Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, found himself in hot water last year after a Ukrainian official criticised him for instructing engineers to turn off Starlink's satellite network over Crimea in order to prevent a Ukrainian attack on Russian vessels.
In an interview with his autobiography "Elon Musk," author Walter Isaacson, the South African billionaire, made a reference to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine by asking, "How am I in this war?"
The tech billionaire was not amused as Western nations scrambled to provide Kyiv with artillery and air defence weapons during the initial stages of Russia's invasion of Ukraine around the time the first of Musk's Starlink terminals arrived in the nation, CNBC reported.
“Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes,” Musk said, according to the book.
In the interview mentioned in his autobiography which is set to be released on Tuesday, Musk told Isaacson that he was worried the Ukrainian attack on Russian vessels would provoke the Kremlin into launching a nuclear war.
However, Musk received much criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's top aide over the revelation.
“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote Thursday on social media after CNN reported on some of the details from the book.
“As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego,” he added on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Crimea, Russia's Black Sea peninsula, was annexed from Ukraine in 2014 and is home to its warships. Following Russia's invasion in February 2022, the Black Sea fleet launched missile attacks on Ukrainian coastal cities.
Ukraine's digital minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, confirmed that SpaceX's Starlink satellites are present in Ukraine, providing crucial battlefield communications.
Fedorov requested Starlink capability from Musk on Twitter, and a photo showed over two dozen boxes in a truck. Starlink's global network of over 4,000 satellites serves over 50 countries and has worked as the connective tissue for crucial battlefield communications in Ukraine.
Musk's decision was discussed in a phone call with President Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, and Joint Chiefs of Staff US Army General Mark Milley, according to Isaacson.
He added that Musk was also in a texting conversation with Fedorov, who urged to restore Starlink's connectivity for Ukrainian submarine drones to attack Russia's warship fleet.
Musk replied that he thought Ukraine was “going too far and inviting strategic defeat,” according to Isaacson’s book.
“I think if the Ukrainian attacks had succeeded in sinking the Russian fleet, it would have been like a mini Pearl Harbor and led to a major escalation,” Musk said, according to Isaacson. “We did not want to be a part of that.”
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