Elon Musk says he refused to give Kyiv access to his Starlink communications network over Crimea to avoid complicity in a “major act of war”.

Kyiv had sent an emergency request to activate Starlink to Sevastopol, home to a major Russian navy port, he said.

His comments came after a book alleged he had switched off Starlink to thwart a drone attack on Russian ships.

A senior Ukrainian official says this enabled Russian attacks and accused him of “committing evil”.

Russian naval vessels had since taken part in deadly attacks on civilians, he said.

“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” he said.

“Why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?” he added.

The row follows the release of a biography of the billionaire by Walter Isaacson which alleges that Mr Musk switched off Ukraine’s access to Starlink because he feared that an ambush of Russia’s naval fleet in Crimea could provoke a nuclear response from the Kremlin.

Ukraine targeted Russian ships in Sevastopol with submarine drones carrying explosives but they lost connection to Starlink and “washed ashore harmlessly”, Mr Isaacson wrote.

Starlink terminals connect to SpaceX satellites in orbit and have been crucial for maintaining internet connectivity and communication in Ukraine as the conflict has disrupted the country infrastructure.

    • @[email protected]
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      10510 months ago

      We already had a nationalized SpaceX. We defunded it and gave grants to private companies like uh… SpaceX.

      • Chainweasel
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        3510 months ago

        While I agree that NASA shouldn’t have had any funding cut, supporting a privatized space industry isn’t a bad thing on its own.
        But giving Elon Musk a defense contract was a fucking stupid idea.

      • @[email protected]
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        010 months ago

        Private companies been US advantage during the moon race, and allowed them to win against the URSS

    • @JohnDClay
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      18 months ago

      That’s how you get an SLS. Government bureaucracy and pleasing congress isn’t great at rocket development.

        • @[email protected]
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          -9010 months ago

          Nope, it comes from Old French which used the same “s” as Latin whereas the “z” is greek. The French standardised to the “s” in the late 1600 which informed the English which had bounced between the Greek and Latin but formalised on “ise” not “ize”.

          So, nationalise is the correct one here.

          • @[email protected]
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            10210 months ago

            You’re entitled to your hill, but as linguistically correct as you may be, linguistics take a back seat to common usage and national variance.

            Nationalized and nationalised are both English terms. Nationalized is predominantly used in 🇺🇸 American (US) English ( en-US ) while nationalised is predominantly used in 🇬🇧 British English (used in UK/AU/NZ) ( en-GB ).

            • GunnarRunnar
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              5610 months ago

              Yeah what kind of linguistics dweeb doesn’t understand that language is fluid and shapes with time and location.

              • @[email protected]
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                2110 months ago

                I’d love to see this tool be held to the spelling standards of old English. You know… to preserve the English language.

              • @[email protected]
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                410 months ago

                Literally the first thing you learn in linguistics is that the malleability in language is why linguistics exists.

                • JackFrostNCola
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                  10 months ago

                  Which is literally why “literally” and “figuratively” as practically interchangable due to misuse of ‘literally’ as hyperbole. Its figuratively killing me.

              • AMuscelid
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                210 months ago

                This is the hidden most based take in the thread.

                • GunnarRunnar
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                  2410 months ago

                  How is dismissing a correction with a blunt “nope” nice and tacking on etymology when we’re talking about modern use of the word?

                • @[email protected]
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                  1510 months ago

                  Ah, the cruel barbs of irony. Your English is actually quite atrocious.

                  There wasn’t a proper sentence in that reply. There was hardly a coherent thought. Perhaps it is time to put your phone down, finish your drink, and go watch a sport.

                • @[email protected]
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                  10 months ago

                  Oh, get bent, you bell-end! There is no point in trying to be nice and discuss things on here any more; let’s be honest. You lot just love to circle-jerk how much you hate Musk to the detriment of everything else. God buoye ond god spede.

                  FTFY.

                • Hyperreality
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                  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nationalize

                  You thought you were smart to correct what you thought was a mistake. You were mistaken, because you’re less smart than you think you are, and not smart enough to know that you don’t know that much.

                  Rather than admit that you’re less smart than you think you are, you’ve doubled down and become rude about it.

                  Vanity, it’s the devil’s favourite sin.

                  Obviously, it’s pathetic. We’ve all been there, but you really should learn when to walk away rather than doubling down.

                • Bipta
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                  510 months ago

                  Everyone should just report this idiot and move on. You can’t fix stupid.

            • @[email protected]
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              -7310 months ago

              Wow, this really upset a bunch of the Lemmy toxic club didn’t jt. Honestly, Reddit may be crap but lemmy is doing it’s best to ape it’s toxicity.

              • OctopusKurwa
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                10 months ago

                You came up in here with your irrelevant pedantry and you call other people toxic.

