In 2022, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk allegedly secretly instructed his employees to turn off Starlink satellites near the coast of annexed Crimea in order to thwart an UAF attack on the Russian navy.
Elon Musk is often accused of playing along with Russian interests and sympathy for Vladimir Putin. But this time the media burst into a real information bomb. Allegedly, Musk thwarted the attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Russian Navy. According to CNN, this is stated in the biography of the businessman, written by Walter Isaacson.
The TV channel does not specify when the UAF attack was supposed to take place, but the book says that Starlink’s work in the Crimea region was limited when maritime drones filled with explosives were already approaching the Russian fleet.
The biography clarifies that the Ukrainian authorities tried to convince Musk to restore the satellites, but he refused, saying that Kyiv “goes too far” with this attack. As a result, the drones that lost connection washed ashore, writes CNN.
According to Isaacson, Musk’s decision was dictated by the fear that the Russian authorities could respond to the “mini Pearl Harbor” with nuclear weapons. The book says that this fear in the businessman was caused by conversations with “high-ranking Russian officials.”
“Starlink was not designed to go to war. It was made so that people can watch Netflix, relax, connect to the Internet at school and do good peaceful deeds, and not strike with drones,” Elon Musk said in an interview with Walter Isaacson for the book.
According to The New Yorker, Musk told Pentagon officials that he personally spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In particular, Musk mentioned his contacts with Putin during a telephone conversation in October 2022 with Colin Kahl, then US Deputy Secretary of Defense.
The conversation between Kahl and Musk took place just after the Ukrainian military was faced with a disconnection of communications provided by SpaceX’s Starlink terminals.
As noted by The New Yorker, by the fall of 2022, Musk became increasingly concerned about the fact that his technology was being used for war. In September, at a conference in Aspen, Colorado, Musk “even seemed to express his support for Vladimir Putin.” “He was on stage and said: “We have to negotiate. Putin wants peace – we have to negotiate peace with Putin,” Musk was quoted as saying by Linkedin founder Reed Hoffman, who attended the event. A week later, Musk tweeted his version of the “peace plan”, which assumed that Crimea remained under Russian control, and a new vote was held in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
To the dismay of Pentagon officials, The New Yorker notes, Musk said he personally spoke to Putin. According to one of the sources, the businessman made the same statement weeks before he tweeted his “peace plan”. He said that his consultations with the Kremlin were regular.
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