Originally published at: Elon Musk secretly ordered Starlink engineers to disrupt Ukraine counter-attack on Russian fleet | Boing Boing
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That sounds super illegal
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it sure does. james bond villain type of illegal. what the fuck
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Combined with Ronan Farrow’s piece, this is some frightening stuff. It’s bad enough to be a right-wing idiot stirring up a bunch of other right-wing idiots, but this is some Bond villain stuff. Granted, not one of the cool villains.
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One nice thing about people getting rich from the lottery is that it’s very difficult for them or the public to later pretend/believe that their wealth was in any way related to their intelligence or lack thereof.
Not so for tech “geniuses,” it seems.
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Absolutely! and it is quite easy to discover some likely laws being broken here
10 U.S. Code § 903b - Art. 103b. Aiding the enemy
Any person who—
(1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things; or
(2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to, or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly;shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct. This section does not apply to a military commission established under chapter 47A of this title.
“, or other things;” certainly applies here. yet rather than death to the foul dude, how about ‘fining’ him by transferring the whole of starlink to public ownership? (“Seems unlikely, but…”)
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Smells like a court martial to me
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Of course Russia is technically not an enemy. So none of this will apply, and he’ll probably get away with it.
Though I do wonder what will happen to his business prospects in other countries as a result.
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I have been repeatedly reassured by gentlemen on the internet that allowing people and organizations to accumulate unlimited quanitities of wealth and power is totally harmless because individual giving to political candidates is limited. I’m pretty sure that invalidates your so-called “article”
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Yeah, pretty much.
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his capricious “cave submarine”-style meddling means both Ukraine and Russia have an interest in killing him—but not until the war ends.
There might be quite a queue by then.
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It should affect his business prospects with the US government. Today he’s acting on a whim against Ukraine - what about US allies in NATO who might have policies he disagrees with? How about the US government itself? Should they be using Starlink or SpaceX for national security purposes when it appears one fragile ego is all that stands between success and failure.
The French government would have nationalised both companies by now (and put someone effortlessly stylish in charge) to ensure national security.
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I believe John Shirley’s "Eclipse: trilogy (aka the “Song of Youth” Trilogy) 1985-1900 series mentions a war wherein China allies with Mexico to launch an attack across the Gulf of Mexico into Southern US.**
The attack, however, does not come off successfully because all of the microchips in the vehicles, jets, tanks, etal were had a secret on/off switch that the US activated…stalling ships at sea, dropping enemy planes from the sky, and so on.
Then again, maybe this was in a William Gibson story/novel??
State-run microchip development seems a bit far-off? Then again, that’s what a lot of the China Hauwei phone interdiction is about (sort of).
**not sure if this was done pre- or post-“Red Dawn” movie
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I think it’s the Xi-Putin connection, coupled with the Musk-Putin connection. That’s all I got.
ETA: Neither Xi or Putin are going to attack the US directly, but if you have a useful idiot on your side… 
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In saner times this news would turn a whole lot of Americans against Elon Musk. Things being what they are, this will probably just turn more Elon Musk fans into hardcore Putin supporters.
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well, in “eclipse” the us had become a christian nationalist theocracy and was hunting it’s own citizens with drones so … there’s always that
i don’t think shirley wrote anything about an accidental billionaire who helped russia invade its neighbors though
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This sounds like a violation of the Logan Act - a U.S. citizen interfering with the country’s foreign policy.
Also a violation of the contract with the defense department seems not unlikely. They could possibly seek significant damages.
Regardless- he has way too much power for one person. And it needs to be diminished. Break up his companies- whatever is needed.
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After 9/11 someone described terrorism as “the privatization of war”, this is the privatization of other government services and it impacts huge geopolitical events. “The oligarch-ation of everything”; Musk only cares about nuclear war insomuch as it hurts his bottom line. AKA: end stage capitalism.
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Not “dragging China into this.” That was merely citing a 38-yr old novel in which FICTIONAL global conflicts were affected/altered by coding embedded in microchips.
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