Earlier this month, Ukraine appealed directly to Musk, asking him to disable Russian military access to SpaceX's Starlink internet system. The Russians had been running thousands of unauthorized terminals along the front — smuggled through Dubai and ex-Soviet republics, activated in countries where Starlink is legal, then shipped into the war zone.

What makes this more than a communications setback is something few outside the conflict fully grasp. Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are now coming to scale on both sides of this war. They haul ammunition and supplies into what soldiers call the kill zone, guided remotely by operators miles away. Starlink terminals mounted on board make that possible. Without Starlink, the robots stop. And soldiers go in instead.

The result, according to sources familiar with Russian battlefield operations, is that Russia is now losing even more soldiers than before — men replacing machines that no longer work.

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[–] tonytins@pawb.social 88 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I'm assuming Elon turned off Starlink access in Russian in an desperate attempt to save his crumbling reputation. Ironically, this only reveals just how dependent they were on his tech.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 89 points 4 months ago (1 children)

God, it makes me more furious at him than ever. Not that he turned it off, but revealing just what a fucking dependency this has been the whole fucking time for Russia. How many Ukrainians have died because of Musk waiting 'til now to turn it off?

Fuck.

And no one suggest that one of the world's richest men couldn't have his fucking engineers figure out a solution to Russian-used Starlink terminals in Ukraine before four fucking years passed. "We can't figure out how to distinguish our own devices" yeah fucking bet.

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 36 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah. Even if we go by the whole "they weren't authorized" narrative, then that just makes it look like Elon turned a blind eye. How could you not know for that long!? Surely, they would have picked up on some anomaly in a fucking war zone.

[–] snowdrop@lemmy.ca 24 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I wonder what really changed behind the scenes to make him take action. It makes me think that, after all, there isn’t Epstein-related kompromat on him. OTOH we already know he’s a k addled manchild so it doesn’t have to make sense.

[–] Peehole@piefed.social 19 points 4 months ago

Maybe they indeed didn’t let him participate?

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

It had nothing to do with Epstein, I wrote a really shouty message about this because this keeps popping up and I'm tired of it, but you seem genuine...

It's a 2 part post, what happened, and then the source backing it up

https://lemmy.world/post/42908537/22057585

There's more info in the source than I posted as well about other things SpaceX was doing.

[–] MrShankles@reddthat.com 4 points 4 months ago

Thank you for that. I always appreciate info

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yeah, his name popped up a whole lot in the recent Epstein releases, and I’m pretty sure this was part of his tactic to be like “no, wait, I’m one of the good guys”.

So:

it’s good that he did this
phony stark is still a categorical piece of shit