SpaceX is not a neutral party. They’re flush with cash from US government contracts. If they want to withdraw their infrastructure from America’s ally, who are defending themselves against an existential threat from one of America’s top geopolitical adversaries, why should they continue to be granted American government contracts?
If Elon wants to be independent, he can be independent. He doesn’t. His companies all depend on government subsidies to exist. Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX — these are not free market capitalist successes, they’re all fundamentally dependent on Big Government. Without government charity, Elon Musk has nothing.
If Elon really wants to bite the hand that feeds him, he’d better be ready to get smacked.
Tesla received a lot of govt investment early on, but aren't they making boatloads of money now? The clean car credits they get from other manufacturers are a small fraction of their revenue.
Tesla early on didn't receive lots of govt investment early on. The got a loan for 400 million $ and that money started to come in around 2012 or so, and that money was paid back a few years later. And Tesla competitors got much bigger loans that they have not yet paid back.
And after that their costumers got tax reductions for buying EVs, but that could be used by all car companies. This is not investment.
They get clean energy credits from other car companies, based on emissions regulation. Again, not investment from the government, rather a mechanism for the government to implement emissions improvements on the industry as a whole.
Tesla also received tax reductions for their large industrial installations, but that is something all companies get when they to large scale investments. Its simply how things are done in the US (and many other places).
I think the comment is a perfectly relevant and accurate response to those wholesale assertions you made.
> His companies all depend on government subsidies to exist. Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX — these are not free market capitalist successes, they’re all fundamentally dependent on Big Government.
US government is not actually allied to the Ukraine as far as I know.
And not allowing your consumer electronics devices and sat systems to be used as offensive weapons (something the system wasn't designed for) is pretty reasonable for any company to do. One can have different feeling about this, but the idea that the US military would blacklist SpaceX over this is not really reasonable.
> Without government charity, Elon Musk has nothing.
This is often claimed but if you actually look into it it isn't actually true for Tesla.
SpaceX might have gone bust without NASA contracts but those were difficult high risk contracts that required performance based milestones to actually receive money. They were certainty not charity. In fact, SpaceX almost certainty lost money on those early contracts like CRS.
The reality is those companies had to compete against competitors who had way more support form government.
“Not for military use” is a perfectly fine condition for an ISP to impose on their services. There is a tendency recently to view Ukrainian victory over Russia as some kind of overriding moral imperative, so much so that other morals are being suspended e.g. I see otherwise sensible people celebrating and retweeting gruesome videos of Russian soldiers being blown up. It’s probably a good thing for a corporation to insist on their boundaries in the face of a moral imperative like that.
TIL I learned that we should feel bad for the Russian soldiers being blown up, and not the thousands of Ukrainian citizens, including children, that Russian soldiers have blown up.
I did not say we should feel bad for Russian soldiers dying (though we should), and I definitely did not say we should not feel bad for Ukrainian children dying (we definitely should). I said we should not celebrate videos of Russian soldiers dying in particularly gruesome ways, an instance of the more general moral principle that death and suffering are bad. This is what I meant about the moral imperative of Ukrainian victory overriding other moral concerns.
I don't know what to tell you. War is sad and gruesome. It's sad for the Ukrainian civilians being killed and it's sad for for the Russian mobiks who are sent to the trenches to be HIMARS-fodder.
I'm glad Russia is having a hard time with their war. I'm not glad that thousands of young men are being sent into a meat grinder.
A partial victory for Putin in Ukraine is an invitation to invade Moldova, the Baltic nations, and every other part of Europe Putin thinks is his rightful sphere of influence.
If you think this war is costly, consider the cost of continuing Russian revanchism.
> A partial victory for Putin in Ukraine is an invitation to invade Moldova, the Baltic nations, and every other part of Europe Putin thinks is his rightful sphere of influence.
This isn't any sort of news or new development and has been known for decades.
Feels like a bait and switch. Having access to Starlink most likely led Ukrainian leadership to divert their scarce resources away from repairing their traditional networking infrastructure. Now that Ukraine is heavily reliant on Starlink, Musk is using that position to undermine their war effort.
There is tons of detail and nuance missing in this article... Starlink is still accessible on frontlines, but Ukraine wants to equip it's drones for guiding them over the front. If you pay close attention no country is donating weapons that can effectively attack Russia and Musk has the same stance...
Yes; there can't be any other possible explanation than a bait and switch from Elon to collapse field communication for the Ukrainian people. Damn you Elon Musk!
Imagine Henry Ford limiting the availability of autos in pre-Vichy France "to prevent a second Great War" after taking a call from Berlin, and you'll get a sense of the moral quality of this decision.
Imagine Henry Ford getting a medal from literal Hitler.
There are comparable challenges today, in the form of people in the West who, still, after a year of war go on RT and spread an aggressor's propaganda.
Everyone misreading this to imply that Starlink is limiting it's use for Ukraine's military communications. The only thing being limited is the use on actual Ukrainian military hardware, like Ukrainian drones that drop bombs mounting starlink dishes on top of them and Starlink kamikaze ship drones having starlink dishes mounted on top of them.
If Elon wants to be independent, he can be independent. He doesn’t. His companies all depend on government subsidies to exist. Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX — these are not free market capitalist successes, they’re all fundamentally dependent on Big Government. Without government charity, Elon Musk has nothing.
If Elon really wants to bite the hand that feeds him, he’d better be ready to get smacked.