Elon Musk posted on X that Ukraine's military used commercial Starlink for offensive drone strikes. He said the loophole was closed last week.
Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, replied with math.
Commercial Starlink drones in Ukraine are capped at 70 to 90 km/h. They don't work inside Russia. Beskrestnov said Ukraine therefore "physically cannot use commercial Starlink for deep strikes or medium-range strikes."
That is a drone moving at the speed of a minivan in a school zone. Musk's theory requires it to murder someone anyway.
Beskrestnov also called it "very strange" that Musk doesn't know the restrictions on his own product. Read that again. The man who owns the satellites got a briefing on them from the customer.
Musk did admit SpaceX throttled Starlink in Ukraine. So the story is a company throttling a war zone, then explaining the throttle with a violation that the throttle's own specs make impossible. That is not a loophole. That is a sentence with no verb.
Ukrainian officials said earlier this month that the restrictions disrupted drone services and left the country exposed to Russian attacks. Zelenskyy said all satellite-dependent drone missions could only run on Starshield. Different product. Different system. Same guy's invoice.
If you own SpaceX exposure through some retail app, congratulations. Your thesis now depends on a post written on a Saturday.
Musk's defense of the company is that it's civilian. Ukraine's defense is that it's slow. Both sides are arguing about a satellite dish like it's a Ferrari.
Fastest civilian drone in this dispute: the one carrying Musk's explanation. It still lost to a speed limit.
Photo by on Unsplash
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