WASHINGTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for a probe Tuesday following a claim that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk curbed a Ukrainian military operation aimed toward Russia’s Black Sea fleet last yr by limiting access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, a report said.
“Congress needs to analyze what’s happened here, and whether now we have adequate tools to make sure that foreign policy is conducted by the federal government and never by one billionaire,” Warren, D-Mass., said Monday, in keeping with Bloomberg.
CNBC confirmed the accuracy of the report with Warren’s staff.
The decision for an investigation stems from an excerpt released last week from biographer Walter Isaacson’s book titled “Elon Musk,” wherein the writer details how a Ukrainian drone sneak attack on the Russian fleet was disrupted by a disconnect from Starlink. The book was released on Tuesday.
In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Isaacson further elaborated on the excerpt from the biography that triggered alarm bells in Washington, amongst NATO allies and the Ukrainian capital.
Isaacson said developing a military-grade version of Starlink will help resolve concerns expressed by Tesla and Musk regarding the satellite networks’ use in combat.
“Allow us to have a certain variety of Starlink services after which later a more military version where we get to manage it,” Isaacson said on “Squawk Box,” describing a discussion between Musk and the U.S. government.
“Elon Musk said, ‘yes,’ and that is the correct consequence,” Isaacson added.
Crimea, a peninsula that Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet. In the times following the Ukraine invasion in February 2022, those ships fired missiles on Ukrainian coastal cities while establishing a naval blockade.
A top aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy slammed Musk after the biography revelation last week.
“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy a part of the Russian military fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fireside Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote Thursday on social media after CNN reported on a number of the details from Isaacson’s book.
“Because of this, civilians, children are being killed. That is the worth of a cocktail of ignorance and large ego,” he added on X, formerly generally known as Twitter. Musk bought Twitter last yr.
This photograph taken on September 25, 2022, shows an antenna of the Starlink satellite-based broadband system donated by the US tech billionaire Elon Musk in Izyum, Kharkiv region, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Yasuyoshi Chiba | AFP | Getty Images
Musk said in an X thread on Thursday evening that the connectivity policy for that area was already lively before the attack: “The Starlink regions in query weren’t activated. SpaceX didn’t deactivate anything,” he wrote.
“Either side should conform to a truce. On daily basis that passes, more Ukrainian and Russian youth die to realize and lose small pieces of land, with borders barely changing. This is just not price their lives,” Musk added.
‘Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars’
Ukraine received Starlink terminals within the early days of the invasion. The country’s digital minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, asked Musk for the potential and shared a post on social media when the units arrived in Ukraine.
In Ukraine, Starlink and its global network of greater than 4,000 satellites have worked because the connective tissue for crucial battlefield communications.
In keeping with Isaacson’s book, the South African-born billionaire asked, “How am I on this war?”
“Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for college and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes,” Musk said, in keeping with the book.
Isaacson reported in “Elon Musk” that his subject was fearful the Ukrainian attack on Russian vessels within the Black Sea would provoke the Kremlin into launching a nuclear war.
“I feel if the Ukrainian attacks had succeeded in sinking the Russian fleet, it might have been like a mini-Pearl Harbor and led to a significant escalation,” Musk said, in keeping with Isaacson.
“We didn’t need to be a component of that,” Musk said.
