- cross-posted to:
- news@kbin.social
- cross-posted to:
- news@kbin.social
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.
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Nationalize Starlink and SpaceX
We already had a nationalized SpaceX. We defunded it and gave grants to private companies like uh… SpaceX.
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.deleted by creator
and we have an idiot in charge who shares his time between defending anti-semitism and interfearing in global conflicts.
Bruh, Trump has been out of office for like 3 years now. Have you been living under a rock?
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Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones.
That “shiny metal detritus” is currently providing internet to Ukraine that allows them to fight in this war.
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@MattMastodon @SCB
It is not his data. He’s just transporter.I’m quite comfortable with it.
If the government wants a private citizen’s data and resources, they can contract with them for it. I find it bizarre that you think the government should just be able to take whatever it wants from people.
If you give them that power, some day, the cause will not be noble.
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Didn’t NASA used to just have companies like Boeing or Lockheed manufacture things?
Private companies been US advantage during the moon race, and allowed them to win against the URSS
Nationalise.
It’s a Z in American English. Both spellings are correct.
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.
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 ).
Yeah what kind of linguistics dweeb doesn’t understand that language is fluid and shapes with time and location.
I’d love to see this tool be held to the spelling standards of old English. You know… to preserve the English language.
Butan hwi?
Literally the first thing you learn in linguistics is that the malleability in language is why linguistics exists.
Which is literally why “literally” and “figuratively” as practically interchangable due to misuse of ‘literally’ as hyperbole. Its figuratively killing me.
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How is dismissing a correction with a blunt “nope” nice and tacking on etymology when we’re talking about modern use of the word?
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.
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.
Everyone should just report this idiot and move on. You can’t fix stupid.
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.
This is the hidden most based take in the thread.
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.
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
Upvoting for gobshite
Jeez dude, can we all just chill out for a second?
God damn just accept you’re wrong. You look like an absolute fool at this point.
Yes, for sure. You are indeed being toxic.
There’s obviously a lot of crossover between musk-dislikers and z-worshippers.
Butbut… “gEt BeNt YoU bElLeNd” though
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.
Thank you for turning dickish pedantry into something actually interesting and worth reading.
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?
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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.
Well, in the spirit of what has been done, -ize has been standardized in American English, and so here we are.
What a worthless comment
I mean, the irony here is quite strong even you must sense it.
Nope. Everyone just thinks youre a joke worthy of a circus act.
Yep
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.
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?
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.
But that’s socialism /s
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That’s how you get an SLS. Government bureaucracy and pleasing congress isn’t great at rocket development.
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.
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.
If you choose not to decide. You still have made a choice.
I love Rush
People would rather just have no accountability, you see.
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.
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.
His midlife crisis needs to get the fuck out of my sight.
He is the Most Divorced Man in the World. And Grimes wasn’t even married to him!
Grimes really said “not even if you’re the richest man alive” and it’s driving him crazy
That I don’t think is his logic
He’s said about that - Ukraine should negotiate with the Russians and give them territory because war is so killy.
There’s no “right” answer to the trolley problem. But there are definitely wrong ones.
That depends on your moral basis.
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?
Private citizens don’t get to make those decisions.
It’s time to nationalize Starlink & SpaceX.
Jesus. It says it all.
He is responsible for the deaths of children.
It’s okay, he plans to replace them with his own progeny. What’s he up to now, 12?
Censorship is terrible. Except when I want to do it and pretend like I’m the best politician. Then it’s great.
LOL self-defense is escalation now
Musk does what putler tells him to do.
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.
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
Pretty sure putin owns musk.
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.
From my understanding, he didn’t pull the rug, instead he just never turned on satellites that he never said he would turn on
He did in fact “pull the rug”
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.
The escalation he was trying to avoid is shelling children. Elon Musk is why I hope hell is real.
By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet
I think this quote is where we all need to take a step back. People are essentially blaming him for not empowering one warring party’s ability to attack another.
It doesn’t matter which side you are on. He doesnt immediately become responsible for everything that the russians do with the soldiers and equipment that weren’t killed/destroyed in the attack.
This is also assuming the drone attack would have been successful.
I wouldn’t call it interference it was just refusal to play.
The type of attitude used here is a very childish “you are with me or you are against me” take that everyone publicly recognizes as wrong.
I would def prefer a ukrainian victory, but you guys treat musk like he is some sort of chaos god and all knowing entity or something.
People are essentially blaming him for not empowering one warring party’s ability to attack another.
No. We are blaming him for preventing Ukraine to defend itself. If you punch me and I punch you to get you off me then that’s not me attacking you, it’s still you attacking me.
Worse, somebody just punched me and I’m about to punch back, and while I do that you swipe my leg so I lose my footing, saying “but you can’t attack them!”, causing me to land unluckily and break my wrist. That is what Musk did: He put Ukrainian forces and assets in direct danger over pulling a service he agreed to provide. Noone would blame him had he stayed out of things in the first place, or given notice that he’s backing out, or something like that. We’d be calling him a pussy, but that’d be it. But committing and then retracting support at a critical moment? That’s treason.
Just because you call it treason doesnt make it treason.
Just as you pointed out, replace defend itself with attack Russia.
Hows it sound then?
