We have entered the out loud part of billionaire gangsters literally taking over the world or trying. Elon dreams of an authoritarian world where he can house his workers a la Foxconn. Honestly someone is going to star popping these malignant ghouls soon and Elon is a prime candidate. One special ops team and a MANDAP and no more X.
We now live in an overt oligarchy heading toward fascism. Although it’s always been an oligarchy behind the scenes IMO, you are right, they are now saying the quiet part out loud. They are also taking actions that were once done behind closed doors right out into the open.
David Frum: “If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
We are watching that happen. An oligarchy run by a fascist would be just fine with conservatives as they’re showing us every single day.
Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition… There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Laws clearly do not bind Trump, Thomas, Roberts, Alito or Musk and they’re done pretending that they do. They don’t even bother playing lip service to the idea that we have a government of laws, not of men.
I once had a Mexican friend tell me “I weep for my country” when talking about Mexican crime. Watching the Republican’s accelerating mockery of our laws, institutions and government I’m sorry to say that as an American I weep for mine.
He’s a saboteur. Detain the mother fucker and try him for treason. At the very least, his removal from his companies is paramount to national security at this point.
No, no, you don’t understand…he’s rich.
that’s why we cannot trust billionaires and big corporations
Elon Musk is afraid of Putin’s revenge. Crucial infrastructure like Starlink should be handled by the government, not a corp. Otherwise the corp will prioritize shareholders and profit rather than human’s life
A couple of years ago, Musk stated that Putin is substantially richer than he is.
Add to that Putin’s bloodthirsty lunacy. Musk may actually fear his wrath.
But then comes the issue, which government? As Starlink is global infrastructure.
Starlink is only ‘global’ as long as Elon approves of the GPS coordinates. With that in mind, ‘global’ is about a joke, it’s at Elon’s whim…
Pretty sure he’s talking about the government of the country the company is registered in. As the is the only one that can realistically nationalise it.
I’m so tired of these literal cartoon villains having power I stg
I think he’s basically gullible. His companies have given him so much money, he just assumes he’s right. However he doesn’t understand diplomacy and Putin played him. He should have deferred to the state department, who deal with that BS all the time
Putin 100 percent has kompromat on Musk. Likely the pedophile shit he did with Trump and Epstein.
It’s also not a mistake when we know he’s buddy buddy with Russia. We know why they did it.
So that constitutes a war crime at this point, correct?
Nope.
I really hope Mr free speach doesn’t do anything about this scathing entirely accurate tweet about what an egoistical monster Elon is posted on the platform Elon owns.
There’s a good chance Putin is richer than Musk…just saying. And since there is that chance, what are the chances Putin has money in Musk’s various businesses?
Starlink fails if Russia or any other country decides to shoot down its satellites. That’s enough reason for musk to be a patsy of any government that threatens to do it.
If one state starts shooting down satellites, they’re going to get their own ones targeted and it only ends when neither has any satellites left. That’s not a box anyone is willing to open.
I’m pretty confident that Musk has insurance for that. They can’t shoot down enough of them to make a big difference, you may have a hole but the network will be ok.
No business wants to rely on insurance. It will never cover all the future losses in a business like this.
A network with regular outages is nearly worthless for most use cases…
Oh you could put a million dollar missle on a 25 thousand dollar satellite. But, you’re going to run out of missiles.
Look up: Kessler syndrome
Yup, they’re already having problems without even getting attacked. Shooting “down” (they wouldn’t fall down) some of the satellites, could easily create enough debris to start a cascading collision effect and turn the whole orbit into a minefield.
It’s even worse, because they are in orbits creating a crisscross grid, meaning debris from one satellite would cross the paths of dozens of others in a short period of time.
Also, disabling a dozen or a thousand satellites, wouldn’t create a “hole” in the network over any single place, since every single satellite goes over the whole globe, replacing any disabled one.
Someone trying to attack Starlink, would either have to trigger a cascading effect, or get no effect at all.
couldn’t you toss up a towing satellite that goes from sat to sat and hooks them together?
If you mean to “scoop them up” as a means of attack… there are thousands of them already, they’re all over the globe, with plans to go up to 40k. They do have engines, and while not particularly powerful (hall effect ion thrusters), they could try to counter the attack by trying to deorbit, along with the attacking satellite. My guess is it would be too slow and ineffective.
The best physical attack would be to cause a collision cascade at their orbital height… or set off a nuke in orbit and EMP them by the hundreds, but that would also EMP a bunch of other satellites, mess up the Van Allen belts, hit anything in a wide area on the ground, and breach several international treaties.
They’ll avoid the debris as they do now. It’s every day business
The number of debris avoidance maneuvers is growing faster than the number of satellites. Even without an attack, it’s anyone’s guess when the amount of debris will overcome their ability to avoid it.
