On Oct. 15, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced a U-turn in his earlier statement that he could not keep providing Ukraine with free battlefield access to his Starlink system. “The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money and other companies are getting billions of taxpayer [dollars], we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free,” Musk tweeted on Saturday.
Tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom replied: “In other words you will continue your support for the US proxy war in Ukraine despite your better knowledge that this is a US proxy war and the risk of a nuclear war because of the US proxy war?”
Musk then wrote: “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, so … guess I’m just damned.” Kim pressed the issue: “I believe in you. We are facing nuclear war because of reckless US foreign policy in Ukraine. You know that. This is a big one. We have to put our personal interests aside for the sake of humanity,” he argued.
To which Musk replied: “I’m trying my hardest to de-escalate this situation and obviously failing.”
There is probably more to this story still to be reported, likely including the Defense Department’s reply to his correspondence, last week, in which he said SpaceX could not continue to provide the service to Ukraine for no charge, and the factor of the widespread social media report—never confirmed—that Musk had been placed on the Myrotvorets kill list, even if only for a short time.
