> More than seven months into the war, it’s hard to overstate the impact Starlink has had in Ukraine. The government in Kyiv, Ukrainian troops as well and NGOs and civilians have relied on the nimble, compact and easy-to-use units created by SpaceX. It’s not only used for voice and electronic communication but to help fly drones and send back video to correct artillery fire.
Putting aside the costs, I'm curious how Musk reconciles giving critical support to the Ukrainian military with his apparent conviction that Russian victory is inevitable. If he truly believes that the threat of nuclear war increases the longer that Ukraine successfully defends itself, then it seems Musk would be keen a way to withdraw Starlink services from Ukraine.
A common narcissistic tactic to manipulate a victim is to provide what is needed, allow that support to become relied upon if not essential, and then all support is discontinued without warning. Maybe Musk is applying variation on a theme, maybe he's just honest to goodness unreliable and irresponsible for getting involved. Maybe Musk isn't a narcissist. Maybe he's also a sociopath, though sociopaths have no conscience and are prone to yelling a lot, they are also irresponsible and unreliable, mostly due to incompetence. Could Musk be incompetent? Though difficult to believe, it would explain some things.
It's only Narcissistic when the victim gives up something up in the process of becoming your dependent-- like a spouse forgoing a career to raise your children, and then you threaten them with a divorce that will leave them destitute and unable to provide for themselves. So they stay trapped in an exploitative arrangement.
What you're describing is the opposite-- a very entitled (and I daresay Narcissistic) interpretation of charity.
If you give a desperate man a dollar, you don't owe him the rest of your wallet.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with Ukraine embarrassing Elon by calling him out for a stupid ideas this week.
For anyone who missed it, he posted some stupid tweet about ending the war by capitulating to russia’s demands and they told him to fuck off.
Curious timing if you ask me.
Believe it or not life is complicated and some people realize that life is about probabilities and not about black and white the vast majority of time. I'm sure he's shoring up his bets both ways as it is a fairly low cost of entry for him and SpaceX on all fronts.
Is this actually hard to understand? Because this sort of visible opining just seems like an extension of the "It's unethical to support people fighting for their freedom" propaganda that's popular with the anti-war crowd. It's not particularly hard to understand wanting to give an underdog better odds even if you can't gurantee a win for them.
I desperately want to know what exactly is the difference between the $60 per month for retail customers, $500 per month "Premium" (that Ukraine apparently requested) for businesses, the $4,500 Starlink is giving them, and the $5,000 maritime version.
SLA? My understanding is that this is typical for connectivity options. Whether you're on a 1:50 aggregation or 1:10 aggregation or 1:1 aggregation may massively affect costs of an X Mb/s connection for any offered value of X.
This gets especially important considering that businesses, militaries, and ships will already aggregate many users on a single link which means that with the aggregate traffic they'll already be using a higher proportion of the nominal bandwidth on average -- AND require higher guarantees for the service on top of it.
$4,500/month is a bit less than Starlink maritime at $5,000/month. I can't imagine it's cheap to provide the support needed for a warzone. There aren't any similar services with public numbers to compare this cost to that are in an active warzone.
> The far more expensive part, however, is the ongoing connectivity. SpaceX says it has paid for about 70% of the service provided to Ukraine and claims to have offered that highest level – $4,500 a month – to all terminals in Ukraine despite the majority only having signed on for the cheaper $500 per month service.
For comparison, consumer Starlink service costs 230 PLN ($47) per month in Poland. AFAIK the consumer plan is not throttled, so what are they getting for $4,500?
They’re not the same devices. The premium terminals support higher data rates up to double those of the basic consumer units. There may be other improvements and advantages as well, there was talk of wider field of view of the sky, multiple simultaneous satellite tracking and redundant connections but I don’t know if those features made it into these devices. Starlink prioritised Ukraine for the latest gear.
You're pumping a lot less data through than military guys constantly using cell phones on the internet while sitting in trenches 24/7 and/or streaming steady real time video from drones and video chat.
Seems like this is a drop in the buckert for the military $$ we're sending and they are definitely getting a lot of bang for the buck, I wonder if the DOD is dumb enough to let this program die out?
Call me conspiratorial, but I do find it weird that first there were these 'peace plans' from Musk, than reports of Starlink problems in Ukraine, then claims about the conversations with Putin (that Musk denied), followed now by the request for money from the Pentagon by Musk, otherwise he'll have to stop operating Starlink over Ukraine.
Maybe there is no connection between all these events, but I'm a bit sceptical of that.
Musk likes to look good. He weighs in on notable events to boost his brand. He is also an extremely savvy investor who is very greedy, and has routinely manipulated markets for profit. Considering he is willing to roll over for the chinese (with a direct link between tweet and outcome), I don't trust him. It's not cute anymore.
The "problem" is that Ukrainian troops are advancing into cells that were not activated because they were Russian-held. You can see this on the map (assuming it's up-to-date): https://www.starlink.com/map No conspiracy theory is needed to explain this.
That sounded plausible to me initially, but then other news came in (as well as continued reports of issues with starlink).
But it is possible that there is nothing sinister here.
Readit News
Putting aside the costs, I'm curious how Musk reconciles giving critical support to the Ukrainian military with his apparent conviction that Russian victory is inevitable. If he truly believes that the threat of nuclear war increases the longer that Ukraine successfully defends itself, then it seems Musk would be keen a way to withdraw Starlink services from Ukraine.
What you're describing is the opposite-- a very entitled (and I daresay Narcissistic) interpretation of charity.
If you give a desperate man a dollar, you don't owe him the rest of your wallet.
This gets especially important considering that businesses, militaries, and ships will already aggregate many users on a single link which means that with the aggregate traffic they'll already be using a higher proportion of the nominal bandwidth on average -- AND require higher guarantees for the service on top of it.
Your average consumer doesn't have to worry about nation state hacking attacks, electronic warfare, and artillery strikes.
Dang, SpaceX is taking them to the cleaners.
Elon posted a graph of the data usage in Ukraine here: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1580572380535001088
What’s unacceptable is that it’s discussed by him on Twitter and with his 108 million followers.
How can he be trusted with any more govt contracts if he is a blabbermouth?
Maybe there is no connection between all these events, but I'm a bit sceptical of that.
As far as I'm aware, this didn't "follow" but was actually the first event, predating the other by weeks.