’ve run up the housing crisis by having houses that take up property but don’t actually become a home if no one lives there. (J.McCain’s second wife…)
And yes being a billionaire is just excess in excess. And I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t buy enough politicians to change the tax laws so that billionaires paid their fucking fair share. Say a 50% tax rate. Minimum.
Ruckus
@Spirula:
My aunt and uncle. Lost both of them to freeway construction here in Orange and LA counties. I am rather sure that my uncle bought the second one because he knew that a freeway was going to be built there. I’m not exactly sure how he knew, but he got bought out, and moved 35-40 miles away and bought the second one. I don’t recall that they lived there more than 3 years. I believe the buyouts paid a rather reasonable portion of the 3rd home. The state is attempting to put in a high speed railway between the SF Bay area and LA. Right now you can travel on the Coast Starlight but you actually end up in Oakland or Emeryville, east of the SF Bay. And then take a bus into SF. You can take a cheaper train up to SF but it is a bus ride from LA Union station (after a bus ride from several points in the county) then another bus to Bakersfield where you board the train then you ride to Martinez and take a bus from there.
This may have changed a bit because we have rail transit that actually works here in LA now.
It isn’t anything like trains in the northeast or in Europe. Train service in Europe is amazing in comparison and I haven’t ridden a train in Europe in 50 yrs. It was better there then than it is here in CA now. They are working on it though. I’d bet that at best if you want to take a train to SF it will likely be that you might not get to end up there directly from here or the reverse in your lifetime, if you are 30-40 yrs old now. I’m in my mid 70s and the train from LA to SF will not be finished in my lifetime. Even if I live another 30 yrs.
Timill
@Burnspbesq: Umm. Starlink has exactly 0 satellites in geosync orbit, and at least 2 other players think there’s space in the LEO telecomms market.
TriassicSands
@Gin & Tonic: Michael Dell?
Dell is a major donor to the GOP. It’s hard to reconcile that with being a decent human being in 2023. Yes, he has come out against a Texas voter suppression bill, but that is too little too late, since he’s helped elect the people who pass such legislation.