In the case of an attack, they’d quickly run out of avoidance ability (onboard fuel) and either have to use the remaining fuel to de-orbit, or become part of the cascade of collisions.
For anyone interested in posting to this community, please keep rule 6 in mind. This post will be kept up because of the valuable discussion and activity that came with this post, but please mind the rules in the future. Thank you (:
Will try to remember to check the rules of each community before posting. Added a link to a news article. Thanks for the heads-up.
No problem. Thank you for responding (:
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At least $100b
B-b-but Elon wouldn’t want to get involved in war!! Aside from all the ways he’s involved himself in the war….
Jfc
I wonder what would happen if a national intelligence agency was tasked with eliminating a billionaire. Could private security, however sophisticated, really deflect assassination attempts from a state? That has nothing to do with Elon Musk, though. He is way too beloved and cherished to ever become a target.
On the one hand, we have “reaper” missiles that are basically flying guillotines, that can strike with enough accuracy to kill a particular person in a particular car seat while not harming the other occupants.
On the other hand, how many times did we fuck up killing Castro?
God damn that was so well said. All I could come up with was “Fuck Elon Musk”.
Yeah, “cocktail of ignorance and big ego” is a perfect description of Musk.
I listen to his interviews in Russian. He’s a good orator indeed.
Ukraine special ops downs Elmos jet…
Starlink is a great system. The problem is its idiot owner, Musk, who is more worried how the use of Starlink in the Ukraine is going to affect his company stock. You’re in the big leagues now, Elmo. You cant “sort of” commit to a war unless you’re a rich Saudi dilettante, who wants to try his hand at international shiat-stirring.
The use of Starlink was restricted by US Government sanctions: no use on Russian territory or assets.
Tough luck, that also means no using it for attacking on Russian territory or assets.
Edit: Here’s a link with sources and dates.
It’s very impressive how someone can be so wrong yet so confident at the same time.
That’s a remarkably interesting link, thanks for sharing.
Great example of people downvoting the truth away. The spectacle of American politics can no longer address material truths, outside of merely referencing good or bad actors.
Elon’s negative image is proof because he used to be widely considered as someone solving the climate crisis through free market capitalism, but the truth is he never changed and has always been this way, and the system he operates in where people need cars is the problem.
It’s also a given that Americans are blind or refuse to acknowledge the effects of their government’s sanctions on the world, the private business interests that benefit, and the way they exploit people like themselves in other countries and use them as pawns.
Musk didn’t allow it. Full stop. It’s not so,e government sanction thing.
Even quotes you reference are from Musk, himself, sharing why he decided so. Musk said he chose not to activate it because he’d be apart of escalating the war…
Musk said he chose not to activate it because he’d be apart of escalating the war…
…which was against US Government policy.
Please read all the links before cherry picking only some of them.
What against US policy? Escalating the war? We already are sending tons of military equipment, some used in counter offensives.
Post the link and full article you got that from, I’d like to read but many of the links are pay walled.
Here’s what I read from one of the links you referenced, I would think Musk would say it’s against US policy if that’s the reason he chose not to activate Starlink
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
“The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” Musk wrote.
An excerpt about the raid from American author and journalist Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography on Musk, titled “Elon Musk,” was published by CNN. Ukrainian submarine drones loaded with explosives were approaching a Russian naval fleet in the Crimean city of Sevastopol when they lost connection and “washed ashore harmlessly,” according to Isaacson.
Musk was concerned about Russia responding to the naval attack with a nuclear weapon, Isaacson wrote in the book, according to CNN. Ukrainian officials
What against US policy?
You can check the list of sanctions imposed on Ukraine/Russia, which regions, types of activity and subjects, along with the exceptions and licenses at:
You may notice that US citizens have been forbidden from providing telecommunications services, including via satellite, in the conflict areas since early 2022, requiring a special license to operate.
Starlink didn’t have such license, and only got a DoD agreement in mid 2023.
In late 2022, Musk would’ve had to break that policy in order to allow the drones to be controlled into the conflict zone.
As for him saying so… I don’t think he’s the type to paint himself as subservient to the government, even if he is; more like the megalomaniac type claiming to have stopped WW3 barehanded, even if he literally did nothing.
So the only one saying Musk didn’t activate Starlink was because of US sanctions is you, and not even Musk himself.
There’s not article, just you deducing from the US sanctions list.
What’s your point, that I should write an article? 🙄
Crimea is Ukraine. Also that’s not how sanctions work at all
Crimea is Ukraine
Crimea is Stalin’s “present” to the Republic of Ukraine after the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Crimean Tatars by the USSR.
Do you support that genocide?
that’s not how sanctions work at all
These sanctions work exactly like that: no service, means no service, not “no service, but sometimes some”.
If you want an exception, you ask the US Government, not some rando running the service.
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You may want to look up the meaning of “tankie”, then re-read my comment, followed by some basic history notions, like the link I’ve provided.
