Fearing a nuclear war, Elon Musk snipped Starlink services to thwart Ukrainian drone offensive on Russia

Starlink CEO Elon Musk reportedly tried to shut down Ukrainian access to its satellite communications network when Kyiv's forces were attempting to attack the Russian fleet off the Crimea coast last year, according to an excerpt from a biography written by Walter Isaacson titled Elon Musk.

Musk told the biographer that he was worried about being dragged into the war and ordered engineers to turn off the satellites as he feared that the attack would amount to “mini Pearl Harbor” and lead to a Russian nuclear retaliation.

According to the book, which is set to be released next week, after Musk disconnected the satellites, Ukrainian drones “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”, reported CNN.

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“How am I in this war?” Musk told the writer, who has previously published biographies of Steve Jobs and Henry Kissinger.

“Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”

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Despite Ukraine's request, Musk remained adamant

The author further claimed in his book that Ukraine’s former deputy prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov “begged” Musk to restore access to the satellites. But the billionaire denied the request, saying that the drone attack was “going too far and inviting strategic defeat.”

More than 20,000 Starlink terminals were donated by Musk to Ukraine after Russia destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure at the beginning of the war in February 2022.

Last October, Musk wrote to the Pentagon to say that it could no longer afford to continue funding the service and asked the Biden administration to cover the cost, which he estimated to be in hundreds of millions of dollars, CNN revealed at the time.

Earlier this year, the US and European governments negotiated a deal with Musk, paying for another 100,000 Starlink satellite dishes to be sent to Ukraine.

It’s unknown whether the Tesla CEO has reconsidered his fears over nuclear war after receivingsuch a large bulk order.

Musk responds

After a user, Mario Nawfal — a self-described combination of entrepreneur, business influencer and “citizen journalist” — shared the excerpts from the book on social media platform X, Musk said that had he accededto the Ukrainian government’s request, SpaceX would have faced retaliation.

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he said in response to the post on X.

(With inputs from agencies)

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