Apparently Ukraine has completely turned it round and is now hurting Russia, and it's mostly thanks to...

[User05677229]

Elon Musk!

I saw this on CNN last night / early this morning.

Everything has changed in the war and Russia is now suffering heavy losses and losing gained territory.

It's largely because Elon Musk was able to block Russia from using satellites to navigate their drones. Meanwhile his Starlink has been allowing Ukraine to use their drones effectively and precisely.

Apparently modern warfare is all about drones and using GPS to navigate them.

Another way of looking at this is that for the first years of the war Elon Musks starlink was allowing Russia to sustain it's drone attacks and incursions into Ukraine and it's only now that he's blocked it that we see how important the system was to their war effort

However, credit where credit is due. Jolly good on him for blocking it 4 years in.

Omg starlink massively helped urkiane in the first year of the war ! He got it over there to help Ukraine !

Don't get me wrong, I support Ukraine 100%, but there's something very worrying that Elon Musk gets to decide who wins a war!

He blocked Ukraine from using Starlink in 2022 so if anything I find it very disturbing that one man can hold so much power and affect so many lives.

How did it come to this, with a dick running the show???

I thought last week we were all being nudged to hate Elon because he was schmoozing the Russians?! I can’t keep up with the MSM narrative or how short people’s memories are!

Poland pays Elon Musk for Ukraine's Starlink access if I recall. Which doesn't mean it's not a game changer in the war. But it isn't being provided altruistically. Which begs the question as to whether Elon was making money from Russia using Starling or if he was allowing it from the goodness of his own heart. Neither of those options are good. And it is very easy to turn of/block access. He did it briefly to Ukraine at the start

Starlink and drones are a game changer technology. However, when both sides have equal access to it, it sort of cancels out. Like selling a new type of guns to both sides. Actually it has a lot of parallels to how innovations in weaponry in WW1 led to both sides being stuck in trenches suffering horribly.

Two things which have apparently turned the tide are 1. Ukraine jumping ahead of Russia in terms of drone technology. 2. Russianbonlojger having Starlink. But it is somewhat disturbing this had to be done out of the "goodness" of Elon Musk heart. At a time when all sorts of sanctions were being targeted at Russia there was no way to make an American based (and heavily subsidised by the US taxpayer) company block of something so directly related to war. He had to be coaxed into it and now everyone public is having to praise him etc in fear he changes his mind.

I think "Elon Musk was selling chainsaws to the killers. Now he stopped giving them chainsaws, chainsaw massacres have seriously reduced. He's such a great guy 👍" is an odd angle

Hmmmmm

I'm sceptical. But maybe that's just me being cynical. You won't see ANY criticism of Elon from the Ukrainians either way though for obvious reasons.

It's a pretty hard problem to solve as how to know which terminals were being used by Russians and which by Ukrainians, especially as the Russians nick them from the Ukrainians so they'd be registered as Ukrainian. I don't believe Starlink has been available in Russia itself since the start of the war, or in stolen parts of Ukraine. Despite it being repeatedly claimed that Musk 'turned it off' to help Russia, he actually just refused to turn it on when asked as Ukraine wanted to use it for an attack, rather than to defend. He claimed that's because he didn't feel comfortable with allowing his systems to be used to bomb anyone, or of being in a position where it was up to him to decide which attacks would be allowed. Which is fair enough maybe, though of course he may be lying, and he genuinely was trying to protect Russia. Who knows. However, it has never been turned off when used for Ukraine's defence.

If I recall, the US military was proposed to take over those sort of decisions, and as Ukraine has been regularly bombing Russia, it seems either Musk's qualms were resolved, or it's not him calling the shots.

It's also worth remembering how immediately he offered Starlink to Ukraine when Russia invaded, free of charge. So it's arguably much stranger that he was ever suggesting they should accept defeat, than that he's helping them now. But then he's a very odd man, and famously mercurial. It may be he just can't decide from one moment to the next. Which is of course a bloody good reason why he shouldn't be allowed to decide. And who knows whether he is; it may be Starlink are operating under orders from the government rather than him, which would be even more confusing, considering Trump's past comments.

Interesting article: Elon Musk Moves Against the Russians in Ukraine - The Atlantic

Fast bit of research answers that begging question
No Russia had to go through proxy accounts hidden elsewhere like Dubai to lie to sign up through loop holes.

Why is everyone so critical of Musk? He's massively boosted access to internet, electric cars, championed cleaner energy, made hundreds if not thousands of his employees millionaires... he's given phenomenal sums in support of many charities.

Is it just because he's not left wing?

As you see from this thread, people post a lot of complete nonsense about him, and it's rarely refuted. Possibly because a lot of people think he is a deeply unpleasant man with terrible views, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that! But I don't think perpetuating lies about him is particularly helpful as it just feeds into his narrative about fake media and lying lefties.

He's like trump, he'll have changed his mind next week. I wish this damned war was at an end. So much needless loss of life.

Russia could withdraw at any time and end it all. Strangely they don't seem willing to. Personally I hope Ukraine continues its advance to the point that things crack in Moscow and Putin himself gets a visit from the Defenestration Activation Support Team.

Musk is, in this instance, as the gif says

No, it's because he is extreme right wing.

I would support him if he was right wing , but not extreme RW.

I think he's a prime example of being successful in one area does not make someone an expert in anything else and the major issues of giving someone like that too much influence in other areas. Similar to what we see with Bill Gates - both of them have had way too much influence in the US education, ways that have never had a good outcome. I think both of them, and more, have far too much influence over things they shouldn't and have caused harm because of it.

I think people need to be more critical of their influence - we can talk about how great their charity donations are, but we also need to recognise that those donations often buy influence to their whims and often spoken about to gain clout without action - I mean, Musk openly said he would donate millions in stock to deal with world hunger if someone gave him a costed plan, the WFP gave him that costed plan, and then nothing happened. Why make that offer in the first place other than to look good?

Sure, he's made some of his employees millionaires, but it's well documented he treats many of his employees like shit and his companies have been investigated repeatedly for severe safety concerns. He has pretty normal big business/US libertarian views on hating unions and anything to do with workers' rights, and uses his influence and wealth to attack them.

Musk has been left-wing when it suits him. He is on record having voted for Obama, H Clinton, and Biden, and having previously been vocally pro-dealing with climate change as you mentioned. People criticised him and his influence back then too.

It's also on record that he shifted more right/American libertarian after a conflict where the Biden administration didn't include Tesla in a White House summit on electric cars. He, Trump, and a few others of similar temperament did a whole 'ex-Democrat' marketing as part of pushing for Trump's second term.

It's also pretty well documented that he doesn't treat the women in his life nor his 14 children. I don't think doing well in some of his businesses outweighs that.

With this news, it would be interesting to see how much of any of the decisions of SpaceX on this were by Musk specifically vs corporate boards and how the corporate interests and money follows the shifts in position we've seen.