Elon Musk first said the U.S. government was responsible for the Starshield limits. Then Trump said he had no knowledge. Then Musk said Ukraine did it.
That is three culprits in one week. The only one not yet accused is the satellite.
The speed in question is 400 km/h, or 249 mph. ,Ukraine's Defense Ministry says it has recorded the restoration of Starlink/Starshield speed, stable on equipment moving over 400 km/h., Before that, ,Ukrainian officials said the curbs capped Starshield operations at 100 mph and forced the cancellation of some operations.,
Musk's defense is a terms-of-service violation. ,He posted that Ukraine's military used Starlink for offensive drone strikes to kill people, and that the loophole was closed last week., He also wrote that ,"We simply enforced our terms of service when they were bypassed.",
Enforced them with no warning, mid-war, on a customer flying drones. Somewhere a lawyer is billing for the phrase "end user agreement."
Then there is Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Zelensky. ,He says commercial Starlink terminals in Ukraine are capped at 70-90 km/h and don't work on Russian territory, so they physically can't be used for deep strikes., That is a loophole the size of a locked door.
The best part is the timing. Trump ,confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that he had asked Musk to ease the restrictions., So the man who said he was not involved was involved in the un-involving.
Retail traders will try to price this. They will ask whether SpaceX is a buy after a week of blame tennis with a sovereign nation. Sir, the company can throttle an army and then post about it. The chart is not the product.
Musk also wrote that ,SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth "BY FAR.", Capital letters. Nothing says calm corporate policy like all caps on a Saturday.
Nobody on this ticker has read the terms of service. Neither has Musk, apparently, until Ukraine broke them.
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