Also as was pointed out it was never activated so its not like he deactivated it. Your analogy doesnt stand.
Just as you pointed out, replace defend itself with attack Russia.
Hows it sound then?
This doesn’t work because we all know Russia is the aggressor. It still sounds bad for Elon
Japan aggressed against the US in WW2, the US still attacked the Japanese navy at many points. Stop trying to twist language to make a point that’s not necessary to make. Everyone knows Russia started the war, that’s irrelevant to whether something is an offensive move in a war.
It was already activated, Musk ordered it shut off during an Ukrainian operation meant to take out those ships. The same ships that have been launching missiles and hitting civilian targets.
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.
Source:
emergency request to turn on satellite access
Is exactly what happened.
He did not act.
I agree with your statement, the fact that Musk can just make decisions like that is an issue. Regardless of whether or not he owns the majority of the company he agreed to provide this service. That means he should have to give ample notice before disabling the service.
Did his company agree to provide this service specifically?
Yes. He donated access points to the Ukrainian military. Militaries tend to use the hardware they have to do military things, Musk knew they weren’t planning on using starlink to play fortnite.
And they knew those access points didn’t have coverage in Crimea, that’s why they asked him to give them access in Crimea.
Musk agreed to provide service In Ukraine. That includes Crimea. It also includes their territorial waters. It also includes the rest of the occupied territories, which they again and again disable service for.
Ukraine certainly didn’t know that there was no connectivity around Sevastopol otherwise they wouldn’t have sent drones there relying on starlink, now would they.
Also, all in all this isn’t his decision to make. He has a contract with the US government to provide service in Ukraine. Lockheed-Martin doesn’t get to decide whether or not the US exports F-35 to Poland or not. It is not their place to say “but that would annoy the Russians so we’ll disable them”.
If you don’t want to be a military contractor, don’t be a military contractor. If you are a military contractor, submit to democratically legitimised decisions of the fucking government.
The US government buys F-35s and then owns them. The US government is contracting Musk to provide coverage over certain areas of Ukraine.
It’s a significant difference. The gov can’t later use Starlink to help people in Taiwan, for instance, without a new contract.
Yeah, I honestly don’t understand why this narrative even needs to be played out.
I don’t know what angle there is by making Musk a scapegoat beyond, maybe, Ukraine trying to strengthen its supporting relationship with the US population, but it already has most of the US support anyway.
Musk has his issues, there’s no doubt about that, but not wanting to be involved is an ethical stance to take on his part.
What’s even more mind boggling is that despite Starlink being so critical to Ukrainian communications, neither the Ukrainian government nor the US entered into a contract with a clause obligating Starlink to maintain service. Musk can just legally turn off Starlink for them with no legal repercussions because they never negotiated something against that into a contract with him. Even if they had to pay a premium rate for Starlink, for a service that critical to the Ukrainian Armed Forces it’s worth it
The US government has recently contracted for Starlink satellites. They did it when he first flinched under Russian pressure and threatened to turn them off
My question is, if he was actually worried about being complicit with the war or whatever, why did he provide starlink at all? It was obvious what it was going to be used for. He get cold feet because Ukraine is doing way better then expected?
Article explains that he was worried he was contributing to an escalation that could lead to nuclear strikes, while he still provides ground support services to Ukraine proper
Not arguing this was the right choice, but explaining that’s his decision-making process.
Buddy you’re in the middle of learning that nuanced takes don’t play on Lemmy, because this place is full of radicalized outcasts that don’t even read articles.
No. Russia is 100% in the wrong, continously committing crimes against humanity for no justifiable reason at all.
… that, in the pursuit of taking away Ukrainian freedom and independence.
Hence, to actively disrupt their defense is deeply unethical. He chose to do something rather than nothing, and it directly helps those wishing to make the world a worse place. Disgraceful.
You mean he chose to do nothing rather than something. The starlink access was never turned ON
By musks account. By Walter Isaacson’s account the opposite was the case. Considering musks opposition to aiding the victim, it would be on brand.
I don’t disagree, but what evidence was produced that we can’t see?
I have evidence that you diddle 12 year olds, but noone is allowed to see it. You’re a reddit mod so it would be on brand.
See what I mean?
I think we owe the claim some level of skepticism if theres no proof provided.
Get fucked, you boot licking weasel.
Musk is really speed running having his LEO satelites nationalized
Now there’s a great idea. Especially since he never would have built SoaceX without so much public support via NASA.
I say it’s ukraine’s fault to try and rely on a PRIVATE infrastructure for mission critical connectivity. That enabled Elon to in turn disconnect the service whenever he wanted. Maybe not rely on a private infrastructure where it’s owner has absolute control over the communication.
Their existing infrastructure was destroyed by an invading nation. What do you expect them to do, put down fiber lines in the middle of a warzone?
I don’t know but trusting some random guy with critical communications doesn’t look like the smartest thing… what if elon tomorrow decides to turn off starlink access for the whole of Ukraine? All they can do is complain…
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I wouldn’t say it’s their fault, but it is on them (and possibly all the supporters) this was allowed to happen.
We can point fingers all we want, but the fact remains that Ukraine military relies on some private company ran by an ass, and now they suffer the consequence. This is also not even the first time this ass was giving them hard time.
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Yeah I don’t think that’s gonna happen
