Nationalize Starlink and SpaceX

I am urging you to take action to prevent Elon Musk from undermining our government’s objectives: nationalize Starlink and SpaceX. Historian Heather Cox Richardson explains: “On Thursday, excerpts from a forthcoming biography of Elon Musk by historian Walter Isaacson revealed that Musk ‘secretly told his engineers to turn off [Starlink] coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast’ after learning that the Ukrainian military was sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives at the Russian naval fleet based in Crimea. After talking to Russian leaders, who said they would respond with nuclear weapons—later events suggest this was a bluff—Musk shut off Starlink, the drone submarines lost the connectivity they needed to find their targets, and the weapons simply washed ashore. “According to Isaacson, Ukrainian officials begged Musk to turn the coverage back on, but he refused, saying that Ukraine ‘is now going too far and inviting strategic defeat.’ He told U.S. and Russian officials that he wanted Starlink to be used only for defense. Then he offered a ‘peace plan’ that required Ukraine to give up territory to Russia and reject plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Later, he again disabled Starlink coverage in the midst of a Ukrainian advance. “Isaacson portrays Musk as frustrated by being dragged into a war. ‘Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars,’ Musk told Isaacson. ‘It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.’ Since the story broke, Musk has defended his unwillingness to be in the middle of a war.  “But Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, pointed out on Musk’s own social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that the same Russian fleet Musk protected went on to fire missiles at Ukrainian cities, killing civilians, including children. Russia is also attacking Ukraine’s infrastructure for exporting grain, which threatens the price and availability of food in Africa. “The privatization of the functions of government in the U.S. has given a single man the power to affect global affairs, working, in this case, against the stated objectives of our own government.” It’s unacceptable for a single private individual—let alone an unstable antisemitic billionaire—to have the power to affect our national policies on a whim. Remove that ability by nationalizing the critical infrastructure his companies provide.