1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Investigate Elon Musk's decision to throttle Starlink service to Ukraine's military and force the Pentagon's inspector general to act. The IG told Congress this week it is effectively refusing to look into the outages, and that refusal is unacceptable. One private citizen should not have the unchecked power to collapse a front line. Musk himself admitted he ordered the throttling, then suggested Ukraine upgrade to a more expensive contract to restore service. With over 250,000 Starlink terminals now operating across the war zone, at $2,500 per terminal per month, this is extortion dressed up as a business dispute. Eisenhower warned us about exactly this kind of arrangement, where a private corporation's profit motive becomes entangled with national security decisions that belong to elected governments. Starlink already faces scrutiny for monopolizing rural internet in the U.S. and raising prices after communities became dependent. The same playbook is now being run on a wartime ally. Congress must demand accountability for this abuse of monopoly power before the next outage comes with an even steeper price tag.