Musk ordered shutdown of Starlink satellite service as Ukraine retook territory

44 jaredwiener 15 7/25/2025, 1:43:19 PM reuters.com ↗

Comments (15)

hnburnsy · 15h ago
>It isn’t clear what prompted Musk’s command, when exactly he gave it, or precisely how long the outage lasted.

Not much here

consumer451 · 4h ago
What are you saying exactly? Break it down for me. I am simple, it's likely that I just don't understand.
Kapura · 1d ago
it is fucking crazy that we allow gigantic service operators to move with the freedom of an IRC op. starting to think that maybe elon musk is not a good person!
throwaway_9000 · 1d ago
Or was probably recruited by Russia's intelligence when (in)famously trying to purchase Russian ICBMs to create a greenhouse photo-op on Mars.
ben_w · 1d ago
I'm sure they (and many others) have tried recruiting him at multiple points, but if the Russians had wanted to recruit him back then, they'd have sold him a launch rather than laughing in his face, and consequently SpaceX likely wouldn't have happened at all.
consumer451 · 15h ago
As a previously huge Musk fanboy, I must admit that I was trying to grasp at straws at the point of TFA, and many other points prior.

At one time, I thought maybe Musk's brain was a victim of some microwave brain->mush weapon or something. Then, I thought it was all about when he went from not realizing his gains to getting the biggest single pay day in history, and having to write a multi-billion dollar tax check that fried his brain.

In the most recent years, I thought that he flipped personalities, and somehow became an easily influenced person for some reason [0], who might believe things that a person like Sacks tells him.

When he gave a Nazi salute to the world, twice... well, it doesn't matter what my theories were anymore. There is no denying exactly who he is now.

I still wonder, was he always this person? If so, top .0001% acting skills.

___

[0] Ketamine as a Possible Moderator of Hypnotizability: A Feasibility Study

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6181123/

dzhiurgis · 19h ago
Or actual order came from DOD or he fears russians will destroy his constellation.

Regardless, Reuters cannot be trusted with reporting in Musk, they’ve demonstrated that too many times. Kinda shame since otherwise they’ve been good.

tempnew · 3h ago
“otherwise they’ve been good.”

I wouldn’t think that’s a very common opinion. They like most other news outlets are circling the drain and using clickbait and nbc/fox style engagement news-tainment as life support.

consumer451 · 8h ago
> or he fears russians will destroy his constellation.

How could this be accomplished? Short of magically causing a coronal mass ejection of historic proportion, aimed directly at the earth so that the thermosphere greatly expanded, I do not see how this could be carried out.

Starlink is that badass. However, Musk is just embarrassing himself these days though, from first principles. I actually do feel bad for the guy.

dzhiurgis · 6h ago
Russia has weapons against satellites. They've tested them very irresponsibly (China too) a decade or so ago.
consumer451 · 4h ago
Sure, but that's against individual Keyhole style sats. Many countries have that capability.[0] The USA has demonstrated the ability to kill a single sat from a USN ship, and a USAF F-15.[1] However, even the USA has no solution for a mega constellation. That's why the CCP is deploying at least 3 different mega constellations, with a planned total of >40,000 satellites.

There is no existing kinetic solution for the entirely novel concept of Starlink sized mega constellations in LEO. (actually near "very" LEO which is a significant factor)

Take out 10, oh that's nice, we have 10,000 more currently in orbit.

Oh, you took out 120 Starlink sats somehow, that's how many we launch per month.

Maybe a nuke with chaff? That could create a dead spot that orbits around the world every 90 minutes? Still, not a killer solution, right? Please, anyone feel free to correct me.

However, a network engineer could be hungover/bribed/comprimised and push a bad BGP route... that would take down an entire mega constellation network for a bit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT#/media/File:An_ai...

rasz · 1d ago
JumpCrisscross · 1d ago
That was regarding a naval attack on Sebastopol. This is a separate incident.
nialse · 1d ago
Sounds excellent! If you will not agree with EU transparency for political ads you should exit the market.
nialse · 9h ago
This comment obviously ended up in the wrong thread.