Comment by estearum

7 hours ago

Seems to me that Starlink is de facto an organ of the US government at this point. Should just be nationalized so a demonstrably unstable foreigner doesn't control something of such vital importance.

The Starshield portion of Starlink is already controlled by the government. It was Starshield that restricted access to Ukraine, and the decision reportedly came from the White House.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/order-limit-starshield-...

OP's article of course is about spectrum allocation in the US and potential trade retaliation, which isn't all that related to Musk's control of Starlink.

  • Current reporting is that Musk approached the White House with the idea of slowing down Starshield.

    And the situation here is that Musk's instability is causing Europe to want to not depend on Starlink, and by extension not depend on the US. So now we're using other organs of the state to essentially coerce them into using a system that is de facto controlled by an unstable foreigner, but is part of the US defense apparatus.

The idea of a drug addicted undocumented immigrant being in charge of our space program and sat comms does seem incredibly unwise.

Unfortunately Trump is worse than Musk. And it's Trump who's to blame for the Ukraine speed restrictions.

  • Current reporting is that Musk approached the White House with the idea. Of course in reality the White House holds all ultimate responsibility, but that doesn't mean Musk is without guilt (especially if he proposed the idea for... some reason...?)

You think Trump wouldn't immediately promote Musk to General?

  • I would be a bit surprised, actually, just because they did have a giant public spat around the end of Musk's weird temp job in DOGE.

  • He would if he could. And let's not give him any ideas. Musk can do enough damage as it is.