                Nobody gives a fuck how you spell nationalize you gobshite

                • BNE
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                  -910 months ago

                  Jeez dude, can we all just chill out for a second?

              • Bipta
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                2010 months ago

                God damn just accept you’re wrong. You look like an absolute fool at this point.

              • @slackassassin
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                1610 months ago

                Yes, for sure. You are indeed being toxic.

            • TacoButtPlug
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              1210 months ago

              Butbut… “gEt BeNt YoU bElLeNd” though

          • @[email protected]
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            1610 months ago

            From https://www.etymonline.com/word/-ize#etymonline_v_25713 :

            -ize

            word-forming element used to make verbs, Middle English -isen, from Old French -iser/-izer, from Late Latin -izare, from Greek -izein, a verb-forming element denoting the doing of the noun or adjective to which it is attached.

            The variation of -ize and -ise began in Old French and Middle English, perhaps aided by a few words (such as surprise, see below) where the ending is French or Latin, not Greek. With the classical revival, English partially reverted to the correct Greek -z- spelling from late 16c. But the 1694 edition of the authoritative French Academy dictionary standardized the spellings as -s-, which influenced English.

            In Britain, despite the opposition to it (at least formerly) of OED, Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Times of London, and Fowler, -ise remains dominant. Fowler thinks this is to avoid the difficulty of remembering the short list of common words not from Greek which must be spelled with an -s- (such as advertise, devise, surprise). American English has always favored -ize. The spelling variation involves about 200 English verbs.

            So in 1694 “-ise” was deemed correct in French, but English has always bounced around between the two spellings, both before and since then. American English has always favoured “-ize” spellings. It’s not really reasonable to try to impose the standards of French in 1694 on English globally in 2023.

            • Flying SquidM
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              610 months ago

              Thank you for turning dickish pedantry into something actually interesting and worth reading.

          • BraveSirZaphod
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            410 months ago

            And why, dare I ask, should the French form of the suffix be prioritized over the Greek? Latin actually used the Z when the suffix was borrowed from Greek. In French, the letter Z essentially didn’t exist, as even in Latin it was (nearly?) exclusively used for Greek loans. As French evolved from vulgar and unwritten Latin, the Z was replaced by S, which is pronounced as /z/ when between vowels anyway.

            So again, why exactly must English hold the etymologically corrupted French form above the actual original one?

            • Tarquinn2049
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              It’s not about what must be done. It’s about what has been done. Language isn’t about how things should have been. One person rarely gets much of a say in how language will develop. If you try to hold language up to best possible practices, you will be disappointed by the actual outcome every time.

              • BraveSirZaphod
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                510 months ago

                Well, in the spirit of what has been done, -ize has been standardized in American English, and so here we are.

      • @[email protected]
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        People learn words in different fashions. In Jeopardy (an American quiz show) they accept written answers in the last round that are spelled incorrectly as long as it’s clear, phonetically, what they were trying for.

        This is done in part because some people learn words by hearing them and not seeing them written, just like some people might have read a word but not know how to pronounce it.

        Did you comment this to be superior or be helpful because it comes across as superior.

        • @[email protected]
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          -1310 months ago

          To add the same low level of information and discourse that all of these click bait, musk hate posts of late contribute to “news” and “technology”.

          Did you comment to feel superior or were you feeling left out?

          • @[email protected]
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            310 months ago

            Neither. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that others didn’t and share something I learned that gave me a different perspective.

            Just like I’m treating this question as genuine, though I suspect it’s snark.

  • @[email protected]
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    13510 months ago

    Elon Musk says he refused to give Kyiv access to his Starlink communications network over Crimea to avoid complicity in a “major act of war”.

    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.

    • Rhaedas
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      4310 months ago

      Musk is the kid in the video that moves all the people to just one of the tracks, gets praised by everyone for thinking outside the box, and then proceeds to run the trolley down that track.

    • @[email protected]
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      1710 months ago

      His logic seems to be that Ukraine is to blame for all the bloodshed of the Russian invasion because they didn’t roll over and surrender without a fight.

      Victim blaming. Classic asshole move.

      Did Elon have a stroke at some point that we don’t know about? It’s amazing how consistently he makes a huge ass of himself now.

      • HopeOfTheGunblade
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        710 months ago

        One of his kids came out as trans, his partner left him and later dated a trans woman, and he got caught trying to give one of his employees a horse for sex, so he decided to join the political side that hates trans people and doesn’t hold people accountable for being shit as long as they continue waving the banner.

        • @[email protected]
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          310 months ago

          He’s said about that - Ukraine should negotiate with the Russians and give them territory because war is so killy.

    • @[email protected]
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      210 months ago

      There’s no “right” answer to the trolley problem. But there are definitely wrong ones.

      That depends on your moral basis.

