Tag: starlink

Starshield or nothing: NZDF moves closer to buying into Musk’s satellite network for secrets

New Zealand has moved closer to buying services from a satellite network set up by tech trillionaire Elon Musk for secret communications.

RNZ revealed in June that the NZ Defence Force (NZDF) was running a six-month trial of Starshield, the first confirmed case of a government other than America’s trialling the two-year-old system that comprises hundreds if not thousands of satellites.

On Friday Defence told RNZ, “A Starshield trial has been completed and showed potential utility for the NZDF.”

Starshield ran into controversy last month when Ukraine’s access to it was reduced, jeopardising some combat and air defence missions, with critics warning this was the risk of relying on privately-owned systems in a war or crisis, as Time reported.

NZ Defence withheld details of the outcomes of its Starshield trial on the grounds releasing them might prejudice national security or defence or international relations.

“Any subsequent satellite communications acquisitions would follow normal capability management and acquisition processes,” it said in a three-line statement.

The trial was purchased through the US government’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system and required the defence minister here to sign an indemnity to shield the US from any damages claims, a routine requirement of the FMS.

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Musk’s Starlink Is Building An Orbital Bypass As Undersea Cable Sabotage Threats Mount

Undersea telecom cables are critical civilian infrastructure and are increasingly under threat. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have shown how civilian infrastructure can become easy targets.

On Friday, the Financial Times, citing maritime intelligence firm Windward, reported that several Iran-linked vessels slowed or lingered over cable routes in the Gulf of Oman as cable-cutting threats rise. For Gulf-allied states, the challenge is both to protect the cables from sabotage and to keep data centers humming amid Iranian drone threats.

It’s not just cable-cutting threats in the Gulf. Remember in 2024 when Baltic undersea cables were severed between Finland and Germany, causing weeks of “disruption.”

There must be a solution to cable sabotage that could bring parts of the internet down for days, if not weeks, and that solution might be Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Musk joined Ron Baron of Baron Capital on Friday afternoon to discuss several topics, including Starlink buildout and bandwidth, SpaceX Starship launches, the mega AI-chip plant called Terafab, and, of course, with Democrats set to control Congress, the future of orbital compute.

Keeping our focus on what could be the best solution to undersea telecom cables. Well, Musk told Ron: “Starlink version 4 will have 10x the capability of V3 (which itself is 10x better than V2), especially with the long-distance laser links. Our next-gen laser links will be 10-terabits per second. 100x better. And we’ll put 10 of them on.”

The clip of Musk and Baron was shared on X by Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt, in which Musk responded and said, “100 lasers per satellite, each operating above 10 Tb/s, with over 100k satellites should be able to outcompete undersea cables,” adding, “Speed of light in space is ~40% faster than cable and the path is direct, instead of following the outline of land masses.”

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Elon Musk Responds – Zelensky Bragged About Breaking Starlink Rules on X by Using It to Bomb Russia – Then Melts Down When It’s Shut Down

It is pretty clear at this point that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy can not be trusted.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky lashed out at Elon Musk and the US, after the Starlink service was interrupted in Ukraine earlier this month.

Starlink, which is controlled by Musk’s SpaceX, was being used by Zelensky to bomb Russia.

According to The London Economic, Zelensky wrote Musk saying it was a “big mistake” when Starlink was interrupted in Ukraine that will lead to “a lot of losses.”

Zelensky continued: “People will die if attacks continue and if Starlink will not work.”

On Saturday, Elon Musk responded to Zelensky on X social media:

“Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.

“Starshield,” a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.

Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.

Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.

Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia.

SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR.

That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell.

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Rosie O’Donnell Claims Elon Musk Could Use Satellites to Rig Midterm Elections in Bizarre TikTok Rant

Deranged comedienne Rosie O’Donnell has suggested that Elon Musk could use his Starlink satellites to manipulate the upcoming midterm elections.

In a video posted to TikTok, O’Donnell expressed hope that a sufficiently large turnout would prevent Republicans from interfering with the election results.

“When this is over — hopefully on November 4th when people show up en masse and they cannot rig the election or use Elon Musk’s satellites to alter the election because the turnout will be so large — hopefully then we will be able to see a tremendous decline in the MAGA cult,” she declared.

O’Donnell offered no evidence for her unusual claims.

Similar allegations spread among anti-Trump activists following the 2024 presidential election, with some suggesting that Musk’s Starlink satellite network had been used to manipulate voting machines.

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Musk Refused To Meet Zelensky, Who Asked Trump for Help Getting Starlink Tech To Guide Deep Strikes Inside Russian Territory

Musk would not even meet him, and Trump would not commit to the idea.

During his US visit for the burial of Senator Lindsay Graham, Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky attempted to meet billionaire Starlink owner Elon Musk, without success.

