Elon Musk Fires Back At Ungrateful Ukrainian Official Who Told Him To F*ck Off, Tells Him To Pay For Starlink
Tesla CEO Elon Musk made the cardinal sin of telling Ukraine and Russia to find a way to make peace and for that he was told to F*ck off by Ukrainian official Andrij Melnyk. But the Ukrainians forgot the number one rule, don’t bite that hand that feeds you.
Because the country is getting much of its internet, especially for its frontline troops, from Musk’s Starink system. Which he donated for free. But the Ukraine gravy train is over and now Musk says they will have to pay for Starlink, or the Pentagon will have to.
Musk said: “SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable.”
Sawyer Merritt said:
“SpaceX’s request is reasonable. Shouldn’t expect a private sec co. to continue to fund this for free forever.
“Do Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, etc do their work for free? SpaceX was generous in donating what they did & they’ll happily cont. to mfg terminals with gov money.”
Hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine are using Starlink because of @elonmusk SpaceX, the US, Poland and many others who worked together. There are now over 25,000 terminals in Ukraine.
SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2022
By year end, @SpaceX’s donations will have costed them upwards of $120M.
“Starlink has been absolutely essential because the Russians have targeted the Ukrainian communications infrastructure,” said Dimitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank. “Without that they’d be really operating in the blind in many cases.”
Musk responded:
“We’re just following his recommendation.”