      • @[email protected]
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        Fair enough. My moral basis says that using my personal power and authority to undermine deals that I specifically sought to make in the first place, upon which others are dependent for literal survival, in order to backpedal my involvement in their survival attempts which I knew from the beginning was the entire point of the deal, the result of which directly and predictably leads to the deaths of hundreds/thousands of innocents… I consider that a moral failing. How about you?

  • Endorkend
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    12410 months ago

    This is the same bullshit take propagandists and Musk himself are spreading.

    Musk sabotaged an active military operation in an effort to save Russian assets and materials, by disabling access to Starlink in that area, to halt the operation. And then refused to undo what he did.

    All to protect Russian assets in an illegal undeclared war of annexation where Russia is the aggressor.

    Musks actions enabled the death of thousands of civilians in Ukraine and likely will cause far more through his actions which extend how long this illegal invasion will continue.

    Musk should be stripped of his US citizenship and booted right back to South Africa. America stands by Ukraine, South Africa tries to pretend they are neutral but the agreements they have with Russia and the opinions of rich fuck South Africans like Musk make it clear they stand with Russia.

    And anyone who keeps spreading these press releases with his propagandist take on the subject rather than saying how things actually happened, should be ashamed of themselves and monitored until all this is over.

    • @[email protected]
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      4810 months ago

      He should be charged with treason or something similar for doing this during wartime to a US ally. Enough of this narcissistic POS.

      • @[email protected]
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        1010 months ago

        People always mention Elon doing so and so against a NATO ally and therefore it’s treason without ever mentioning the inverse which is Elon aided a war crime for a country who is a direct enemy of the US, which is the real treasonous crime imo.

  • Jaysyn
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    7110 months ago

    Private citizens don’t get to make those decisions.

    It’s time to nationalize Starlink & SpaceX.

    • Flying SquidM
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      1110 months ago

      It’s okay, he plans to replace them with his own progeny. What’s he up to now, 12?

      • kamenLady.
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        210 months ago

        His father is even crazier about this, seriously. His father is very active, creating more muskeets …

        Not much of a story, if he wouldn’t be doing it with Elon’s stepsister.

    • Pendulum
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      1110 months ago

      It was never turned on in the first place. Read the article, not the clickbait headlines that have circulated (this one is on point though, credit to BBC)

    • @[email protected]
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      -610 months ago

      Doubt it. The smart money says that he did it because he does a ton of business with the Chinese and is very nervous about being seen to actively take sides in a way that would cause them to see him as a potential security threat.

        • @[email protected]
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          110 months ago

          You would have a point were I simply speculating, but I’m not.

          I am simply stating what the most well-informed and knowledgeable sources are saying.

          You would know this if you had sanitized and healthy media consumption habits, but you obviously don’t.

            • @[email protected]
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              110 months ago

              I won’t name any specific organizations, but the upshot is that you need to consume a variety of news sources from different countries and in different formats. It also pays to get into very specifically focused news organizations.

  • @[email protected]
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    3510 months ago

    Censorship is terrible. Except when I want to do it and pretend like I’m the best politician. Then it’s great.

  • Bear
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    3210 months ago

    Why ISPs need to be neutral. Musk was never elected or appoints be a general. Otis not his place to decide what strikes happen or not. The blood of the people those ships have attacked are now on his hands.

    • @[email protected]
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      410 months ago

      From my understanding, he didn’t pull the rug, instead he just never turned on satellites that he never said he would turn on

      • @[email protected]
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        210 months ago

        He did in fact “pull the rug”

        https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/elon-musk-biography-walter-isaacson-ukraine-starlink/index.html

        Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet, according to an excerpt adapted from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the eccentric billionaire titled “Elon Musk.”

        As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes.

  • Grant_M
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    2710 months ago

    Musk does what putler tells him to do.

    • @[email protected]
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      -2110 months ago

      Russia has anti satellite weapons. Why should he risk it for zero reward? At least the defense contractors are getting paid. Elon does it for free.

      • @[email protected]
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        710 months ago

        Yeah, sure. Have you ever heard of ‘reactions to actions’? What do you think would happen if Russia were to start targeting foreign satellites? How confident are you that they actually possess the technology to disable around 2000 out of the 4000 Starlink satellites to clear paths above Russia/Ukraine? Or, what do you think Russia is capable of in this regard? and did you really belive musk does this for free and with no ulterior idea? 😂😂😂, but there’s no such thing as free. Here’s just one example: Link to CNBC article on Pentagon awarding SpaceX a Ukraine contract for Starlink satellite internet https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/01/pentagon-awards-spacex-with-ukraine-contract-for-starlink-satellite-internet.html

  • Alien Nathan Edward
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    2110 months ago

    The escalation he was trying to avoid is shelling children. Elon Musk is why I hope hell is real.

    • @[email protected]
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      410 months ago

      Now there’s a great idea. Especially since he never would have built SoaceX without so much public support via NASA.