Starlink’s CEO Elon Musk Refused Ukraine’s Request for Starlink to Be Used in Russian Attack
Key takeaways
- Elon Musk confirmed he turned off Starlink access last year to stop the company getting embroiled in the Ukraine-Russia conflict
- Ukraine officials have called for an investigation into the decision
- Starlink continues to grow its reach with new Cloudflare partnership recently announced
Controversial billionaire and CEO of Starlink, Elon Musk, finds himself embroiled in another controversy. This time, it’s for declining Ukraine’s plea to utilize Starlink technology in countering a Russian drone attack last year. Musk justified his decision by citing concerns over escalating into a “major” act of war and involving SpaceX in the conflict.
Regardless of public opinion, Starlink continues to experience significant growth and is storming ahead with its growth plans. Here’s what’s new.
What’s the latest with Starlink and Russia?
Last week, CNN reported that an excerpt from Musk’s new biography says he ordered Starlink’s network to be turned off near the Crimean coast to disrupt a Ukrainian attack on Russia, which quickly caused an outcry in news outlets and on social media.
Responding on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk said Ukraine’s intent was “to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor”, and that had he agreed to the request, “then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
The biography further justifies the decision over fears that Russia would have responded to the Ukrainian attack with nuclear warheads. Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s space exploration company SpaceX, has provided free internet to Ukraine since the beginning of the war in 2022.
Vadym Skybytskyi, an officer in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Intelligence Directorate GUR, said on national Ukrainian television that it would be necessary to investigate the situation and “appoint a specific group to examine what happened”. The Pentagon declined to comment on Musk’s decision.
Starlink’s financial performance
Both SpaceX and satellite internet service Starlink are private companies, but Musk has indicated in the past that he could take the latter to market once the financials were strong enough.
In August, SpaceX confirmed it had generated $55 million in profit on $1.5 billion in revenue for its latest fiscal quarter. The company is valued at $150 billion per its latest employee stock sale, with SpaceX predicting it will double its revenues in 2023 to $8 billion from $4 billion in 2022. Euroconsult estimates that 40% of that revenue will come from Starlink.
Starlink’s customer base has also rapidly expanded, with the satellite company reporting 1.5 million subscribers in May at a growth rate of 3,600 new customers per day.
The company recently announced a partnership with content delivery service Cloudflare to improve Starlink’s performance for users, which sent Cloudshare’s stock up 7.2%. The two companies will collaborate to boost Starlink’s mini data center network to deliver faster internet speeds.
The bottom line
Musk’s role in avoiding getting his companies caught up in an international war might draw ire over whether it was the right decision, but from a financial perspective, it’s understandable why he didn’t want SpaceX or Starlink associated with the conflict.
As for Starlink’s financial picture, the company is going from strength to strength with new subscribers, SpaceX recording a profit and its new partnership with Cloudflare. Should Starlink or SpaceX ever go public, investors will be chomping at the bit to get in at the ground level.
