How is Elon Musk Intervening in the Russian–Ukrainian War?

On 10 May 2022, US billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Russia threatened him through the head of Russia's space agency over his attempts to provide Ukraine with internet service.

Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, claimed that Russia is increasingly targeting SpaceX's Starlink internet communications facilities in Ukraine. However, Musk claims that the situation has been challenging.

This brings a question, how did a US private owner have so much influence in Ukraine’s war, to the degree that Russia threatens him?

 

Satellite Internet

The Foreign Policy magazine published an article by Vivek Wadhwa, an American businessman and technology academic, and Alex Salkever, a journalist specializing in technical affairs.

It said that Broadband internet services and rapid deployment (satellite internet directly) have proven to be critical during the war in Ukraine and other emergencies.

The authors began their article by referring to what Elon Musk, who launched satellite internet in 2020, wrote on Twitter on February 26, 2022: " Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route." he said, announcing the return of broadband connections to dark areas of Ukraine.

The authors said that business rarely affects geopolitics, but here, Starlink in war-torn Ukraine has become a lifeline for the flow of information, keeping the affected hospitals in touch, and Starlink acting as a link for drones targeting Russian forces with artillery shelling.

CNBC reports that up to 150,000 Ukrainians connect to the internet every day thanks to SpaceX's Starlink internet services. The figure is based on rough data shared by Ukrainian Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov in a tweet.

Fedorov reached out to Elon Musk via Twitter shortly after the Russian war began, asking for his help to start satellite internet services in the region. It took Musk and SpaceX about 10 hours to respond and activate internet services in the region, where they had not yet begun business operations.

 

Starlink Terminals

In terms of Starlink, the US Agency for International Development stated in April that SpaceX's terminals will give Ukraine "unlimited, unthrottled data connectivity," even if fiber optic or cellular communication infrastructure links are destroyed.

According to Reuters space writer Joey Roulette, the majority of the 5,000 terminals and related internet access—3,667 in total—were supplied directly by SpaceX at a cost of "approximately $10 million." The remaining 1,333 terminals were acquired by USAID.

While SpaceX had satellites to provide the service, only a limited number of people bought the necessary devices on earth (dish stations) to connect to these satellites. As internet cables were the target of attacks, Ukraine was in dire need of Starlink terminals, and assistance flowed from all sides.

Throughout the conflict, Ukrainian stations not only helped to stay in touch with the world but also helped hospital patients receive ongoing care.

The impact of new low-Earth orbit satellite towers, such as Starlink, goes beyond providing broadband internet beyond war zones and natural disasters.

In the United States, for example, 19 million Americans, 6% of the population, lack access to broadband for communications, many in unpopulated rural areas. Although 5G wireless cellular networks have greatly improved access to data for millions of people around the world, their scope is limited. Far from densely populated areas, the 5G network will leave many areas around the world unutterable.

 

Russian Response

According to a Reuters piece, which Musk also shared, a coalition of nations has alleged that Russia sponsored a hack against satellite internet networks, which eventually brought tens of thousands of modems offline immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

According to Reuters, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss claimed the attack on ViaSat’s KA-SAT network was "deliberate and malevolent," while the European Union Council said the breach caused "indiscriminate communication failures" in Ukraine and many member nations. The assaults were verified by the US, Canada, and Estonia, according to Reuters.

"After those modems were knocked offline, it wasn't like you unplugged them and plugged them back in and rebooted and they came back," said Rob Joyce, Director of Cybersecurity at the US National Security Agency.

"They were down and down hard; they had to go back to the factory to be swapped out."

While the exact extent of KA-SAT's outage has not been published, the firm does offer connectivity to the Ukrainian military and police forces, according to Reuters. This might have an operational impact on first responders.

 

Fears of Exploitation

Starlink will be a challenge for old communications providers, the report says. In most of the United States, for example, customers have only two terrestrial broadband providers to choose from, while a large proportion of Americans have access to only one broadband provider, and broadband costs are high by global standards.

In many countries of the developing world, there is intermittent access to broadband service and inadequate wireless data coverage from cellular networks.

Data and information control is critical for authoritarian regimes to maintain power. It was no surprise that China announced its state-sponsored plan to build a constellation of 13,000 satellites and launch it into low-Earth orbit using a new reusable version of its Long March 8 rocket.

This is likely to limit Chinese citizens' use of foreign satellite networks to maintain the Great Firewall. But satellites in low-Earth orbit have so far proved to be the biggest test of authoritarian restrictions.

Blocking access to data from tens of thousands of satellites in the sky is more difficult than blocking large data channels at state borders.

The report adds that Chinese citizens have access to data via low-Earth orbit satellites operating outside Chinese airspace. Attempts by the Chinese authorities to ban all low-Earth orbit broadband satellites accessible to their citizens could block access to those satellites by citizens residing in neighboring countries, such as India or Russia.

The downing of non-Chinese satellites as they move across the region threatens to create a chain reaction, not to mention (debris clouds) that could inadvertently destroy many targets.