Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of Twitter, looks on as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles Exhibition Center in Paris, France, June 16, 2023.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Author Walter Isaacson took to social media to try to “clarify” an excerpt from his upcoming book “Elon Musk.” The clip quickly drew backlash after it described how Musk thwarted a Ukrainian attack on Russian warships.
Isaacson’s book claims that Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX last year ordered engineers to shut down Starlink’s satellite network over Crimea to disrupt a Ukrainian military initiative. Musk’s Starlink terminals arrived in the early days of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, as Western governments worked to supply Kiev with artillery and air defense systems.
Musk eventually became angry about the arrangement, saying, “Starlink was not intended to be involved in wars,” according to the book. The technology billionaire told Isaacson he feared the Ukrainian attack on Russian ships would prompt the Kremlin to launch a nuclear war.
But in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Isaacson shared new details late Friday.
“To clarify the Starlink issue, the Ukrainians THOUGHT reporting as far as Crimea was possible, but that was not the case,” Isaacson wrote. “They asked Musk to enable this for their drone sub-attack on the Russian fleet. Musk didn’t enable this because he thought, probably rightly, that it would cause a major war.”
Crimea is a peninsula on the Black Sea that Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and it is home to Russian warships in the Black Sea. In the days following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Russia in February 2022, the Black Sea fleet fired missiles at once-zealous Ukrainian coastal cities while imposing a devastating naval blockade.
Isaacson continued in a second message On Saturday, he said he “wrongly” believed Musk had made the decision to shut down Starlink’s satellite network on the night of the attack.
“Based on my conversations with Musk, I mistakenly believed that the policy not to authorize the use of Starlink for an attack on Crimea was first decided on the night of the Ukrainian attempted covert attack that evening” , Isaacson said. “He now says the policy had been put in place before, but the Ukrainians didn’t know about it and that evening he simply reaffirmed the policy.”
Isaacson’s X-posts came after a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lashed out at Musk over the clip.
“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on social media Thursday after CNN reported. about some details from Isaacson’s book. .
“As a result, civilians and children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and a big ego,” he added.
Isaacson’s full book will be published on Tuesday.
Read the full excerpt about Starlink and Ukraine in the Washingtonpost.
— CNBCs Amanda Macias contributed to this report.