As you may already know, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to a tweet earlier this week telling officials in Ukraine that SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet is active in the country and that more terminals were already “in road”.
Despite skeptics who claimed that Musk was using the invasion of Ukraine as a publicity stunt, the terminals arrived in the country in less than 48 hours. Moreover, the technology is apparently working as advertised, and officials in Ukraine have thanked the CEO for his help.
Musk has since tweeted about the situation, which is no surprise. It seems that when the loud CEO has his mind wrapped around something, he often obsesses over it, and not necessarily in a bad way. Not long ago Musk admitted on live TV that he has Asperger’s syndrome, and just this week, he once again called attention to “multiple personality disorder.”
The tweet above was just one of many written by Musk himself this week. It was in response to President Biden’s continued praise of Tesla’s rivals. However, that tweet topic was far from the other, perhaps much more useful and relevant for Starlink in Ukraine.
Now that the Starlink terminals have arrived safely in Ukraine and are said to be in successful use, Musk is offering more details as well as offering some insight, warnings and advice.
Musk claims that Starlink is essentially the only communications system that Ukraine can safely rely on right now and is likely to be hacked. He added the following responses on Twitter:
As more people chimed in on Musk’s tweets about Starlink internet in Ukraine, there were plenty of questions. One Twitter user questioned whether the technology could really be under threat from a Russian cyber attack. Musk clarified that this has already happened to all Viasat Ukraine user terminals on the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Is there anything Musk or SpaceX can do to ensure that Ukraine can continue to use Starlink Internet safely amid further attacks? While we have no way of knowing for sure, and Musk didn’t make any specific claims, he did respond to another tweet with just two words: “Game on.”
What does this mean? No one can say for sure, though it appears that Musk is planning to work with SpaceX to make it harder for the Russians to attack Starlink and render it inoperable. While the most important part here is that Musk is personally involving himself and his company in helping Ukraine, SpaceX will likely benefit from this unexpected, real-world test of Starlink’s Internet security features.
In a tweet, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation for Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov thanked Musk. He also directed the tweet at other major companies, asking for their help as well. There is also a second Twitter response from Musk about SpaceX helping Ukraine with civil internet outages.
Musk responded with measures SpaceX is already taking to improve the Starlink in-flight internet system. Of course, these updates are possible via over-the-air software updates, just like Tesla cars and home energy devices.
How about that TIME magazine Person of the Year award now? Start a conversation in the comments section below.