Voennoe Delo reported:

“SpaceX chief Elon Musk refused to meet Vladimir Zelensky during the Ukrainian leader’s visit to the United States, The Atlantic reported.

According to the publication, Zelensky had sought talks with the billionaire, but Musk declined the proposed meeting.”

Zelensky’s objective has become clear: he wants access to Starlink technology for missile guidance in strikes deep into Russian territory.

Unable to meet Musk, Zelensky reportedly asked Donald J. Trump to help secure Elon Musk’s permission to use Starlink technology.

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Reuters Peddles Fake News After Defense Contractor Misuses Civilian Starlink Terminals

Reuters dropped another misleading article today – this time attempting to manufacture drama between the Pentagon and SpaceX over Starlink usage during the Iran conflict.

The story framed routine commercial contract discussions and terms-of-service enforcement as major “tensions” and growing Pentagon reliance giving Elon Musk undue leverage.

Reuters’ version of events was that SpaceX used wartime urgency to raise the price of Starlink connections on U.S. drones from roughly $5,000 to $25,000 per terminal, forcing the Pentagon to pay up while exposing how dependent the military has become on Musk-controlled infrastructure.

The reality, according to Musk, is that the dispute centered on a more basic issue: a drone manufacturer or contractor allegedly used civilian Starlink terminals on military weapon systems, including drones, in violation of Starlink’s commercial terms of service, when the proper government and defense product is Starshield. In other words, Reuters framed the episode as a price-gouging and leverage story, while SpaceX and the Pentagon framed it as a contract-compliance story involving the misuse of civilian satellite service for weapons applications.

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Ukraine Regained Territory After Cutting Russia’s Black Market Starlink Terminals

According to a newly declassified U.S. defense intelligence assessment first reported by Bloomberg, Moscow’s frontline command-and-control structures suffered a catastrophic blackout earlier this year due largely to coordinated crackdown that disabled thousands of black market Russian Starlink terminals.

The Pentagon document highlights just how deeply Russian forces had come to rely on Elon Musk’s commercial satellite terminals to patch over their own spotty military communication systems. For months, Russian units bypassed international sanctions via shadow supply networks to source the hardware.

The Friday Bloomberg report claims that a “Ukrainian offensive against Russia earlier this year retook about 400 square kilometers after thousands of portable Starlink internet terminals operated by Russian forces were deactivated,” citing analysis from the US Defense Intelligence Agency. 

The document, authored jointly by the DIA and US European Command, states that “Russian military capabilities in Ukraine were temporarily yet significantly degraded following Ukrainian officials’ efforts in February to deactivate thousands of Starlink terminals that were illicitly used by Russian forces to coordinate movements and unmanned aircraft strikes in areas where communications were unreliable or easily jammed.”

Ukrainian forces then made their first territorial gains since 2023, after years of steady Russian gains, with Russia military comms now said to be “temporarily yet significantly degraded” due to the loss of the terminals.

The report further describes that Kiev forces working in tandem with SpaceX were able to deploy sweeping geographic restrictions that target-locked and deactivated unauthorized terminals operating inside the combat zone. This resulted in “instant” results.

What also didn’t help is the Kremlin’s own tightening restrictions on the use of Telegram by Russian forces, and so also the recent lack of this favored encrypted messaging platform among military units left frontline commanders totally isolated.

While US intelligence noted that Russia still maintains an overall structural advantage in raw combat functions, and of course manpower and firepower remains on Moscow’s side, the incident demonstrates that communications are still a vital backbone to any modern warfare and command system.

SpaceX has long sought to officially bar Russian consumers from using Starlink, due to long-running sanctions, and to prevent military use against Ukraine.

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When one man, a civilian, controls the kill switch for military ops

In September 2022, Ukrainian forces prepared to launch a drone strike on the Russian naval fleet anchored off Crimea. The drones never arrived.

Elon Musk had decided, unilaterally, not to activate Starlink coverage over the region. But he wasn’t simply declining to help. SpaceX had already been managing battlefield access for both sides: restricting Russian use, imposing speed limits to prevent drone integration, and maintaining a verified whitelist with Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. One private citizen, with no security clearance and no accountability to any electorate, was governing the battlefield connectivity of an active war.

The public debate treats this as a story about Elon Musk — his politics, his proximity to the White House, his X posts. That framing lets the actual problem off the hook. Replace Musk with the most patriotic, internationalist, apolitical CEO imaginable and the structural problem remains identical. The Pentagon has spent a decade building critical military functions on infrastructure it can’t legally compel, and the consequences are now arriving in real time.

