Elon Musk told his engineers to switch off a Starlink satellite communications network near the coast of Crimea last year due to fears that a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s naval fleet could trigger a nuclear response from President Putin, a new biography has revealed.
Ukraine has used SpaceX-made Starlink satellite terminals to keep its military forces connected even as Russia has destroyed phone and internet networks. Yet as Ukrainian submarine drones armed with explosives approached the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, they suddenly lost connectivity and “washed ashore harmlessly”, according to Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the eccentric billionaire, entitled Elon Musk. An excerpt was published yesterday by CNN.
