random people having this kind of influence on international conflicts because they have a lot of money is good and healthy and okay

“One of the advantages is the huge amount of innovation coming out of the private sector, which the government wants to leverage to stay ahead of China and others,” said Brian Weeden, the director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, a think tank.

Well if the government had invested in its space and innovation programs they wouldn't have to rely on the private sector.

What a shit article. Is it a job requirement that anyone at WaPo writing about Musk turns everything into fawning praise? Almost none of the article is about the incident itself, the majority of it is just rehashing all the things Musk's companies have done while crediting him for it (lol) and completely burying that the book alleges he shut down the internet during the drone attack after being in contact with senior Russian officials.

Wow he is so subtle. What a genius move that no one expected. /s

That's how you put yourself on the CIA and KGBs watch list

Literal supervillain behaviour

This is the best summary I could come up with:

But the recounting of the incident is a reminder of how SpaceX — and its founder — amassed enormous power and leverage as its competitors proved incapable of keeping up with a dizzying pace of innovation.

“One of the advantages is the huge amount of innovation coming out of the private sector, which the government wants to leverage to stay ahead of China and others,” said Brian Weeden, the director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, a think tank.

SpaceX started providing Starlink internet service to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, creating a lifeline for the country when its communications systems had largely been knocked out.

“Despite being the launch provider with the most proven track record and the lowest prices in the industry, SpaceX was seemingly not considered by Amazon,” the suit alleges.

“SpaceX has been truly innovative in several key areas, launch and large constellation broadband internet — two things people have long dreamed of but have been tried and failed before,” Weeden said.

A good portion of that success stems from Musk himself, who works relentlessly and pushes his teams to as well, attempting to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

The original article contains 1,360 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 86%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

If you are hitting a paywall, remember to turn off scripts for this particular site on ublock origin

Waiting for him to have an "accident"

That is a very unflattering photo. lol

Paywalled articles are such a bummer. I understand why they exist, but hoarding knowledge sucks.

People have a lot of family over there. A lot of folks are really upset.

I wonder how much more before people have an extreme reaction to him personally.

Starlink's dominant revenue stream is the US military. It's seen as a moderately strategic program by the US as they attempt to saturate specific orbits of strategic value with US assets to prevent China from using those orbits.

If Musk actually did this, then he did it with the knowledge and likely the direction of the US military. The alternative is that he didn't do this but the story is being planted as part of a propaganda campaign in which Musk is playing the role of right-wing mobilizer.

All Musk has to do to answer this is to say outages occur in satellite networks all the time. But, I'll suppose he'll remain silent until someone charges him with something. Would be nice to have a witness on this stupid SOB