Well sure, but when Starlink has been used to kill or wound a few hundred thousand Russians it hardly seems like this matters much, and even if Russians ran the port it is Ukrainian territory.
My point is that either way, Elon shouldn’t even be in a position to make this decision, nor expected to make the “right” move. But it’s ultimately his private network.
Even now, US military contractors and legal experts are poring over their contracts because nothing explicitly says that private operators must allow their systems to be used in acts of war. Elon may still have a legal right of refusal.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s refusal to allow Ukraine to use Starlink internet services to launch a surprise attack on Russian forces in Crimea last September has raised questions for the Pentagon.
apnews.com
“Musk was not on a military contract when he refused the Crimea request; he’d been providing terminals to Ukraine for free in response to Russia’s February 2022 invasion. However, in the months since, the U.S. military has funded and officially contracted with Starlink for continued support. The Pentagon has not disclosed the terms or cost of that contract, citing operational security.
But the Pentagon is reliant on SpaceX for far more than the Ukraine response,
and the uncertainty that Musk or any other commercial vendor could refuse to provide services in a future conflict has led space systems military planners to reconsider what needs to be explicitly laid out in future agreements, Kendall said during a roundtable with reporters at the Air Force Association convention at National Harbor, Maryland, on Monday.
“If we’re going to rely upon commercial architectures or commercial systems for operational use, then we have to have some assurances that they’re going to be available,” Kendall said. “We have to have that. Otherwise they are a convenience and maybe an economy in peacetime, but they’re not something we can rely upon in wartime.”
www.bloomberg.com
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