Secretary of State Antony Blinken sidestepped questions on Sunday about reports that Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla
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and owner of the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, stymied the Ukrainian war effort last year by not enabling, or disabling, Starlink satellite internet access during a planned drone Black Sea attack on the Russian fleet. Blinken was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” about excerpts from a recent biography on Musk claimed indicating that the influential serial entrepreneur had rankled Ukrainian officials by not responding to their request to use Starlink for the maritime attack. “I can’t speak to a specific episode,” Blinken replied.
“Starlink has been a vital tool for Ukrainians to be able to communicate with each other and particularly for the military to communicate in their efforts to defend all of Ukraine’s territory,” Blinken added. Musk has previously feuded with the U.S. government over what he said was a lack of compensation for his provision of Starlink access to Ukraine. The SpaceX-launched constellation of satellites can grant internet capabilities to areas otherwise too remote to connect. The billionaire said last week that officials wanted him to provide internet access all the way to the Crimean Peninsula port city Sevastopol. Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. From the archives (February 2014): Russian influence that’s decried in Kyiv is welcomed in Crimea Also see (March 2014): Putin: Russians are ‘always being cornered’ The internet access would have presumably been used to help orchestrate a major raid on Russian naval assets. Musk declined to provide the access, keen, he said, on avoiding having SpaceX become “complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he said. The “Elon Musk” book’s author, Walter Isaacson, later said that the Ukrainians “thought [Starlink] coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not,” indicating that this is why some reports have suggested Musk cut off the access in question. Officials in Kyiv reportedly maintain that the description of the incident as it appears in the Isaacson book is accurate. The episode illustrated Musk’s influence, particularly given Starlink’s paramount importance to Ukrainian military communications. “It sounds like Starlink’s so important that the U.S. government doesn’t want to risk offending a capricious billionaire,” CNN host Jake Tapper remarked to Blinken, who declined to comment further on the notion. Musk has teased that SpaceX is crafting a “Stars …
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