US Senate to probe Musk and Starlink's work in Ukraine
The US Senate Armed Services Committee has begun studying national security issues caused by billionaire Elon Musk's decision to block his private Starlink satellite network near occupied Crimea.
Source: Bloomberg; Jack Reed, chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee; European Pravda
Details: Reed says that the reports about the use of Starlink have revealed "serious national-security liability issues and the committee is engaged on this issue".
"The committee is aggressively probing this issue from every angle," he said.
Reed said the committee will look at the broader satellite communications market, government contracts and "the outsized role Mr. Musk and his company have taken here."
"Neither Elon Musk, nor any private citizen, can have the last word when it comes to U.S. national security," Reed said.
Other Democratic senators on the committee, including Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, demanded an answer from the US Department of Defense about why Musk, and not the US government, decided when Ukraine could use the satellite network.
Shaheen and Warren plan to send a letter to Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin asking for details about Starlink and Musk's work in Ukraine, said a congressional aide who spoke anonymously. The committee is not yet launching a formal investigation but is rather gathering information, the aide said.
In a short interview, Shaheen said that she asked administration representatives during secret briefings about control over the use of Starlink in Ukraine and did not receive an answer.
Background:
- Earlier, US Senator Elizabeth Warren demanded an investigation into SpaceX after Elon Musk admitted that he blocked Ukraine's access to Starlink to prevent an attack on Russian warships off the coast of Crimea.
- CNN, which obtained an excerpt of Musk's biography written by American journalist and author Walter Isaacson, reported that in 2022, Elon Musk secretly ordered the Starlink satellite connection near the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea to be shut down to disrupt an attack by Ukraine on the Russian naval fleet in Sevastopol.
- Later, Musk himself confirmed that the drone attack on the Russian fleet in Crimea had been disrupted.
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