The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee is investigating national security issues over Elon Musk’s decision not to activate the Starlink satellite network to support the Ukrainian attack on the Russian fleet off the coast of Crimea, reports Bloomberg.
Committee chairman Jack Reed said that reports on the use of Starlink revealed “serious national security liability issues, and the committee is looking into it.” According to him, the issue is being examined “from all angles.”
Jack Reed also said that the committee will look at the broader satellite communications market, government contracts, and the role Elon Musk and his company play here.
“Neither Elon Musk, nor any private citizen, can have the last word when it comes to U.S. national security,” emphasized the chairman of the committee.
Other Democratic senators on the committee, including Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are demanding that the Defense Department answer the question of why Elon Musk, and not a U.S. government official, decided when Ukraine could use the satellite network.
As a reminder, the scandal erupted around a situation that occurred in 2022 and became known from an excerpt of a biographical book about the billionaire. The author wrote that Elon Musk last year secretly asked his engineers to turn off Starlink off the Crimean coast and disrupted the Ukrainian operation against the Russian navy.
Instead, the billionaire says that the network in that region was not activated at all, and he did not turn it on despite an emergency request from Ukrainian officials. Separately, he also said that he did not activate Starlink near Crimea because of US sanctions against Russia. However, he would have agreed to do so if he had received a direct directive from US President Joe Biden.
Loading comments …