A common reflex is to argue that private defense contractors have always been central to American military power. Lockheed Martin builds the F-35; Raytheon builds the Patriot. What’s different now is the control plane: who has real-time administrative control during use. When the government buys a tank, it owns it. The keys don’t expire. The manufacturer can’t disable it mid-mission or impose terms in combat. Software and AI are different. Vendors keep ongoing control — updates, access, and usage limits. They don’t sell a capability; they license access to one, and the license has conditions.

Those conditions have already collided with active operations. After months of failed negotiations, the Pentagon formally designated the AI firm Anthropic a supply-chain risk because of restrictions on how its model could be used. The Pentagon was explicit in its decision: “The military will not allow a vendor to insert itself into the chain of command.” Emil Michael, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, described the moment he fully grasped the vulnerability: Anthropic’s models were already embedded across combatant commands and intelligence agencies, wired into classified workflows. Anthropic retained the control plane inside the Pentagon’s cloud — able to update, restrict, or shut off access. When Michael raised hypothetical crisis scenarios, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, offered exceptions case by case. “Just call me if you need another exception,” Michael recalls him saying. In a genuine crisis, a commander can’t call a vendor to authorize military action, nor should he have to.

This isn’t about whether Anthropic’s rules are reasonable. They weren’t set by anyone accountable to the joint force, there’s no override mechanism, and the Pentagon had made itself dependent on systems it doesn’t control.

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NED leader cut off in Congress after boasting of ‘deploying’ 200 Starlinks to Iran amid violence

The National Endowment for Democracy’s president, Damon Wilson, bragged to a House committee of his group’s aggressive efforts to spark unrest in Iran, including by smuggling Starlink terminals and fashioning anti-Iran narratives for the media.

Damon Wilson, the head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was interrupted by a member of Congress during a House oversight hearing on February 24 after revealing that his agency “began supporting the deployment [and] operation of about 200 Starlinks early on” amid the violence which swept through Iran last month.

Before he could finish the sentence, he was cut off by the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, Rep. Lois Frankel, who told Wilson: “You know what, I’m going to interrupt you – we’d better not talk about it.”

Wilson’s comments had been prompted by a question from Frankel, who requested details of what appears to be a new and apparently secret initiative by the State Department to provide Starlink terminals to Iranians.

Wilson appeared to take credit for both the recent unrest and Iran and subsequent media framing of the chaos. “What we’re seeing today, the Endowment has been making investments over years that have ensured that there have been secure communications, including Starlinks… that allowed information to go both in and out of the country,” he stated.

According to the New York Times, the Elon Musk-produced internet systems had been smuggled into the country by a “ragtag network of activists, developers and engineers [who] pierced Iran’s digital barricades.” It is clear now that the NED was at least partly responsible for funding and coordinating that network.

With Starlink emerging as a key weapon in the information war waged against Iran, it’s unclear how anti-government actors have managed to smuggle the devices into the country. But a recent incident in which a senior Dutch diplomat was caught trying to sneak multiple Starlink units and satellite phones through security at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Airport gives a hint.

The National Endowment for Democracy was founded in 1982 under the auspices of then-CIA Director William Casey to topple socialist and independent governments through the direct sponsorship of NGO’s, media organizations and political parties. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED co-founder Allen Weinstein said of the Endowment’s work in 1991. 

Despite its mission of promoting transparency and “fundamental freedoms” abroad, the NED is now a dark money group which conceals the names of its local partners under a “duty of care” policy announced in 2025. During his congressional testimony this February, Wilson insisted the policy was necessary for the security of grantees on the ground.

The NED’s work to smuggle Starlink terminals into Iran is therefore a covert operation aimed at promoting unrest. And according to Wilson, it is now a key part of the Endowment’s most aggressive initiative.

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WEB WAR: After Shutting All Internet in the Country, Iranian Forces Are Now Jamming Starlink Service, While Users on the Ground Try to Bypass This New Censorship

It’s a technological ‘cat and mouse’ dispute.

As massive protests took to the streets of Iran for days on end, the Ayatollahs’ regime shut down the country’s internet completely.

That left the insurgents relying almost solely on the Starlink services made free by Elon Musk during the confrontations.

So the Iranian government started a two-pronged approach: begin cracking down and seizing all the Starlink terminals it could find, and at the same time, deploy military-grade level jammers to (so far, successfully) disrupt Starlink satellite service.

Both SpaceX engineers and Iranian protesters on the ground are now seeking ways to circumvent this censorship.

France24 reported:

“Iranian authorities cut the public’s access to the internet and telephone communications on January 8. The networks were later partially reinstated, but with severe restrictions. The Iranian regime has been facing a series of protests since late December. In an attempt to crush the movement, the Iranian government also tried to break the last international communication link available to Iranians: Starlink.

Starlink, which provides internet access through a constellation of satellites, was thought to be out of the Iranian authorities’ reach for censorship. However, in recent days, Starlink has been subject to a jamming campaign that has seriously impaired its use.”

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