Elon Musk Foiled Ukrainian Drone Attack Against Russian Fleet by Turning Off Starlink Satellite Access: Report

The world's richest man stopped a Ukrainian undersea attack on the Russian naval fleet in Crimea by secretly ordering engineers to turn off his Starlink satellite communications network last year, according to an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and other companies.

The Ukrainian submarine drones “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” author Walter Isaacson wrote, according to CNN.

Musk’s decision left Ukrainian officials begging him to turn the satellites back on, according to the excerpt.

Musk was said to have been driven by fears that Russia would respond to an attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons--a fear stoked during his conversations with senior Russian officials, Isaacson wrote.

While the excerpt doesn't specify a date, Starlink terminals in eastern Ukraine went dead last October. “It was never intended to be weaponized, but the Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in February of this year.

The iconoclastic multibillionaire reportedly feared a “mini-Pearl Harbor” by the Ukrainians in Crimea--territory that Russia illegally annexed in 2014 and has occupied ever since. Musk was said to believe such a sneak attack would have led to global conflict.

“My inference was that he was getting nervous that Starlink’s involvement was increasingly seen in Russia as enabling the Ukrainian war effort, and was looking for a way to placate Russian concerns,” Colin Kahl, a former U.S. under-secretary of defense for policy, told the New Yorker, recalling a conversation with Musk after Starlink services were curtailed. 

Prior reports have suggested that Musk has sympathies with Russia and has worried that Russia viewed his Starlink network as a major advantage for Ukraine. Isaacson’s new book describes how Musk felt himself being pulled into the Ukraine war after Russia’s 2022 invasion. 

Musk gave Ukraine some 5,000 Starlink satellite terminals worth millions of dollars, and they became critical to Ukraine’s defense as Russia jammed and destroyed mobile phone and internet services. 

But the tech titan balked once Ukraine started using Starlink terminals for offensive attacks against Russian forces, the biography says.

“How am I in this war?” Musk asked Isaacson. 

“Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”

Seeking a way to support Ukraine without being blamed for attacks on Russian soldiers, Musk spoke by phone with U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, chairman of the joint chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, and the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Isaacson wrote.

At the same time, Mykhailo Fedorov, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister,  begged Musk to restore connectivity for the submarine drones by telling Musk about their capabilities in a text message, according to Isaacson.

“I just want you—the person who is changing the world through technology—to know this,” Fedorov told Musk.

Seeking to extricate himself, Must demanded the U.S. government take over the cost of Starlink in Ukraine--before backing down.

SpaceX CEO Shotwell was furious.

“The Pentagon had a $145 million check ready to hand to me, literally,” she told Isaacson.

“Then Elon succumbed to the bullshit on Twitter and to the haters at the Pentagon who leaked the story.”

In June, the Pentagon reached an agreement with SpaceX to buy Starlink services for the Ukrainian government.