How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.

  • jonne@infosec.pub
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    1 year ago

    Or they should’ve never left this to the private sector if there was going to be a strategic component to it. Now they’re at the mercy of an unstable foreign national, who is himself beholden to a bunch of foreign investors.

    • demlet@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      38
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Turns out unregulated capitalism might be slightly at odds with democracy.

    • Kes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      The most insane part is that they never even entered into a contract with Starlink to provide service. Starlink is the backbone of Ukraine’s communications infrastructure, and it’s shocking that the DoD and the Ukraine Armed Forces never thought “hey we should get a contract with Musk so we can ensure he keeps Starlink available throughout the war”. For such a critical service, they were content with dealing with Starlink directly and having Elon subsidize it personally, giving him a large degree of control over one of the most vital components of Ukrainian communications, rather than what they eventually did by going through the DoD to negotiate a contract with Elon using taxpayer dollars